John One Five

Skin As Canvas

2012-01-11T21:57:00.001-08:00

A few months ago I had the privilege and joy of bathing a child, and I admired her flawless skin. There were no scars, no wrinkles, no blemishes, no outstanding marks. But then I thought that there had been no stories yet in her life that had left visible signs.

Later I reflected on my own 63-year-old body with its scars and marks, each with a story. The broken and capped front tooth is the result of an accident that occurred in 1955. I still remember the two boys who started a foot race and watched each other instead of where they were going. Just five feet from their starting line one of them cracked his head on my tooth. He reared back, stunned, and a small corner of my tooth was broken off. In those days, bonding was unknown; rather than patch a small bond to my tooth which would have been an easy procedure today, my tooth was ground down to a small stub and a heavy cap put over it.

On my left inside forearm there is a white scar a half inch long and an eighth of an inch wide—the only remnant of a deep rip I sustained while scaling a chain link fence. That was about 1958.

In the summer of 1963, at Scout camp I fell into the stream and gashed my right knee. The camp doctor sewed it up and I had to walk with a stiff leg for a week or more. There are two scars there now.

On the ring finger of my left hand is a dark line from when a dirt-caked mirror broke and slashed my hand. When the wound healed, some of the dirt remained in the skin and is there to this day. That was in the fall of 1973.

The last joint of my left little finger doesn’t lie straight any more; it was damaged when I was holding a board in 1994 for someone in the karate class to break with a kick. He broke my finger instead.

On the same hand, the pointing finger has a long thin scar, the remnant of a slash from drawing a sword too quickly in 2002. I slashed it across the length of the finger deep enough to cut the tendon. Fortunately I cut the tendon lengthwise rather than severed it. It took nine stitches and gave me a great story. I applied for Worker’s Compensation for that $3,000, one-hour visit to the Emergency Room, and no one ever questioned why a priest could claim a sword cut as a job-related injury.

Between the thumb and forefinger on my right hand is a burn scar. I burned it when I reached into an oven in 2007. I was on retreat and was not familiar with the oven, and the top burner charred the skin several layers deep.

Apart from these scars, marks, and injuries, there are now age spots on my hands, arms, and face. I don’t plan to cover or remove them; they tell stories of adventures, misadventures, and skills that are part of my life’s history, and provide the unique tales told on the canvas of my skin. I look with pleasure at the faces of old people with many wrinkles, each visage unique and, like a canvas, telling a person’s story in visible marks.

I can only imagine what Jesus’ body was like. It is easy to assume that his hands bore calluses and scars from carpentry, that his feet were hard from much walking, his muscles were corded, and his skin darkened by frequent exposure to the sun.

The skin of a young child is like a blank canvas. Life’s adventures are few at that age. Human skin is a medium on which is written the tales of one’s life. Take the thought deeply enough and one can become immersed in the meaning of Jesus’ incarnation—the word, literally translated, means “in the meat”. God himself took our flesh, and had skin as we have, and it came to bear the marks of his divine life on earth. Go even farther, and one comes to resurrection—the destiny of the believer’s body on the far side of death. The resurrected body becomes perfect, yet surely will be recognizable through its direct connection with this life.

Once my skin was as flawless as that of the child I bathed, but now my scars, wrinkles, and blemishes tell the unique tale of my life, every mark on my body evidence of some adventure or escapade, even if just the adventure of living for more than six decades in the world. “My body shall rest in hope,” says Psalm 16:9b. My body, such as it is, also lives in hope. Jesus shared my human nature, and shares it still. In my love for him, I await the consummation in the greatest adventure of all.

The Ends of the Earth

2011-10-24T20:34:00.001-07:00

Jesus told his disciples, “You will bear witness for me in Jerusalem, and all over Judea and Samaria, and away to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The ends of the earth. The preaching of the Gospel began in Jerusalem and within a generation, churches had been formed throughout the Roman Empire: throughout the Holy Land, across the northern coast of Africa, throughout what is now Turkey, over into Greece, certainly in Rome. Before long the Gospel had spread as far west as Spain and the British Isles. By the end of the first millennium it had covered all of Europe including Scandinavia.

In the sixteenth century as Europeans began to explore and make homes in the New World, the Gospel came to the eastern parts of North America. In the eighteenth century Franciscans under Father Junipero Serra established missions in Mexico and eventually moved northward into what is now the State of California. They built missions approximately one day’s journey apart, from San Diego up beyond San Francisco.

In the meantime, the Gospel had also moved eastward from Jerusalem. Armenia became the first officially Christian nation. Ancient traditions tell how the Gospel came into India. It moved into Russia and crossed the vast spread of that country. In the eighteenth century the Gospel came into Alaska and began to move down the western coast of North America.

About 1833, 1,800 years after the Day of Pentecost, not far from what is now Fort Bragg, California, Russian Orthodox missionaries coming south from Alaska met Franciscan missionaries coming north. The Gospel had circled the globe, and “the ends of the earth” turned out to be California.

“All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God” (Psalm 98:4b).

Adoration

2011-10-10T18:43:00.001-07:00

For many years, on the first Sunday of each month I have presided at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. This service of pure worship contains a space of silent adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. As the years have passed, I have come more and more to find immense solace and peace as I gaze upon the consecrated Host.

Jesus gave the Church the command to celebrate what later came to be called the Mass and to receive Holy Communion. The faithful quickly discerned that Jesus is truly and objectively present in the consecrated Bread and Wine. Eventually there developed devotions to Jesus in the Sacrament apart from the Mass. One of the most moving and beautiful is the service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The consecrated Host is placed before the faithful in a monstrance, a decorated stand with a glass display case for the Host.

Jesus taught, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29).

Considering this passage, I am reminded of the story of Saint Jean Vianney, the Cure d’Ars, who noted that there was a little French farmer who visited his chapel every day at about noon. After a while the Cure became curious as to what the farmer was doing in the chapel. One day he decided to ask him. The farmer responded that he came in to visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. His style of prayer was simple. He said, “I just look at him, and he looks back at me.”

It sounds so simple, but in Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament I have come to see the profound reality of what the French farmer tried to explain: “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

When one gazes upon the host, on the one hand, one can see only a wafer of unleavened bread. On the other, by faith one may gaze upon that which is most beautiful. In adoration, there is no sense of time passing. As I kneel before the monstrance I am altered, and can even feel my face change its expression in response to what I see, discern, and feel.

Recently as I was drawn to the Beloved and allowed myself simply to look with adoration, I noted the various changes in my countenance that washed over and through me. Without plan or will, they simply moved through me, passing easily from one to the other, in the order below. I felt:

Joy

There was the rapture of feeling my entire self lifted up, almost swelled with delight, for I knew that what I saw was close to the vision of God himself, the creator and source of all that is beautiful. “Look upon him and be radiant” (Psalm 34:5).

Awe

Joy moved to awe at what I was discerning. “Please show me your glory,” begged Moses of God (Exodus 33:18), who responded, “My face you cannot see, for no human being can see me and survive” (Exodus 33:20b). Yet he allowed Moses to see a part of his glory (Exodus 33:21-23). Primitive and anthropomorphic as this narrative is, it contains an essence of profound truth that I find even more moving than the theophany at the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:1-6).

Unworthiness

“Moses covered his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus 3:6). Awe led me quickly to a sense of my unworthiness to see such beauty and glory; I was overwhelmed by the immensity of what was before my face, as if a passage to infinity had been opened in the ordinariness of the day.

Penitence

"When Simon saw the miracle of the great draft of fish, he fell on his knees before Jesus and said, ‘Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man’” (Luke 5:8). Unworthiness led quickly to penitence, the realization that I am a sinner.

Receiving Love

An assurance of being loved followed upon my penitence and overrode a sense of unworthiness. Anglican priest George Herbert wrote a poem called “Love bade me welcome”. Its first line is, “Love bade me welcome yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin.” The theme of the poem is that though one is indeed unworthy to be a guest at the banquet of Love, yet Love Himself bids you to be seated. When love is offered so firmly and unhesitatingly after one sees and acknowledges one’s unworthiness, then the love is life-changing.

Contentment

Having received that welcoming love, which at first was uncomfortable, without any sense of hurry I felt the contentment of the present moment, resting comfortably in the presence of the Beloved. “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:11a).

Desire/Longing

Eventually, the enjoyment of being in the presence of the Presence moved me gradually from simple contentment to a desire and longing for more. I knew that “once perfection comes, all imperfect things will be done away with” (1 Corinthians 13:10), and that the Blessed Sacrament, glorious as it is, is still a “veil”, a mediated thing by which Jesus comes to those who love him. “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water. Therefore I have gazed upon you in your holy place, that I might behold your power and your glory” (Psalm 63:1-2).

Union/Love

I moved from longing to a vision of its eventual fulfillment: “The city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God, and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it” (Revelation 21:23). The Blessed Sacrament itself satisfies even as it whets one’s appetite for the banquet of the Kingdom of God.

Hope

Finally, I felt hope, the hope that what one sees and longs for now shall have a consummation. The promises of God never fail, and the hope of life eternal with Jesus is a sure and certain hope. “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

And that led me back to Joy. Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper in anticipation of the breaking of their band, “I shall see you again, and your hearts will be full of joy, and that joy no one shall take from you” (John 16:22).

All of this can be wrapped up in a quotation from Karl Rahner from his brief essay, “About Sitting Down”. He wrote, “Of course, there are many exercises that lead to quiet and silent resting in oneself, such as the experience ... of deep and pure love between two people... Ultimately, however, there is only one type of stillness that enables a person to be at peace with himself or herself: prayer... Only in the loving being-at-oneness with the infinite mystery we call God can one arrive in such a way that one does not have to go any farther, where one can find rest."

“All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Or “I just look at him, and he looks back at me.”

“My Life’s Light, My Beloved Ladye”

2011-08-14T21:53:00.000-07:00

Nearly five years ago I wrote this blogpost about my personal devotion to the Virgin Mary. Of more than one hundred blogposts in almost five years, it is one of those I am most pleased with; it still stirs my emotions. One person who read it at the time said it was the most beautiful account of a man’s love for a woman that she had ever read. That gratified me deeply.

Today I post another item about Mary. The one in the link above is very personal and devotional. This one is didactic. Of all the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, August 15 is the most important. On it the Catholic faithful commemorate her death and assumption into heaven.

In the middle ages in England, a devotional acclamation arose: “Christ’s meek Mother, Saint Marye, My Life’s light, my beloved Ladye.” It is now the motto of the Guild of the Living Rosary, of which I am the American chaplain. I love the motto. It reminds me that Anglican devotion to Mary was once strong and widely accepted. The ravages of the Reformation removed many wonderful things from the palette of Christian devotion, but thankfully devotion to Our Lady has been returning for decades, gradually but surely.

The rise of devotion to Mary is not limited to Anglicans. J. Neville Ward, a Methodist clergyman, wrote a remarkable book on the value of the Rosary called Five For Sorrow, Ten For Joy. It was first published in 1971. In its preface, Ward wrote, “It does seem clear that the first-century people who put together the four gospels found that they could not do justice to the mixture of the divine and human in Jesus without saying some very remarkable things about his mother. Their minds were continually drawn to her. Because they felt that to Jesus was given the name that is above every name, these early Christians sensed an extraordinary mystery about her. They knew as well as we do that the influence of a mother over a child is absolutely incalculable for good or ill. If Jesus was who they thought he was, then who was she?”

Mary was the virgin mother of the Messiah. Legends of her early life tell us that she was an only child, miraculously born to aging parents, that she was presented in the Temple at the age of seven, and was raised there. Of her birth and early life, Holy Scripture and history are silent, but it is consistent with Scriptural accounts of others and therefore logical to assume that, with a view to her future destiny as the Mother of the Messiah and Lord, she was specially sanctified from the womb of her mother as were Jeremiah and John the Baptist, and that she lived a life of spotless innocence. How else could she have been fitted for her high and mysterious office as the Mother of the incarnate God?

In the Biblical narrative, she lived in Nazareth, a small town in Galilee in the north of the Holy Land. At the time of the Annunciation, when she was called to be the mother of the Messiah, she was probably about fourteen or fifteen and betrothed to Joseph, who tradition tells us was an older man, a widower, perhaps with children from a previous marriage. The assertion that Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth was a very early one in the Church and became widely accepted.

Mary has been called “the greatest boast of the human race”. Quite likely, next to Jesus, she is the most beloved human being of all time. In the eighth century, St. John of Damascus weighed into the iconoclastic controversy in which the Byzantine Emperor had declared that the use of images, icons, and other externals was not permitted in Christian worship because it was idolatry. John said that the use of such things is permitted, since there is a difference between “worship”—which is given to God alone, and “veneration”—which may be given to images and to the Saints. For Mary he declared that “hyper-veneration” is permitted, as the chiefmost of the Saints. John’s declaration became the official teaching of the Church.

Mary is the only person in Scripture who is not exhorted to believe that Jesus is God. Others are told that he is the Messiah, such as the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem and Simeon in the Temple, but only Mary is told from the beginning who Jesus is: the Son of God. There are only two categories in the New Testament of those who never doubt that Jesus is the Son of God. One is Mary alone; the other is the demons, who cry out, “We know who you are—the Holy One of God!”

She accepted the call of virginal motherhood, using the same words God the Father used to create the universe: “Let it be”—in Latin, “fiat”. Like most godly vocations, this one was not an easy one, and the Gospel of Luke says that “she was greatly troubled at the saying” when the angel greeted her. Like Moses and Jonah, she knew the voice of the Lord at the time of her vocation; unlike them, she accepted and maintained the vocation without hesitation.

It must have been because she not only knew God, but also loved him. Not that the others did not love God, but Mary was the one who loved him best. She was able in her own existence to love God and to love neighbor, to fulfill the summary of the Law her Son would later pronounce. Hence, after the Annunciation, she visited Elizabeth in joy, and risked the loss of Joseph’s trust because she had faith in the God whom she trusted to bring it all out right—which He did.

In the visit to her kinswoman Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, she proclaimed the Magnificat. The canticle shows her contemplative nature, but also that this nature is rooted in daily life and reality—as all contemplative nature must be if it is truly to be contemplative. The Magnificat shows that Mary was aware of God’s sovereignty, intentions in exalting her, and regard for the poor.

The Magnificat satisfies those most deeply devoted to Mary, with the words “all generations shall call me blessed” and “he who is mighty has done great things for me.” The Magnificat also appeals to those who are passionately devoted to peace and justice concerns, with its ringing words about scattering the proud, putting down the mighty from their thrones, sending the rich away empty, and exalting the lowly while filling the hungry with good things.

Clearly, even as a young teenager, the contemplative Mary was not removed from the things of the earth. She could handle traveling while heavily pregnant, giving birth in a stable or cave, and being on the run with a small child while under threat of death from a powerful man with hundreds of soldiers at his command. Yet these things are the matrix for the most obvious and most important picture of all: mother with child. It is a tender, heart-rending, and heart-filling picture. She is poor but not destitute, and always rich with the presence of God.

She appears first as a young teenager called:

to a new country more alien than that to which Abraham was called;

to know the meaning of the divine presence more intimately than Moses at the burning bush;

to be devoted to the will of God more intensely than Elijah;

to a vision of holiness greater than that given by revelation to Isaiah;

to carry sorrows with more resolution than Jeremiah; and

to an obedience more resolute than Daniel’s.

In the stable, feeding the divine infant from her own body, she is presented as undeniably Virgin and Queen. Virginity here is not a statement about lack of sexual experience, but a statement about purity, about being completely “God-oriented” and having room for nothing else, so that all of her relationships, including that with Joseph, were made rich and whole solely because of her single-heartedness toward God.

It is a concept with which our generation has become unfamiliar, and because unfamiliar, uncomfortable. A number of translations of old hymns have replace the word “virgin” with “maiden”, and in the categories of saints in the Episcopal calendar, the ancient class of “virgin” has been dropped. It is a major loss and our culture and contemporary Church are the worse for it.

This is not to imply that virginity is inherently a higher or better vocation than marriage or that sex is inherently impure. Virginity is a special kind of offering. It is a kind of fasting. True fasting is not merely the absence of food, but the presence of joy through the offering of a gift.

Virginity is a means of loving God, and a calling for a few. It was the calling of Mary, and an integral part of her glory. In the early Church, virgins were considered in a category close to martyrs: those who offered themselves single-heartedly and wholeheartedly to God. Virginity is never about absence, but rather a unique richness. The things of God are never negative, never about lack; on the contrary, they are always about richness and inundating love.

The first clear prediction of suffering for Mary came when she and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple at the age of forty days, according to the Law of Israel. Simeon was there, “righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25). Simeon gave the pre-eminence to Mary rather than to Joseph by addressing her, saying, “This child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35).

Pre-eminent as she was, there was a price to be paid for her vocation. We are nowhere told what her response to Simeon was, but we can guess that she lived not only with joy but perhaps with a measure of apprehension, or at least the knowledge that there would be heartbreak and great pain in store. In fallen world, it is always so wherever there is love.

When Mary and Joseph lost track of Jesus when he was twelve years old and found him in the Temple, and Jesus spoke to them about having to be in his Father’s house, the Bible says, “They did not understand the saying which he spoke to them”…and “his mother kept all these things in her heart” (2:50, 51b). Understanding is a matter of the mind; Mary kept those things in her heart, a deeper place than the mind, the repository of love and intimacy, the home of faith and worship. Here also she had treasured the words of the shepherds who visited on the night that Jesus was born. (Luke 2:19)

There are only a few other places where Mary is mentioned in the Gospel narratives. She is mentioned at the wedding in Cana of Galilee; when she and Jesus’ brothers are trying to get a word with him; by a woman who cried out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts which you have sucked.”

And finally the poignant words at the crucifixion, “Woman, behold your son.” Her presence at the cross is indicative that perhaps she had been among the company much of the time—certainly at the least in its last days.

And when Jesus died, she was a widow without a son, like the widow of Nain upon whom Jesus had had compassion and for whom he had raised her son from the bier. Like that widow, Mary’s son also returned from death. Unlike that widow, she did not get to keep him—at least not in the earthly fashion. Much has been said and written about Mary as virgin and mother; far too little about Mary as widow and bereaved.

The last Biblical reference in her chronology is the day of Pentecost, where she was numbered among those in the Upper Room when the Spirit descended upon the faithful. (Acts 1:14)

We do not know how long she lived after that, for she is not mentioned again in the New Testament. No matter how long she lived in the first generation Church, as J. Neville Ward wrote above she would have had a place of deepening affection and awe in the hearts and minds of believers. It is evident that the first Christians found it increasingly difficult to exclude her from their praise of Christ because the more they saw of the glory of Jesus, the more they saw his Mother aglow with it.

Every right belief about Mary points to Jesus, continuing the lesson in the miracle of Cana in which she said to the servants, “Whatever he says to you, do it” (John 2:5). Mary is the model of humanity redeemed by Christ.

She is the only mortal who knew the entire earthly life of Jesus. “Her virgin eyes saw God incarnate born,” says one hymn(Written by Moir A. J. Waters [1906-1980]); and the Stabat Mater speaks of how she saw him suffer and die: “At the cross her station keeping, stood the mournful mother weeping.” She knew him throughout the “hidden years” of his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. She knew him as carpenter.

Sometimes it seems that Mary is reverenced by being mentioned little in the New Testament. It does not seem to be a silence of unimportance, but rather of reverence. She is never even called by name in John’s Gospel, the Gospel that was written by the one with whom she spent the last years of her life. In John’s Gospel she is only referred to as “the mother of Jesus”. It is almost a literary bowing of the head, and, in the mind and heart of the Church, tying her to Jesus forever.

I believe that it is no coincidence that the Gospel written by one whom Jesus named a “son of thunder” for his violent and vengeful nature is perhaps the most mystical and profound thing ever written. The “son of thunder” was transformed by having “the mother of Jesus” in his home for the rest of her life. It is not hard for me to consider that the Gospel of John in many ways was inspired by Mary.

What of Christian devotion to Mary? In some ways, it is so obvious that it is foolish to bring it up. Maybe understanding it can come through a brief reflection on the words used in the Bible of her alone: “full of grace.” Grace is the means by which God does everything to redeem and hallow people and places. Mary was full of grace. In order to be full of grace, one must be empty of everything else, so that one can be utterly receptive—that is, to be truly female. This is a mystical truth, written deep not only in human nature, but in the very framework of the cosmos.

God, from the beginning of time, is the Giver of Life. All life-initiating, life-producing, and life-nurturing activities are derivative of God’s acts of Creation and Redemption. Because the world is indwelt by the Spirit, all things are sacramental, not only all of nature but in particular human physiology. Just as snow, for example, reminds us of purity, beauty, silence, and renewal, and as a storm reminds us of might and power and transcendence, so do human bodies reflect spiritual truths about human nature.

The body of a man is designed to give, to initiate life; the body of a woman is designed to receive, to nurture life. These are spiritual realities, far richer than merely physical or even symbolic. George MacDonald (in his novel Malcolm) says, “The love between man and woman, arising from a difference deep in the heart of God, and essential to the very being of each... is one of [God’s] most powerful forces for blasting the wall of separation, and first step towards the universal harmony of twain making one. By no words can I express my scorn of the evil fancy that the distinction between [male and female] is solely or even primarily physical.”

Thus, the relationship between male and female, by logical extension of sacramental theology (not to mention physiology) is an icon of the romance between God and the cosmos, in which God woos and wins his wayward bride. The Bible consistently reveals God in masculine terms, not to say that God is male (which is absurd) or to disparage females (equally absurd), but to reveal the nature of the relationship between God and the cosmos: that everything that is created and redeemed is his beloved Bride. At the foundation of all things, and the interaction of things, there is divine love. God created by love, sustains and redeems all things in love, and consummates all things for love.

If God is revealed in masculine terms, and if all that exists is truly about love, then the cosmos, everything that exists, is feminine to God. Salvation is a romance, a love story, and a matter of passion. One may consider that it is the only love story that there is, for all other love stories are only variations on this theme.

If this is so, then Christianity is the most earthy, sensuous, “rooted in real life” religion that there is, and therefore the only fully true religion—for it recognizes that in the Incarnation human flesh has been hallowed and all matter transformed, and maleness and femaleness themselves are the localized expressions of cosmic verities. Christian orthodoxy proclaims that only a male can be an icon of God as he has revealed himself in Christ, and only a female can be the icon of the universe. The archetypal contemplative is female, and Mary, the receiver of God, is the one in whose human flesh and life the cosmic myth of divine love became fact. What is written large across the cosmos became localized in such and such a real time, such and such a real place, such and such a real person.

As an archetype this reality perhaps even implies virginity. It may even imply perpetual virginity—one who is filled with nothing but God, and has never been filled with anything else; one who is full of grace. It implies purity (the radiance of God) and innocence (untainted by evil), but not naiveté.

Mary is such a one who is full of grace, which is to be full of God, which is to be full of joy... and (until heaven) full also of sorrow. For joy and sorrow are inseparable until the great consummation, the great End that is the great Beginning. Mary is often depicted as a woman of sorrows or of solitude. This image probably implies a reference to the sword that pierced her soul (heart) as prophesied by Simeon in the Temple.

This is the glory of Mary. It has been more than six centuries since the age of chivalry, when virginity was understood and valued as the enormous power that it is, when there were festivals in honor of Our Lady, and when England was called “Mary’s Dowry”. Now we live in a culture of speed, greed, and death, and the heartfelt exclamation “By Our Lady,” has devolved to the English epithet “bloody”.

But for the Catholic faithful, the truth does not and cannot change, though all the world be deaf and blind. Our Lady is still, next to Jesus, the greatest human being who has ever lived, who shows us the way of Jesus. Her hidden glory of unique intimacy with God shows that we bear the cross to walk the way of life. We share in the sufferings of Christ only because they lead to “the joys of his resurrection”. Mary, then, is the first among the redeemed, and the greatest boast of the human race.

Her glorious Assumption is a sign of the full hallowing of matter, the fullness of redemption, the firstfruits of Jesus’ promises, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5); and “I shall come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am, you may be also” (John 14:3). Mary’s Assumption shows us our destiny, what the Prayer Book describes as “perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in [God’s] eternal and everlasting glory” (Book of Common Prayer, page, 488).

As the first Christians knew, and as Catholic Christians everywhere have known through the ages, and today know still, any genuine devotion to Jesus and commitment to him must inevitably draw Mary into one’s heart as well. As the medieval Anglicans knew it, “Christ’s meek Mother, Saint Marye, My Life’s light, my beloved Ladye.”

Joseph, Son of David

2011-08-08T18:34:00.000-07:00

When Bishop Robert Rusack consecrated Blessed Sacrament’s church building almost thirty years ago (September 27, 1981), in his remarks he pointed out that of all the churches in the diocese, he believed that though many had statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Blessed Sacrament was the only one that had a statue of Saint Joseph as well. It is unfortunate that Joseph is so neglected in our churches, and I am delighted that our forebears saw to it that he was remembered in our parish.

Our shrines to Mary and Joseph are in opposite corners at the back of the nave. Both receive visitors who pray and light votive candles. I wonder how often, if ever, anyone connects the two in devotions. Just a few days ago, someone did, and was moved to write to me about it. What she wrote transformed and immeasurably enriched my understanding of St. Joseph. I will quote her few lines below.

In all of Scripture, there is not one word recorded of anything that Joseph said. We know him by his dreams and his actions as the protector of the Virgin and Child. He was a descendant of King David, a carpenter, open to direct communication from God in dreams and obediently responsive to what he discerned, and willing to take risks out of obedience to God. And it is clear that he loved Mary.

Long tradition tells us that he was an older man, perhaps a widower with children, and that by marrying Mary he became her protector in her vocation as Mother of the Messiah. He was still alive when Jesus was twelve and the Holy Family traveled to Jerusalem. When Jesus began his public ministry nearly twenty years later, Joseph is no longer in the narrative. He had died in the meantime and Mary was a widow in her forties.

Another long tradition is that Mary was always a virgin. There is much Scriptural support for this belief, though not definitive, and the title “ever-virgin” is ancient and nearly universal from the early years of the Church. In the service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Joseph is referred to as Mary’s “most chaste spouse”. Most believers reduce this belief to the understanding that Joseph and Mary did not have sex.

I am chagrined to admit that I hadn’t thought much farther than that myself until a few days ago. But if we stop there, considering only what did not occur between them, the haunting implications of what their loving relationship actually was are missed, and we are left with a poverty-stricken image of negativity or absence. The reflection I received from a member of Blessed Sacrament on the subject caught me up short. If we take it as given that Mary and Joseph were not sexually intimate, we must not and cannot rightly conclude that they therefore had no intimacy. In chastity, and even in celibacy, there still can be and should be deep intimacy, for are we not called truly to love? And can there be genuine love without intimacy of some kind?

Looking across the lawn between the hall and the side door of the church, I caught sight of a young woman going into the church to pray. I never saw her leave and assume that she was there for a long time. Later I learned that she had visited the shrines of both Mary and Joseph, and in her devotions connected the two in a way I had never even thought of before. She was moved to write to me about her experience, and said, “I think that St. Joseph held the Blessed Virgin a lot: I don’t know how else she could have survived... and I think that was probably terrifying for him, and probably conflicting---a very fine edge, but not an impossible balance since he did it.” She added later, “In retrospect, it seems so obvious I want to laugh: what do we think St. Joseph was doing? Standing around holding the reins of the donkey while a lonely girl carried the God-Man?”

These few words had enormous impact on me and opened up a profound depth in the meaning of true love as manifested in the Holy Family. Our wayward culture seems to know only gratuitous sex or painful isolation; it knows almost nothing of genuine love of any kind, with all of its limitless manifestations.

The young woman came somehow to know that, if Joseph’s love for Mary led him to hold her a lot, it would have been costly to him. I have no idea how she could have received that insight, but I think it must have been so. We know of the sword that was prophesied for the heart of the Mother of the Messiah; was there not also a price for Joseph to pay for his fidelity to his vocation, his lifelong devotion to the most lovable woman of all time? I thought of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, and Jesus felt power going out of him. There is a kind of love in which power is given from the lover to the beloved: sacrificial love in any of its manifold expressions.

Joseph was not only a son of David; he was also a son of Boaz, whom I described in a recent blogpost as “a real man”—one who knows how to love a woman. Joseph was obedient to God, protective of the ones he loved, and willing to pay a price not only for their safety but to ensure that they were blessed. He was self-effacing and humble, yet strong and reliable. His strength passed into the Virgin Mother, shaping and filling her through the years of their marriage for the costly future days of her Son’s ministry that he would not live to see. “Blessed indeed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.”

I plan to post something about Mary next week on her feast day, August 15, but a post about Joseph begged to be written today.

Beyond DispicuBel

2011-08-03T20:55:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I found a child’s scrawl on the back of a prayer request card in the church. It read, “I know you God So I am so DispicuBel” I must confess that I was shocked and deeply saddened by this.

I have been a spiritual director and adviser over many years to probably dozens of people, and have been powerfully impacted by the fact that far and away the most common spiritual “ailment” is when people know Jesus and believe that he is the Son of God and Savior—but do not feel or truly believe that they are unconditionally loved and fully forgiven. Indeed, this is my own besetting sin. To see this sentiment laid out in the words of a child was distressing. Did the child hear the words from an adult, remember them, and then write them down without knowing their meaning? Maybe the child just liked the word because of the movie “Despicable Me”. Of course, I don’t know. But the implication that knowing God leads to believing oneself to be despicable is distressing.

After I reflected on the scrawl, the words of a song from 1970 came into my mind. The song was “Woodstock”, written by Joni Mitchell to capture the feeling of the legendary rock concert of August 1969. The song begins with these words:

I came upon a child of God.
He was walking along the road.
When I asked him, “Where are you going?”
This he told me.

I’m going down to Yasgur’s farm.
Think I’ll join a rock and roll band.
I’ll camp out on the land.
I’ll try and set my soul free.

We are stardust.
We are golden,
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

There are several recordings of the song on youtube, but here’s the best-known version:

Now here’s something funny. Woodstock is known as the largest gathering of people that had ever occurred in the United States up to that time. In the words of the song, they were “half a million strong”. Woodstock is remembered not only for the music but for the rampant “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”, i.e. immoral and illegal behaviors. Yet there is an appearance of joy in what people experienced there, expressed in the song that uses the words “child of God”, “getting one’s soul free”, and “getting back to the garden”, i.e. looking for Eden. And in recognizing that humans of all kinds are “stardust” and “golden”. Even in the context of public nudity and clouds of marijuana smoke there was a kind of lyric innocence underneath, with happy people looking for and finding some sort of freedom in contrast to, as the song says, feeling “like a cog in something turning.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating that people become hippies in order to find God or freedom, or learn that they are loved. “Free love” and drug abuse are long-proven roads to ruination.

What I’m thinking about is the contrast between the genuine search for “the garden” and recognition that one is “a child of God” and “golden” among—what shall I say? neo-pagans?—and the sense of being despicable and loathsome that so many believers have today. Believers more than anyone ought to know that the birthright of the born again is “love, joy, peace,...” Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you”; “Your joy no one will take from you”; “My peace I leave with you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.”

The feeling of being despicable is valuable and, as far as it goes, true. But too many believers stop there. We need the overpowering message not only of Scripture but of the Saints: St. Thérèse of Lisieux, for example, also called St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus (January 2, 1873 – September 30, 1897).

During his pontificate at the beginning of the twentieth century, Pope Pius X declared St. Thérèse “the greatest saint of modern times.” She was only twenty-four when she died, but during her short life spoke more powerfully and simply and penetratingly of the love of God than most people in the history of the Church.

My favorite saying of St. Thérèse is, “I’m not saying that you believe too much in your own wretchedness. I’m telling you that you don’t believe enough in merciful love.”

Despicable, okay. But don’t stop there. Believers should have at least as much conviction of their being the children of God, and golden, and knowing love, joy, and peace as the neo-pagans of Woodstock.

“I’m telling you that you don't believe enough in merciful love.” If only I, and everyone I know and love and preach to, could really and truly know and believe and feel these things.

Real Manhood

2011-07-18T21:20:00.001-07:00

A good number of years ago I ran across this statement: a real man is one who knows how to love a woman. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten the source now, but I liked the definition very, very much. It struck me as rather “chivalrous”; it appealed to me and inspired me to strive to “live above” the tawdry standards and low expectations of our culture. I think it has always been difficult to be a real man, but it is particularly so today when there are so few genuinely inspiring role models, and when the standards that popular culture holds up for imitation are either twisted or scornful of real manhood.

Chivalry is often considered a quaint notion today and probably has not been taken seriously for generations—at least, as such, in general. Yet I think that a chivalrous man shows manhood at its best. Chivalry is about honor and virtue, and in spite of popular opinion is probably always, deep down at least, truly the ideal of manhood. I have known a number of truly chivalrous men, and thankfully some of them are among the past and present young men at Blessed Sacrament. They are rebels.

This is why I really like Boaz in the Book of Ruth. I read Ruth a couple of weeks ago, and the gentle and strong manhood of Boaz impressed me deeply. I had, of course, read the book many times before, but Boaz came across to me this time in a deeper way than before. He showed the fulfillment of the powerful and ringing definition of manhood in the New Testament: Ephesians 5:25-30.

The eponymous Ruth was a young widow, a foreign woman living in Israel. She had married the son of Naomi, an Israelite who had gone with her husband and two sons to the neighboring land of Moab during a famine. After her husband and sons died in Moab, the newly widowed Ruth returned to Israel with her widowed mother-in-law, pronouncing the well-known and much-admired vow, “Wherever you go, I shall go; wherever you live, I shall live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God” (Ruth 1:16).

Ruth was a most amazing and admirable woman. Indeed, the book is about her and bears her name.

But let’s not overlook Boaz. Once back in Israel, Naomi and Ruth were poor, but it was Israelite law that close kinsmen, according to a formula, were to provide for the widows of their family by marrying them, thereby preserving the family line of the deceased husband. It was also Israelite law that the poor were to be allowed to glean in the fields during harvest time, picking up grain that was left over after the reapers had covered the field.

Naomi urged Ruth to glean in the fields of Boaz, their near kinsmen. Ruth did so, and was humble and deferential. Boaz noticed of her, and clearly took a liking to her. He saw to it that his menservants did not bother her and that the reapers would leave her plenty of grain to find. He thereby provided for her and Naomi, and did so honorably. He did not just give Ruth a few bushels of grain in place of her gleaning; that would have been patronizing. He preserved her dignity by allowing her to continue to glean, thereby showing her respect by permitting her to “earn” her grain by her labor. As she worked in the fields he also gave her access to drink and provided her meals. (See Ruth 2:8-16.)

Boaz was obviously a godfearing man. His first words recorded in Scripture are, “The Lord be with you” (Ruth 2:4), with which he greeted his servants. From this may well come the greeting that has been so much a part of the liturgy for many centuries. Today we use Boaz’s words many times in worship.

Naomi urged Ruth, of course, to continue to glean in Boaz’s field, as Boaz himself had also urged. Naomi eventually encouraged Ruth to claim the privilege of Boaz’s protection under Israelite law, even though she was a foreigner. She then went to sleep at Boaz’s feet, throwing the end of his blanket over her (Ruth 3:7). When Boaz discovered her in the middle of the night, he treated her with honor and courtesy, preserving her safety and praising her for her virtue (Ruth 3:11-12). He addressed her more than once, including on this occasion, as “daughter”, a sign both of intimacy and honor.

Boaz then moved to ensure that Ruth would become his wife in the fullest, most proper fashion, treating her claim honorably and ensuring that he would make her his own formally and legitimately even though there was one other relative with the right of redemption ahead of Boaz.

And then, as the short book makes clear, they became the great-grandparents of King David, who governed Israel and established its golden era, and through whose line the Messiah is traced. David, then, was one-eighth Moabite—partly of foreign blood.

It is often claimed today that women were little more than property in the age of the Old Testament and for centuries afterward. The story of Ruth shows that the real situation was much more complex than that. There are those in every age—most undeniably including our own—who consider women, and men and children too, as throwaway property. Perhaps our own age is even more guilty of this than most ages of humanity. But there have been and will always be men who are godly and chivalrous, going against the trend of their culture. These rebels know how to love a woman. They know how to love God.

How One Man Changed History

2011-06-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

June 1, today, is the feast of St. Justin, commonly called Justin Martyr. It’s a day that always impresses me, for reasons that will become clear at the end of this blogpost.

Justin was born in Samaria in the first decade of the second century. His parents were pagans. As a young man he eagerly sought to learn the meaning of life, and received instruction from a number of philosophers without being satisfied by any of them. Sometime in his twenties he was walking along the beach in Ephesus on the western shore of what is now Turkey, and met an old man who told him about Christianity. The conclusion of their long discussion was that Justin came to believe that no one could arrive at the idea of God solely through his own efforts, but that one needed to be instructed by the Jewish Prophets who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, had known God and could make him known. Justin decided to become a Christian, probably at Ephesus, at the latest by A.D. 130.

Before his conversion, Justin already knew something of Christianity, since it was by now a common religion in the Roman Empire, even if not yet licit. After his conversion, Justin wrote that he had been influenced by the fearless conduct of Christians facing execution. He wrote, “When I was a disciple of Plato, hearing the accusations made against the Christians and seeing them intrepid in the face of death and of all that men fear, I said to myself that it was impossible that they should be living in evil and in the love of pleasure.” Justin explained that he was moved by Christianity’s “moral beauty” and by its “truth”.

Once he had become a Christian, Justin began to write and to teach. Within about ten years, he arrived in Rome where he started his own school. Three of his essays still exist. Following up on what he had learned from the old man, he wrote that true knowledge of God can only come by revelation, though it is built upon one’s own seeking. His writings are the first time in Christian theology that we find so concise an explanation of the difference that separates Christian revelation from human speculation. Just as the accusation on Jesus’ cross was written in the language of the Empire (Latin), the common people (Greek), and the People of God (Hebrew), so do the three extant essays of Justin address the Romans (explaining that Christianity does not imply disloyalty to the Empire), popular philosophy (defending Christianity against the Greek charge that it is irrational), and the Jews (asserting that Christianity does not distort the Hebrew Scriptures but rather fulfills them).

Roughly twenty years after his arrival in Rome, after disputing with the cynic philosopher Crescens, he was denounced by the latter to the authorities. Justin was tried, together with six companions (Chariton, Charito, Evelpostos, Pæon, Hierax, and Liberianos); all were condemned for their refusal to renounce Christ, and were beheaded in the mid 160s. In a prescient statement written in A.D. 155, Justin had said, “It is incumbent on every lover of truth, at whatever personal cost, even if his own life is at stake, to choose to do and to speak only what is right.”

The court record of the trial and condemnation is extant. The examination ends as follows: “The Prefect Rusticus says: Approach and sacrifice, all of you, to the gods. Justin says: No one in his right mind gives up piety for impiety. The Prefect Rusticus says: If you do not obey, you will be tortured without mercy. Justin replies: That is our desire, to be tortured for Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and so to be saved, for that will give us salvation and firm confidence at the more terrible universal tribunal of Our Lord and Saviour. And all the martyrs said: Do as you wish; for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols. The Prefect Rusticus read the sentence: Those who do not wish to sacrifice to the gods and to obey the emperor will be scourged and beheaded according to the laws. The holy martyrs glorifying God betook themselves to the customary place, where they were beheaded and consummated their martyrdom confessing their Saviour.”

The church of St. John the Baptist in Sacrofano, a few miles north of Rome, claims to have Justin’s relics.

The title of this blogpost is How One Man Changed History. Of course that can refer to Justin himself, whose influence was great in his own day and extends to our own time more than 1,850 years later. But the man I am thinking of in this title is the stranger on the shore of Ephesus, whose name was not recorded by Justin, and in this world, then, will never be known. This old man was probably a member of the church in Ephesus, which had been a major Christian center from the days of St. Paul more than a century earlier. He was evidently a man able and willing to talk about his faith with a stranger in an effective and persuasive fashion.

Also obvious is the fact that it was God who did the “converting” of Justin. The young Justin was eager to know the meaning of life and was ripe for coming to know God. We may ask, what would have happened if the young man and the old man had not met, nor conversed, or if the old man, having met with Justin, shrank back from talking to him about Jesus. Of course, we cannot answer those questions; we can only know what actually happened. The old man did talk to the young man, and he was the instrument by whom God brought Justin to Christ, and through Justin, many others.

Year by year I have pondered the account of Justin’s conversion and given thanks to God for the old man, whoever he was—a brother in Christ, at least, and an effective “street evangelist”. There are times I have been in the place of the old man, and shared Jesus with people whom I had met casually. (See this blogpost, Girl on a Bus.) But it is always God who is the evangelist (See this blogpost, No Wrong Numbers With God.) God’s first plan for bringing people to Christ is to have believers serve as his instruments. People are usually converted by people—much less frequently by visions or personal study. I salute the stranger on the shore and hope to be as effective as he was.

Mars, Symbol of Mystery and Longing

2011-05-08T18:09:00.001-07:00

Unquestionably, in spite of the vast amounts of new knowledge about the fourth planet that have come our way in the past generation, Mars is still a symbol of “otherness” and “mystery”. From the time of Jules Verne and perhaps before, space travel has been one of the great dreams of humankind, and Mars, as our closest planetary neighbor in space, has received the most attention. Surely it will be the next extraterrestrial place that will receive a human footprint—perhaps even in my lifetime. Countless movies, documentaries, magazine articles both popular and scientific, television specials and series, short stories, and books have investigated this dream.

For me, the dream is only one variation on the desire, set deep in the human heart, for a place of beauty and adventure, whether we call it “over the rainbow”, Shangri-la or El Dorado, Wonderland, going “boldly where no one has ever gone before”, or use another of the many well-known literary descriptions of a beautiful, far-off place that draws our attention with painful yearning.

Mars has fascinated humanity from the time of the ancients who named it for the mythological god of war (because of its distinct red color, suggestive of blood). Orson Wells’ radio drama of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds that aired on October 30, 1938 caused widespread panic when it was thought that Martians had landed on Earth and were wreaking immense havoc. Several movies made in the last few years have featured landings and adventures on Mars.

Much to my excitement and joy, a few days ago I came into possession of a fragment of a Martian meteorite—a piece of Mars. Wikipedia says, “A Martian meteorite is a rock that formed on the planet Mars, was ejected from Mars by the impact of an asteroid or comet, and landed on the Earth. Of over 50,000 meteorites that have been found on Earth, as of March 15, 2011 ninety-seven are Martian; they include fragments of approximately 58 individual Mars rocks that have fallen to Earth.”

Compared to my little stone, then, diamonds are as common as gravel.

Further technical reports conclude that, “Roughly three-quarters of all Martian meteorites can be classified as Shergottites. They are named after the Shergotty meteorite, which fell at Sherghati, India in 1865. ... Shergottites are among the rarest of meteorites. A Shergottite consists mostly of olivine, the pyroxene mineral pigeonite, and plagioclase feldspar, making it a basalt. Such a rock can only form in a differentiated body, that is, a fairly sizable planet. From studies of its age (much younger than other meteorites) and its gas inclusions (which precisely match the composition of the Martian atmosphere), we know that the planet in question is Mars. The Shergottites appear to have crystallized as recently as 180 million years ago, which is a surprisingly young age considering how ancient the majority of the surface of Mars appears to be, and the small size of Mars itself.”

The fragment now in my possession is from a stone that originally weighed 1.29 pounds that was collected in the Dar al Gani region of Libya in the winter of 1996-1997.

Here is the fragment in my possession:

Probably from the time the first man looked up with wonder, the red planet has been a place of mystery and symbol of mystical encounter, both satisfying and whetting the primeval longing in humanity for something beautiful beyond the horizon. When I looked up into the night sky in late August 2003 during the closest approach of Mars to Earth in tens of thousands of years, I found myself suddenly moved by the glowing, ruddy point of light in the sky. I felt that heart-longing myself, knowing it to be the longing for heaven and the Face of God as revealed in Jesus. The experienced surprised me, and greatly gratified me. Owning a piece of Mars is immensely satisfying, but I know that its possession only points more inexorably to the one Desire that is the deepest longing of my heart.

Turtles, Tsavorites, and Trust

2011-02-03T21:02:00.001-08:00

First, I have been surprised that since my last blogpost on November 1, the number of hits the blog gets each day more than tripled. That trend has continued for more than three months. I have no idea why, but I was hesitant to post another entry for fear that the visitors who wanted to read about Bob Janoe would give up. But it’s been long enough now, I think, so here’s another post.

Story one: Not long ago my older son told me about a friend of his who owns a turtle. The turtle loves the taste of strawberries and watermelon. Any portion of either fruit laid in his way wouldn’t last long. Then one day the turtle got hold of some red pepper, which apparently astonished him no end. One can only imagine his little turtle eyes popping open with shock. After that he refused to eat anything that was bright red. Even when his owner tried to tempt him with juicy pieces of watermelon or strawberry, placed directly in his path, he would turn aside. Obviously he didn’t trust his sense of smell as much as he trusted his sight. (I was surprised that the turtle could discern the color red, but apparently it is so.)

Story two: About twenty-five years ago I acquired a ring with an attractive tsavorite stone. The ring was a gift, and I had a choice of an emerald, a tourmaline, or a tsavorite. The tsavorite was just the right shade of my favorite color, so that’s the stone I selected.

Recently I became curious about tsavorites and looked ’em up online (and a story about a REALLY BIG ONE here) and learned that the stone was discovered as recently as 1967, and only became publicly known in 1974. In doing my research, I read an account of how a native found an enormous tsavorite of particularly brilliant color, and tried to sell it to a gemologist in the area for fifty dollars. Because the gem was so large (about the size of a couple of fists put together), the gemologist assumed it was only glass and, not wanting to be taken in, sent the native away—only to find out later that the stone was genuine and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The lesson from both these stories? Many times we don’t trust the free grace of God when it is offered to us. We are afraid to take a risk or trust such an enormous offer of love. We are used to paying for things and are leery if someone offers a free gift of some fantastic item.

As Aslan said in The Magician’s Nephew, “Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!” I have seen it many times in my ministry, how people are suspicious of grace, mercy, love, joy, and peace. It’s very sad—but how wonderful when the grace of God is gladly received and changes lives.

Is Victory More Important Than Justice?

2010-11-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

Bobby Shawn Janoe, a member of Blessed Sacrament Church, was arrested on January 2, 1992 for the murder of his wife of six weeks. His wife Joy left home the evening of December 31, 1991 and did not return. Her body was found the following morning in an alley in Westminster, California. Bob has steadfastly maintained that he is innocent.

Bob was prosecuted twice by a deputy prosecutor of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. His first trial resulted in a hung jury, so he was tried a second time, where he was convicted. The Orange County Register reported on January 15, 1994 that the trial “turned on scientific and circumstantial evidence” and that “the guilty verdict was reached without a clear-cut motive established.” Bob was able to show later that some, at least, of the “scientific evidence” was the first work of an inexperienced lab worker whose conclusions were refuted by later tests.

During the trial, Bob’s defense attorney presented character witnesses in an attempt to convince the jury that Bob was non-violent. The Register account reported that, “on the final day [of the trial], Janoe’s first wife testified that he had beaten her many times….” On the strength of that testimony, the prosecutor said, “We proved he was a violent man whose temper reached the extreme.”

Not true. During Bob’s first trial, I met a young woman who had come down from Idaho at her own expense to testify on Bob’s behalf. She told him that of all the men she had dated, she felt safest with Bob. A few years after his conviction, acting on his own defense and working from prison, Bob was able to prove that his first wife had lied on the stand. In a declaration to the court dated March 24, 2002, this woman recanted her previous testimony and declared, “In my testimony I lied… Bobby did not threaten to kill me at any time I knew him … I was never physically assaulted by Bobby.” Bob was also able to prove that the prosecutor knew at the time of the trial that the testimony the woman was giving was untrue.

QUESTION:

If the prosecutor was so certain of Bob Janoe’s guilt, why did he need perjury to clinch the case against him?

The Los Angeles Daily Journal is a newspaper for lawyers. In an article on this particular prosecutor dated June 16, 1998, the Journal quoted another (unnamed) prosecutor who described him as one whose “goal is to destroy the defendant on the witness stand and take along any other witnesses he can as casualties of war”—tactics which have prompted some attorneys to criticize him as “unethical” and “mean-spirited”. Another lawyer, who did not want to be named, said, “My biggest problem with [this prosecutor] in every case I’ve seen him try … is that he tries to smear the defense lawyer, the defense investigator, and anyone associated with the defense team as liars and cheats, irrespective of their honesty and integrity.” Still another defense lawyer said, “He has a win-at-all-costs type of attitude…and that is not always a healthy thing.” In another Register article, dated April 28, 1998, this particular prosecutor was quoted as saying, “Yeah, I’m competitive. I don’t like to lose.” The last time I checked (which was years ago), this prosecutor had a perfect record of convictions, having successfully prosecuted 57 defendants and never losing a case. The fact that Bob’s first trial resulted in a hung jury is significant.

One of this prosecutor’s peers—one of apparently many who don’t want their names used—told me personally that this prosecutor is known for using perjured evidence to gain a victory. A contact in the Public Defender’s Office told me that attorneys and police officers are immune from prosecution when they lie on the stand or when they cause others to do so. (This has been confirmed to me more than once, but I still find it unbelievable.) Once Bob had proven that his first wife had lied on the stand and that the prosecutor was aware of it at the time, he sued his prosecutor. The prosecutor’s defense was that he had only done so in the course of his job and Bob’s suit was dismissed.

QUESTION:

Is victory more important than justice?

Bob turns 52 today, November 1, 2010. He has spent almost the last nineteen years of his life in custody. During this time he self-studied law in order to act as his own attorney. In that capacity he has proven in court that his first wife committed perjury in his trial. In another victory, nearly ten years ago Bob was able to prove in court that the judge who presided at the trial in which he was convicted was guilty of bias. Bob began work to have all decisions made by this biased judge set aside in order either to gain a new trial or his release. Nearly ten years later, no action has been taken on this matter.

Thanks to a grant from Bishop Jon Bruno of Los Angeles, Blessed Sacrament was able to hire a private investigator to work on Bob’s case. This individual spent several months researching the records, investigating the crime scene, and interviewing various individuals. He discovered that exculpatory evidence had been suppressed, and that some of the evidence that had been introduced during the trials had been destroyed. He also learned that Bob’s wife’s body had been found about fifty feet from where a certain individual she had known before was living in his car. This individual had a motive for silencing Joy, and had even previously been found guilty of violently attacking another person by the same method that caused Joy’s death. This information was not introduced during Bob’s trials.

In his most recent letter to me, Bob wrote, “I am trying to understand, psychologically, what mechanisms are involved when the deputy prosecutor in my trial knowingly introduced the perjured testimony. Was it just a matter of winning? … Moreover, what mechanisms were involved as that same deputy prosecutor suppressed exculpatory evidence that he had an ethical duty to turn over to the defense? … As an example, in the beginning of a case, as the police detectives present their theory to the assigned deputy prosecutor, that deputy prosecutor will formulate his own theory as to how he feels the alleged incident occurred; consequently, from that point forward the deputy prosecutor will seek out evidence to confirm the theory he believes occurred. At the same time, that deputy prosecutor will disregard any exculpatory evidence as inconsequential. This phenomenon is known as ‘confirmation bias’. It is a complex process, but from the research I have reviewed, it appears once a person is arrested, a commitment has been made, and there is no turning back…

“When it comes to [my first wife], I am trying to be patient. She is probably feeling a lot of anxiety and guilt about lying in her testimony, but she was sought out by the deputy prosecutor, who in turn manipulated her to present those lies to the jury and court. In an effort to empathize with her, I have walked in her shoes, metaphorically. … When you think about it, we have no control over what other individuals do or say. We can only control what we say or do. I can’t change what happened in the past, the future hasn’t happened yet. All I can do is deal with the present, my actions. I choose to show [her] the love others have shown me… Thank you for showing me love… You’re in my thoughts and prayers.”

During my years of ministry with and for Bob, I have conferred with attorneys and prison chaplains. One attorney, who had himself been in jail before reforming and, after his release, earning a law degree to help indigent prisoners, estimated that about 5% of people who are convicted are actually innocent. The media frequently report stories of convicted felons who are later proven innocent by DNA or other evidence, often several years or even decades after their conviction. A chaplain with twenty years of experience told me, “Let me tell you frankly. The system never wants to admit it was wrong. It will do so only when adverse publicity is so bad that it is better to release a wrongfully convicted person than to continue to ignore his case. And you only get sufficient adverse publicity by making the case a high media item or get a celebrity on your side.”

I don’t know what more I can do for Bob beyond what I have already done. I continue to write to him and pray for him, encourage and enable others to minister to him with their own gifts, and keep his name before the public—such as with this blogpost. I’ve reminded him more than once that Jesus was also falsely convicted, so he’s in good company. I’ve seen Bob grow and mature in his spiritual life over these nineteen years. I still hope that one day he will be set free and be able to return to the church that has never forgotten him. Blessed Sacrament prays for Bob publicly at the 8:00 a.m. Sunday Mass every week—the service he attended regularly for a number of years. I urge readers of this blog also to pray for him. Maybe this blogpost will even begin something that will lead to justice for Bob. It would be an answer to prayer and an act of justice long denied.

Bob welcomes letters. You can write to him at

Mr. Bob S. Janoe

J-25333

Calipatria State Prison, B-5-112

P. O. Box 5005

Calipatria, CA 92233

Jesus Prayed All Night, And…

2010-10-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

Before Jesus selected the twelve, he “went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). Then in the morning he gathered all his disciples together and from them chose twelve to be those closest to him, destined to become the apostles, the foundation stones of the Church. Among those twelve was “Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor” (Luke 6:16b).

So what does it mean that Jesus prayed all night and still selected one who became a traitor? Was his prayer not as discerning as one would expect, because he prayed and still made a bad choice? Does this cast doubts on Jesus’ prayerful wisdom or ability to hear God’s answer?

Of course not. Judas was necessary for the fulfillment of the many Scripture passages that all had to do with Jesus’ passion, sacrificial death, and resurrection.

Was Judas, then, “set up”? No, for God doesn’t work that way. Judas did what he did by his own choice—though his motivation and measure of repentance are not clear from Scripture.

What would have happened if Judas had been faithful? Of course we don’t know, but certainly Jesus would have been arrested by some other means. The twelve, in one of their best moments, believed that any one of them could betray him. (“Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, “Is it I?” [Mark 14:18b-19]. We are not told that they leaned together and said, “It’s got to be Judas. Can’t be anyone else, could it?”)

We are not told what Jesus prayed about “all night”; “Give me wisdom to choose the right men”? Makes sense, but probably much more than that. We can’t know. “Right men” would include the one who, in God’s economy and foreknowledge (but not force), would become a traitor.

A few things we can learn from this incident. One: critical decisions should be preceded by serious prayer, which in the end means leaving it in God’s hand and not telling him what we want done. Two: what we may think we are praying for might have a meaning and fulfillment much deeper than we can ever guess, especially if we’re not Jesus. Three: in answers to prayer, everyone’s free will is preserved no matter what we pray for or how the prayer is answered. Four: we may think that we didn’t get what we pray for if things appear to go really wrong, but that would be just because we prayed with conditions. Five: God’s will is always done in spite of what human free will may choose—even if the human choice is a really bad one.

And maybe one more thing. It’s easy to focus on the traitor, but the other eleven were pretty unlikely choices and as far as we can tell they all turned out great—some of them spectacularly far beyond any reasonable expectation. They were all prayed over before they were chosen too.

Lord, Show Us the Father

2010-08-22T18:02:00.001-07:00

This is what Philip said to Jesus at the Last Supper: “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (John 14:8b). That sounds to me like a great insight. It is, I think, perhaps the heart of the redeemed human experience, on a par with Peter’s confession in Mark 8:29: “[Jesus] asked [his disciples], “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.”

So it’s always been a bit of a forehead-wrinkler to me that Jesus’ response to Philip was a criticism: “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). I guess that, good as Philip’s words were, after the length of his discipleship Jesus expected him to know something about the Incarnation.

But to come back to Philip’s original insight, “seeing the Father” is indeed the fullness of redemption. The joy of heaven is sometimes called the “Beatific Vision”.

Today I had an experience that drove that intense reality home more deeply than anything I had known before. I was walking by the church play yard about half an hour before the second Mass was scheduled to begin. A four-year-old girl was sitting on the grass alone, crying. I opened the gate and stepped up to her, knelt down, and asked her why she was crying. She looked up and said, “I want to see my Daddy.” (Turns out another child had made fun of her, which was why she was crying. Apparently she thought that seeing her Daddy was what she needed to feel better.)

“Your Daddy’s in choir practice,” I said.

“I know,” she said, “but I still want to see him.”

“Can you wait until choir practice is over?”

“No, I want to see him now.” (Patience is not numbered among this child’s many virtues.)

“How about if I take you over to the door, open it a few inches, and let you see him for a few seconds.”

“Okay.”

So that’s what I did. I walked her over to the closed door, through which the sounds of the choir anthem were sounding. I slipped the door open about six inches, located the child’s father, and then lifted her up a little so she could see him. “There he is,” I said. No one in the choir room even noticed that we were there. “Is that enough?” I asked after about five seconds.

”Yes,” she said. I put her down and eased the door shut, then took her back to the play yard. She went through the gate ready to play again. The crisis was over.

When I told her father about the incident a little later, I said, somewhat jokingly, “It was like a little Beatific Vision.” Then we both realized that that was just what it was. It was suddenly impressed upon us what immense responsibility parents have for their children. God gives us a little bit of himself when we become parents. What immeasurable influence we have over them. How humbling it is to know that it is through us fallible human beings that children learn things about God that they can’t get in any other way.

Detour To Delight

2010-08-03T14:53:00.001-07:00

About three times a year I take a couple of days to visit my father and stepmother in Indio, a little more than a hundred miles from my home. The midway point of the drive is through a narrow canyon at the east end of a twenty-mile course of the 60 freeway that unrolls just east of Moreno Valley between Riverside and Beaumont, where the 60 joins Interstate 10. This part of the journey, like most of the trip, is freeway driving.

Usually I can zip along on a Sunday afternoon, but on this occasion as I entered Moreno Valley an electric sign read, “congestion until beaumont”. A couple of miles later there was a second such notice, and I grimaced and resigned myself to getting caught in a jam on a bright Sunday afternoon; the part of the freeway that was just ahead of me winds for about ten miles through hills on both sides with no exits, and I figured that there was no way to avoid the congestion.

Now, I don’t need the GPS to get to my father’s house, but on this particular day I entered the address just to see how the “estimated time of arrival” would be revised as I drove. After I’d resigned myself to getting stuck in congestion, I remembered an icon on my GPS that I’d never used before and could only guess what it meant. Still, guessing its meaning wasn’t difficult since the icon read “detour”. I wasn’t in a huge hurry, so I shrugged and tapped the icon. Immediately the GSP directed me to get off at the next exit: Moreno Beach Drive. An adventure had begun.

Even though there was no congestion in sight yet, I swung off the eight-lane concrete expanse and dropped down onto a road I’d never heard of. “Turn left,” the GPS electronic voice said, so I turned left. From this point on I was entirely under the direction of an electronic guide that depended on satellites I couldn’t see. I was on a well-paved but narrow road, and slowed accordingly.

Within a couple of minutes I was in rural country. After half a mile or so I was directed to turn right onto Ironwood Avenue, then left onto Redlands Boulevard. Five minutes from the freeway I was in a place where it looked as if things hadn’t changed for decades. It may as well have been the 1940s. Even the streetlamps had old-fashioned, bell-shaped hoods. Expansive meadows of gold, summer-dry straw spread out on both sides of the road. I met another car no more than half a dozen times on the detour. I saw no buildings of any kind.

Finally I turned right onto Oak Valley Parkway. On either side of the two-lane road there were low ridges of contoured land that rolled up into comfortable, partly barren hills. Patches of cottonwoods showed where there was probably a spring or a barely-moist streamlet. It was a hot, sleepy afternoon and almost nothing moved.

Simple signs, sometimes plain, hand-painted black letters on whitewashed boards, advertised entrances to ranchos whose buildings were out of sight beyond stands of trees. White fences enclosed some large fields where I expected to see horses grazing. They were probably not far away but I didn’t see any.

To think that this terrain was so close to my usual course to Indio, and had probably been little changed since before I was born, was an eye-opener. I drove with a sense of expanding wonder and pleasure, my eyes endlessly and appreciatively wandering over the land as a drove at a leisurely pace.

After half an hour or so, I came to the western outskirts of a newly-built tract of homes surrounded by a high cinder-block fence. The end of my rural drive was at hand, but even the cinder-block fence reminded me a little of the neighborhood where I grew up in the 1960s. After the tract my tires hummed along a wide, asphalted road that must have been a narrow country lane not long ago, and then I passed by tall shade trees just before I came to an onramp for Interstate 10 on the south side of Beaumont, about a mile northwest of where I would have joined the 10 had I stayed on the 60. If there had been congestion, I had bypassed it completely. The GPS worked beautifully, guiding me into a slow-paced, beautiful area that I would never would have sought out, never even would have known existed if I hadn’t been warned of that bane of modern living, a freeway jam-up. The country I traversed was close at hand and always had been.

I wonder… how much of life is like that? What do I miss time after time because I am too stuck in my ways, too much a creature of habit, too “hobbitish” to recognize or risk an adventure that is always at hand? I thought I enjoyed adventure, but now I wonder… I had to be forced into this one. I wonder some more. Will I now seek out alternate routes from time to time, or mostly stick to what I know? The physicists are right: there are indeed alternate universes less than a hair’s breadth away. God is in them all, and fills all of them, as always, with joy.

Today I Turn 62

2010-07-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

I remember

…when television first became popular and when shows were first broadcast in color (about ten years later).

…watching shows from the 1920s and 1930s, like “Spanky and Our Gang” and “Laurel and Hardy” when they were broadcast on television.

...when television shows featured intact families, and fathers were present, respected, wise, and loving.

…when Eisenhower was President and politicians were (mostly) respected.

…when milk was delivered to our door in bottles, and the dry cleaner picked up and delivered our clothes.

…when it cost fifty cents to go to the movies.

…when candy bars cost five cents.

…when telephones were black and had words for prefixes; my telephone number was DIckens 2-9449.

…when a gallon of gas cost about thirty cents, and the gas station attendant rushed out to fill your tank, clean your windows front and back, and asked if he could check the air in your tires and your oil (that was when they were called “service” stations).

…when Disneyland opened.

…when The Mickey Mouse Club was on television.

…when my neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley included lots of fields and orchards, and I could pick large pomegranates off the tree, crack them on the trunk, and eat them on the spot.

…crying on my first day of kindergarten, and another child comforting me.

…when Sputnik was launched, becoming the world’s first artificial satellite.

…when my neighbors got a divorce and everyone was shocked because it was almost unheard of.

…when the polio vaccine was announced, and everyone went to get polio shots; and later when you could get follow-up treatment by eating a sugar cube with a vaccine in it instead of getting a shot; somebody named Sabin developed that method and across the nation everyone was urged to get immunized through a nation-wide “Sabin on Sunday” program; on that day my whole family went to a local school after church and stood in a long line to get our sugar cubes.

...and many year later meeting "Gilbert" (a member of my church), one of the last people who had ever suffered from polio.

…when almost no stores were open on Sunday, and almost everyone went to church.

…when kids on the elementary school playground frequently asked “what church do you go to?”

…when the design on the back of the Lincoln penny changed from the bunches of wheat to the Lincoln Memorial, and it became a fad at my school to collect pennies.

…that my mother got a job after 22 years of not having one because my brothers and I were growing up; she waited until the last of us three had completed high school.

…being able to ride my bike anywhere I wanted without regard for safety except for crossing busy streets.

…buying my first comic book.

…buying the first Amazing Spiderman comic book in the store for a dime (sells now for tens of thousands of dollars) and those that followed up to number 25; I sold them all for a dollar each.

…that I was fascinated by Superman, and that my grandmother made me a Superman suit for Christmas 1953.

…reading The Screwtape Letters from my parents’ collection when I was about eight or nine years old, and thinking that C. S. Lewis was eye-opening cool.

…polishing my shoes every Sunday morning before going to church, for which I had to wear a suit, even though I was only six years old.

…when the Episcopal Church was respected throughout the nation.

…being in a confirmation class in 1960-1961 that was packed with kids, a few of whom I also went to school with.

…the Kennedy-Nixon campaign for President in 1960, and that I went to school with Nixon’s nephew, who got his photograph on the front page of The Los Angeles Times rooting for his uncle.

...when I enjoyed reading The Los Angeles Times.

…when transistor radios came out and we could carry a radio only a little larger than a deck of cards and hide them at school.

…going to typing class in junior high school.

...when almost all girls wore dresses.

…the Cuban missile crisis in the fall of 1962 when the world came the closest to nuclear war.

...an English teacher (Miss Haley) who pounded proper grammar into us and said something like, "Someday you'll thank me!"

…two thousand high school students standing as still as statues during the lunch hour at my high school as the public address system played the radio, giving us live information on the assassination of President Kennedy.

…wearing hippie beads.

…the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

…the assassination of Martin Luther King.

...watching the Ed Sullivan show on television in January 1964 when the Beatles first came to America, and then talking about it at school the next day; everyone thought that their long hair was weird.

…being loudly and publicly berated in the waiting room of a car dealership by a man whom I didn’t know for having long hair; I had driven my father’s car there to get it serviced and was waiting while the work was being done.

…going to the Griffith Observatory with a dozen friends on my seventh birthday (gee, that was 55 years ago today!) because I loved astronomy so much.

…the IGY (International Geophysical Year) in 1957.

…learning gymnastics and being able to do a standing back flip without even thinking about it (and frequently did), and eventually being able to do a double back flip on the ground.

…buying hardback Hardy Boys books in dust jackets when they were new and only cost a dollar.

…going on our “last” family vacation in 1967 (the summer I turned 19) when we drove around the U.S. for a month on a budget of $50/day for gas, food for a family of five, lodging, admissions to national parks, and incidentals—and meeting the budget.

…watching the Moon landing on live television.

…and, well, lots of other things but this list is an even 1,000 words now.

Words for All Times, Including Now

2010-07-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

The words were written by Donovan (Leitch), a singer/composer and icon of the 1960s. I learned to play many of his songs on the guitar. Many of them, I think, were deep and lyrical, and they still affect me today.

This one, however, was one of several he wrote for Franco Zefferelli’s 1972 movie, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”. It’s called “Father of All Things”, and the words are especially fitting for me at this time. Although the movie is available on DVD, sadly, no sound track with Donovan’s songs was ever made available for purchase, but here’s a youtube link in which someone else plays and sings the song. English is not his native language and he messes up a couple of words, but overall he does a fine job. He's a superb guitarist, too!

There’s a shape in the sky beckoning me.

There’s a sound in the wild wind calling.

There’s a song to be sung for glory,

And I feel that it’s coming our way.

There’s a pain on the land weakening me.

There’s a sigh in the city of sorrow.

There’s a shadow of darkness accumulating,

And I feel that it’s coming our way.

Father of all things, mother of light,

Soothe and ease our human plight.

Mary in mercy, Jesus in joy,

Please, will you help us win the fight?

There’s a love for all men sleeping within.

There’s a friend of a friend awakening.

There’s a jubilant joy bursting to be,

And I feel that it’s coming our way.

Father of all things, mother of light,

Soothe and ease our human plight.

Mary in mercy, Jesus in joy,

Please, will you help us win the fight?

Five Minutes to Live

2010-06-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

I think it’s likely that the baby boomer generation had the happiest childhood in the history of the United States. The era immediately post-World War II was an age of optimism, economic boom, and technological excitement and innovation. The term “family values” had not been coined because it was just what we did. A kid growing up in the 1950s was on the spot when television entered American life. The Atomic Era was new and the Space Race had just begun, in which both the United States and the Soviet Union were dedicated to landing a man on the moon before the other country did so. Disneyland opened in 1955 and launched an interesting, exciting, forward-looking television show that probably shaped my generation more than we boomers think.

That era that is long gone still lives in the memories of baby boomers today. I have so many honey-rich memories of that time that it would be difficult to know where to begin to share them, but there are many nostalgia websites that do a better job than I could anyway. (I did post this item on my blog in late 2006.) Over time, our better memories take on an increasingly golden aura—and the bad memories fade.

It is because of that phenomenon that only recently did I recall that the 1950s were also the age of the Cold War and the fear of nuclear holocaust. A little over a year ago I was helping my wife’s parents pack up for a move, and in their discard pile found a sealed can of water. I crinkled my forehead, wondering what it was, and looked at it first with curiosity and then, once I read the label, felt a sudden chill as certain memories of my childhood came back. As children of the 1950s, we drew mushroom clouds and talked about the atomic bomb and the even bigger one, the hydrogen bomb. We talked about “the A-bomb” and “the H-bomb”.

Since the can was being thrown out, I took it as an historical item. Believing it to be significant, it didn’t take long before I shared it with the congregation during a children’s sermon. The point was that not so long ago all the people on earth were afraid that the whole world might be destroyed, but no matter what we might be afraid of, in all circumstances we can trust in God.

I produced the can of water and asked the children what it was. They quickly identified it as a can of water, and I expected that they and the adults in the congregation would expect me to point out the contrast with the ubiquitous plastic bottles of water today. And when, in what I expected to be a dramatic flourish, I pointed out the small black print on the can, IMPERVIOUS TO NUCLEAR FALLOUT, I expected that people would gasp. But instead I got a reaction I didn’t expect in a million years: the congregation, mostly young people, laughed out loud. I was stunned speechless for a moment. A kid’s fear of the end of the world was something to laugh about! Almost at once, I realized that what I was trying to share was so foreign to the young people that they had no concept of the reality.

Very often the burdens and traumas of a generation are passed down to the next even when times change. I remember as a child being told that I had to “clean my plate” (meaning, eat everything that was on it) whenever something was set before me, and I thought it was unreasonable, capricious, and often cruel. I came to dread many mealtimes. Most children of that era were given the same standard. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that those who had compelled children to “clean their plates” had lived through the Great Depression when very often there wasn’t enough food of any kind at all. They were offended if a child didn’t realize what a boon it was to have enough to eat, and show it by eating everything without question.

I remember drawing swastikas in my sixth grade class and being quietly but seriously advised not to do so by my sixth grade teacher. He had lived through the era of a recent world war with its unspeakable atrocities, but for me the swastika was only a symbol that I knew carried some sort of power.

Today, a can of water declared “impervious to nuclear fallout” is one of these symbols.

Recent “end of the world” movies include “Twelve Monkeys”, “Deep Impact”, “Asteroid”,
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (a remake of a 1952 original), and “2012”. These were all fiction. But the nuclear apocalyptic movies and books of the 1950s were based on something that was very real: I think of the book A Canticle for Leibowitz and movies such as “Fail Safe”, “On the Beach”, and even the black comedy “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”.

It was very real. In the fall of 1962, when I was 14, the world came as close as it ever had to genuine nuclear holocaust. This wikipedia article reports that the Cuban Missile Crisis is “generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to turning into a nuclear conflict.” Here is a part of a speech delivered by President John F. Kennedy during the most tense hours of the confrontation with the Soviet Union. In particular, listen to his words that begin at 2:02.

The fear of nuclear war was not all-consuming by any means, but it was pervasive as the plethora of books, movies, etc. of the era shows. And the fear was very real. Air raid sirens were tested on the first Fridays of each month at 10:00 a.m. I doubt whether those who have never heard them can imagine a sound so loud and so alarming. The noise was intended to cause people to stop everything that they were doing and run for a bomb shelter to save their lives, though everyone knew that it would likely be pointless. Even a kid knew that there was nowhere to hide. I remember telling my mother when I was about ten, “If I were the enemy I’d attack us on a first Friday at 10:00 a.m., because then everyone would think it was a test and no one would pay any attention.”

It was a sound that covered the entire city, loud enough to override any other sound that there could be. We knew that if the sirens went off, we had maybe five minutes to live, for the entire city would be turned into rubble in an instant under radiant heat that was hotter than the surface of the sun.

Do you want to hear what air raid sirens sounded like? You can. Read on.

H. G. Wells' novel, The Time Machine, was published in 1895, and was intended as a social commentary on the division of the human race into “classes” which, if taken to extreme, would result in horrifying evil: the division of humanity into two divergent groups, one preying upon the other. The book was made into a movie in 2002. The 2002 version was a remake, however; the original movie was made in 1960. In both movies, in place of Wells’ hypothesis that “classism” could divide the human race into two divergent streams, some disaster hits the earth and causes some enormous change whose implications last through the ensuing centuries. In the 2002 movie, it was an environmental disaster that blew the moon to pieces—environmental issues being at the forefront of our current culture.

But in 1960 it was nuclear war. In the movie the time traveler goes from New Year's Eve 1899 into the future—with a stop in the viewers’ present at the time the movie was made, arriving in time for the onset of a nuclear war. In the movie the war takes place on August 18, 1966. You can find that scene here; begin at 8:28 and go to the end, 10:02. Then continue here from 0:00 to 3:52. Imagine being a child and seeing this movie at that time. The scenes include air raid sirens that signal the imminence of the attack. But there is a better place where the arresting, chilling sound comes through.

Farther into the movie you see the recounting of that disaster in the far future here. Watch the scene from 1:43 to 2:15. And if you want to hear what the air raid sirens sounded like more clearly and compellingly than the earlier bit, watch the scene from 3:55 to 6:20. The sirens mean something else in the movie, but the sound was identical to the air raid sirens of the time that were intended to warn the populace that the world was about to end. That the sounds were identical was, of course, no coincidence. In case there was any doubt, the scene from 6:20 through 7:45 makes that explicit. I remember the sound well and it still raises hackles on my skin.

Gradually things changed. The era of glasnost overrode the Cold War, and the Soviet Union eventually collapsed. I still remember opening the newspaper nearly twenty years ago and seeing the incredible headline. I immediately remembered Nikita Khrushchev’s promises from over forty years earlier, “We will bury you” and “Your children will be Communists”.

Here’s a recent newspaper article that looks back on this era. “Duck and cover” drills are mentioned in it, which I remember very well from my elementary school days.

Considering all that, I guess it was good that when I held up a can with a label that read, IMPERVIOUS TO NUCLEAR FALLOUT, the response was laughter, for those who laughed had never heard air raid sirens in their own city. My children’s sermon was correct: no matter what we might be afraid of, in all circumstances we can trust in God.

The Martyrdom of Minh Voan

2010-05-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

The image of Christians being thrown to the lions during the time of the persecutions in the Roman Empire has been presented so often that it is easy to take the reality of such deaths for granted. The Coliseum in Rome was built to entertain the populace of the city with exciting spectacles. While some of the attractions were innocent, others excited the audience through bloodshed and death. Many wild animals and gladiators were compelled to fight to the death to stir voyeuristic passions in the hearts of those in the stands.

One of the most strange and unaccountable sights the Coliseum could offer was to see a Christian die, with upward gaze, singing hymns of joy. The martyrdom of a Christian, who had made a good confession before the multitude and then met the wild beasts with a calm resolution and a hopeful joy, was beyond the understanding of the lookers-on. The sight was one of the choicest of entertainments, and was often reserved for the last item on the schedule of events.

Martyrs have testified to their faith in every century since the resurrection of Jesus. This is why they are called martyrs, a word that means “witness”. People are not usually willing to die for a philosophy or a doctrine. Galileo recanted his proclamation that the earth rotates around the sun when threatened with execution, though it is said that he muttered “but it does” when he left the place of his recantation. Defending his astronomical discovery, true as it was, was not worth more to him than his life. In contrast, the Christian martyrs died not for a teaching but for a divine Person, who in his infinite and invulnerable Personhood has even conquered death. He conquered death because he loves those upon whom he wishes to confer life, perfection, and the deepest possible intimacy, without end.

The witness of the martyrs was so central to the life of the early Church that by the middle of the second century, the frequently persecuted Christian community observed annual commemorations of the martyrdoms that were part of their heritage. The first such commemoration was that of the aged bishop Polycarp, who was put to death for Jesus’ sake in about A.D. 156. His community commemorated his witness on the first anniversary of his death. It is highly significant that the anniversary they celebrated was the date of the death, rather than the birth, of the martyr. Christians view birthdays as days of gratitude for one’s life in the world, but the date of death as the “birthday” into the kingdom of God, and therefore as worthy of the greater celebration.

The closest I’ve ever come to knowing someone who became a martyr was knowing someone who had known him. The martyr’s name was Minh Voan. Among the last known photographs taken of him, there is one that shows him with Dr. Stan Mooneyham, the late President of World Vision, a Christian outreach ministry based in Monrovia, California. They are arguing on the tarmac at the airport in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in April 1975. The fall of the city to the Khmer Rouge is imminent.

In the photograph, Dr. Mooneyham’s back is to the camera, located on an airplane filled with Cambodian orphans; the plane also holds Voan’s wife and children. Dr. Mooneyham is pleading with Voan to board the plane with his family. Voan is looking up earnestly at him wearing his combat hard helmet. In the background, others are looking toward plumes of smoke rising from the airfield as the Khmer Rouge shell the runway trying to prevent the airplane from taking off.

As Dr. Mooneyham urges him to board, Voan tells him, “I cannot leave Cambodia, because my work is not yet finished. My father and my mother, my brothers and sisters, do not yet know Christ. I cannot leave.” His face shows no fear of any kind.

Minh Voan was a Cambodian who worked on a relief and development project with World Vision in his native land. He was a very devout Christian who came from a family whose members were still Buddhist. Voan spent countless hours not only working on World Vision projects but also in preaching the Gospel to his countrymen. When it became obvious that Cambodia would fall into the hands of the Khmer Rouge, World Vision evacuated as many of its native personnel as possible. It was almost certain that any Cambodians who had associated with the Americans for any reason would be killed.

During the evacuation, Voan was instrumental in seeing that many Cambodian orphans found refuge in the United States. Dr. Mooneyham’s son Eric, who took the photograph, wrote to me about the day when Voan was left behind.

"We flew a Convair 140 full of powdered milk out of Bangkok via Saigon and landed at Pochetong airport where Voan met us. When we landed the U.S. attache was boarding the last military flight out and advised us to leave immediately. Under shell fire from howitzers only a few miles away we off-loaded the supplies and took on 23 infant passengers (left behind at an orphanage), Voan’s wife Theri and their children (I remember two). I still have a piece of shrapnel that bounced off my flak vest. It was too hot to handle and I tossed it in my camera bag. I'd forgotten about it till I got home and found it melted into the foam rubber.

"I took the photo during an argument between my father and Minh Voan. Voan wanted to stay behind. He insisted that there was unfinished work. He said he would find his way to Thailand and escape across the border when the time was right. My father argued and pleaded with Voan to come with us but Voan stayed anyway ...

"We did not hear anything from Voan ... until we returned in 1985. At the invitation of the new government World Vision reopened the children’s hospital which we had built before Pol Pot and which had been looted and abandoned during those years. We were walking through the streets when an older man came running out of a doorway and pointed at my father and said, 'I know you!’ Because it was dangerous for him to be seen talking to westerners we went inside with him. After a few minutes of dialog we found that this man knew Minh Voan and had witnessed his death. He said Voan was caught witnessing and that he and another man were clubbed on the back of the head."

Those who knew Minh Voan are certain that he would not have thought that he was doing anything out of the ordinary by staying behind—only doing what his faith demanded. He never called attention to himself, but exhibited a self-effacing humility and a simple obedience to Christ. Voan’s determination to remain in Cambodia to serve Christ and to preach the Gospel even though threatened with death, demonstrates that this was a man whose love for Jesus Christ was stronger than the fear of death. Like all the martyrs of Jesus, his head never bowed and his heart never quailed before his enemies.

In nearly two thousand years of Christian history there have been countless martyrs whose testimonies have not been remembered by the world or even the Church. Those whose heroism for Jesus is known comprise only a small fraction of the whole company. Many sources report that there were more of them in the twentieth century than in all the previous centuries combined. I hope this account of Minh Voan will make his name a little better known. No one knows the exact date of his death, but I remember him every year in mid-May so that his name will always be brought to mind in the Easter season.

And Love Most Sweet

2010-02-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

On January 27, I made a discovery that stirred my soul. I will reveal it at the end of this blogpost.

My favorite movie is probably “Somewhere in Time”, which appeared in 1980. It starred Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer. A number of people who have seen the movie have told me that its beautiful theme song, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op. 43, Variation 18, has brought them to tears. I think there is a reason why so many people are deeply moved by the story, so strikingly captured in the theme song.

Briefly, the story is about a poet named Richard Collier who, in 1980, discovers a photograph of a young woman at a hotel where he is staying. Captivated and finally obsessed by her image, he learns that the likeness is that of the once-famous actress Elise McKenna, and was taken in 1912. Collier refuses to accept the obvious fact that she is dead and unobtainable, and eventually discovers a way to forsake his present utterly and go back to 1912 to meet her and eventually win her love. I will write no more about the plot so as not to provide any spoilers—other than to say that it is not a typical love story.

It is a story of the pursuit of love for something “out of this world” but which has left in the world signs that beguile, entrance, and ultimately change the dedicated searcher for love. To win that love, the searcher must forsake everything he owns. With total dedication, then, even time itself yields its inviolable boundaries, boundaries that are yet permeable by human desire and longing and eventual consummation. This is how I long for Jesus.

Not long ago I learned that the movie was based on a novel named Bid Time Return, written in 1975 by Richard Matheson. I found a copy of the book and saw that the author had taken the title from Shakespeare’s Richard II, Act III. Scene 2: “O call back yesterday, bid time return.” The verse is quoted on a flyleaf of the book. I read the book last week and found myself moved deeply, even more than when I saw the movie.

Ultimately, even the best of earthly loves is never satisfied, can never be satisfied, in this world. Either everything we love we eventually lose, or the love cannot be completed or truly consummated. We cannot “have our cake and eat it too.” Cake is made to be eaten, but in the eating we lose it. If we refuse to eat it so we can admire it, it does not serve its primary purpose, and thus we fail truly and fully to enjoy it. Every living thing we love, plant, animal, or human, we lose as it ages and as we age. Genuine love, therefore, is always for something outside this world, and every earthly love points through the beloved to something greater and unobtainable by our own efforts and desires.

Throughout my life the acknowledgment of this truth has colored my affections and my sense of self. The theme of lost or impossible loves which are nonetheless real and all-consuming has impacted and shaped me. That “shaping” has led me to understand something about love and grief and loss that, perhaps, is uncommon. Or perhaps quite common indeed, but rarely understood in the rich combination where both love and loss complement and empower each other.

Just a year or so ago I heard for the first time an old song about that very thing. The song is called “Once Upon a Time”. I first heard it sung by Perry Como. One can hear that version here. It begins after a brief introduction. There is an instrumental with a beautiful slide show here.

Some of the words to the song are:

Once upon a time, a girl with moonlight in her eyes

Put her hand in mine and said she loved me so,

But that was once upon a time,

Very long ago.

Once upon a hill, we sat beneath a willow tree,

Counting all the stars and waiting for the dawn.

But that was once upon a time.

Now the tree is gone.

Surely just about everyone of a certain age can testify to the poignancy of these lyrics. We human beings were created to live in eternity, but, because of our exile from God’s immediate presence, we live in time. Still, we somehow remember the heights from which we have fallen and long intensely for what has been lost. Therefore we shall always have some measure of futility and disappointment about our lives, for they are filled with transitory things. Fallen human beings best enjoy that scent of eternity when we learn to accept transitoriness as a quality of even the best earthly things, and give thanks to God for them as is, realizing that ultimately all things point to him. “All things come from you, O Lord” (1 Chronicles 29:14b).

C. S. Lewis, in his book Out of the Silent Planet, addresses this longing for eternity while living in time when one of his characters says, “How could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back—if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory, and that these are that day?”

In an argument with Jewish leaders, Jesus said, “My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. … I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come. …You are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:14b, 21, 23b). Though the debate is about the trustworthiness of Jesus’ authority to teach, these quoted words inside Jesus’ comments show that Jesus is the only One who is really the Lover both within and beyond the world, inside of and outside of time. “You will seek me,” he said, but we are of one world (which is fallen) and he is of another (which is perfect), and between the two, “a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us” (Luke 16:26).

Only divine love can bridge that chasm. Jesus said to his disciples at the Last Supper, the event that marked the end of their earthly companionship, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:2-6).

To me, Richard Matheson’s story in both film and print sets forth this teaching in mythic form. It is a story about an inspirational love with a powerful emotional impact. It is about human beings who meet and love across an impassible barrier; and thus, even time itself must relax its inviolable, implacable one-way movement for the sake of love. This human love, mortal as it is, points to the ineffable and foundational true love whose strength broke another inviolable, implacable force in nature: death—since the Lover broke the bonds of death with his resurrection.

The setting of the love between Richard Collier and Elise McKenna is a great hotel with many decades of history. In the movie, it is The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan.

In the book it is The Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, California, shown here as it was in 1900.

Both sprawling, luxurious, and historical hotels are immersed in time but point beyond it. By their existence, they suggest that they are places where love lasts forever, and where love is all that is known. They are both grand places of “many rooms” and long history, where time lies in multitudinous layers.

“And love most sweet.” The title of this blogpost comes from the inscription on a gold pocket watch that Elise gives to Richard in the book as a sign of her love for him. She tells Richard that it is a line from a poem by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science religion. Richard recognizes that Elise has remembered the line incorrectly, but he doesn’t tell her (of course), and he resolves not to tell her how the poem ends. I looked it up, however, and here is the last stanza of the poem “Love”, by Mary Baker Eddy:

Thou to whose power our hope we give,
Free us from human strife.
Fed by Thy love divine we live,
For Love alone is Life;
And life most sweet, as heart to heart
Speaks kindly when we meet and part.

In both movie and book, the watch plays a small but significant part in the love between Richard and Elise.

Well, it is only a story, though it sets forth the power of longing and love. The astonishing discovery I made on January 27, after I had finished reading the book is that the character of Elise McKenna was based on a real person, whose life story strongly parallels the fictional account. Most important of all, there is a real photograph behind the account of Richard Collier’s obsession.

I learned that Matheson was visiting a lodge or hotel or museum (I’ve forgotten which now) and saw a photograph of Maude Adams, an actress who was at the height of her career at the turn of the twentieth century. Her photograph inspired the book, which led to the movie. I suspect that it is no coincidence that the author of the story, Richard Matheson, has the same first name as the story’s protagonist, Richard Collier. Maude Adams’ life provided the pattern for Elise McKenna’s life in the story. Moreover, even Maude Adams’ manager provided the pattern for the fictional manager of Elise McKenna. Details of both lives are preserved in the fictional account. For example, in both real and fictional life, the actress had the lead role in the play, “The Little Minister”, by John Barrie. It is in that setting that Richard Collier meets Elise.

Maude Adams was born Mormon but apparently never practiced that religion. As an adult she became enamored of the Catholic Church, although I have found no information about whether she ever formally became a Christian. She was dedicated, however, to philanthropy, and did many works of mercy through her work and financial gifts. She made frequent retreats at Catholic retreat centers, and donated one of her homes to Catholic Sisters for a retreat center and novitiate. She died at the age of 80 in 1953, and is buried on the grounds of the estate she had donated to the Sisters. Her life span crossed mine for five years.

Here is the photograph that captivated Richard Matheson. It was taken in 1892, when she was 19. Her eyes look to us across nearly 120 years. Somewhere in time. Somewhere in eternity.

Life

2010-01-15T19:43:00.001-08:00

Today someone sent me one of those cheering emails with a heartwarming story that ends with a list of encouraging affirmations. One of those affirmations was

If not for you, someone may not be living.

This statement struck me. It is true. There was a time about fifteen years ago when one of the weekday Masses was interrupted by a woman who entered the church carrying a bouquet of flowers, and came down the aisle crying. Although I hadn’t seen her for a very long time, I recognized her at once as a woman named Kathy whom I had met when she was a waitress at a restaurant I had frequented.

She gave the flowers to me and said that I had saved her life. I didn’t know at the time that that was what I was doing; I had merely paid attention to her, encouraged her, and helped her with a personal problem she had. Eventually she gave her life to Christ and was baptized and confirmed on October 8, 1978—my last Sunday at St. Anselm’s Church in Garden Grove before coming to Blessed Sacrament. When she gave me the flowers she told me that because of her personal problem she had been hopeless and suicidal before I met her and was planning to take her life, but that I had turned her in another direction. After a long time she had been moved to seek me out and come to thank me for my ministry to her.

There’s more. The above statement could have been sent to a man named Terry McLaughlin, and he might think of me. He saved my life when I was about seven. I was swimming in a round pool at a friend’s house. The pool had its deep end in the middle, and there was no clear demarcation between where I could stand and where it was too deep for me. I got too far toward the middle and was drowning. Terry, only a year or two older than I, pulled me out.

Life. Fragile. Always a gift. God connects people to one another in marvelous ways, many of them we don’t even know about. Because of Terry, Kathy lives.

How Jesus Saw the Father

2009-12-30T23:03:00.000-08:00

For some years I have taught that the Gospels provide three places where the actual Aramaic words of Jesus were remembered and recorded. They are all found in Mark. The first is Talitha, cumi—“Little girl, I say to you, arise” (Mark 5:41). The second is ephphatha—“Be opened!” (Mark 7:34) And the third is Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)

It struck me a few months ago very powerfully that there is one more place: “And he said, ‘Abba, …’” (Mark 14:36).

Abba is usually translated “Father”, and is presented as such in the three places where the word is used in the New Testament, but teachers often explain that Abba really means “Papa” or “Daddy”, i.e. what a small child would say to his own father. [However, see the first and second comments to this blogpost.] It is a term that demonstrates personal and familial, trusting intimacy. When we consider that it is how Jesus addressed the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane at the beginning of his Passion, it is deeply moving. He prayed tenderly to his Father that he might be delivered from “the Cup”—and the Father refused. It is only a chapter later that the words, Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani are recorded. Yet we also know that even this experience was an expression of the Father’s love for his Son and the world into which he had become incarnate in order to save it.

When we are taught that Abba is the term that believers may also use to address God, it proclaims a reality that is nothing less than breathtaking. We find this teaching in Romans 8:15 (“You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”) and Galatians 4:6 (“Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba! Father!’”). To think that we sinful human believers can address the Creator of the Universe with such a term tells us something extraordinary about God, and something indescribable about ourselves in relationship with him. It tells us that we are children of God—not just in some sort of sentimental way, but in a reality that is immeasurable.

I don’t think that the term Abba can be adequately translated into English. To address God in prayer as “Papa” or “Daddy” just seems to me so insufficient. Yet how can one “claim” the unique reality of the relationship that is the birthright of the born again? “Father” is truly a very rich form of prayerful invocation, often used both liturgically and personally and rightly so, but Abba means so much more than that. It struck me recently that the word needn’t be translated at all—one may simply address God as Abba. And so I have, when I needed comfort or sought guidance in times of stress, pain, and trouble. It was in such a time that Jesus himself addressed God as Abba. There is nothing inadequate about Jesus’ own word. If it cannot be translated, it can, perhaps, be pictured. To the right is a photograph of one such occasion.

So many, many people were not sufficiently held and hugged when they were children that it shows in their adult lives—sometimes dramatically. My blogpost of over three years ago, Hugs and Kisses, is one of my favorites. It really provides the background to this blogpost. I realize now that genuine, pure affection in Christ’s Name is one meaning of Abba as expressed in this life. In so many ways, it tells us who we really are in Christ. To pray Abba is to know that one is safe, loved, accepted, warm, and fully content in the arms of the One who loves us truly, fully, perfectly, unconditionally, and eternally. Even the best parents, spouses, or friends cannot give that message consistently. When we pray as Jesus did, Abba, when we need it most, we may catch a glimpse of that world where we are truly, fully, perfectly, unconditionally, and eternally loved.

The Efficacy of Prayer: A Real Life Adventure

2009-11-19T17:56:00.000-08:00

C.S. Lewis wrote an essay called “The Efficacy of Prayer”, which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in January 1959. In that essay, he stated that “there is no rigorous proof” that when one prays for something and that thing happens, that the prayer is what made it happen. “The thing we pray for may happen, but how can you ever know it was not going to happen anyway? … In some measure the same doubt that hangs about the causal efficacy of our prayers to God hangs also about our prayers to man [e.g. asking someone to pass the salt or take care of your cat while you are away on a trip] … Our assurance is quite different in kind from scientific knowledge. It is born out of our personal relation to the other parties; not from knowing things about them but from knowing them. Our assurance—if we reach an assurance—that God always hears and sometimes grants our prayers, and that apparent grantings are not merely fortuitous, can only come in the same sort of way… Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In it God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayers is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one—from that revelation. What He does is learned from what He is.”

Judge for yourself:

On Friday, November 6, I began a two-day trip to the mud caves (see my previous posts here and here) with three other adults (Kevin, Leslie, and Joi) and five preteens (seen below, left to right, Phillip and Olivia, Emeth, Tabby, and Zinnie).

(The photos in this blogpost were taken by Joi Weaver.)

We traveled in two vehicles: a borrowed Jeep and a borrowed Ford F-250. After a drive of several hours we arrived at the turnoff from the asphalt of S-2 to the dirt road that begins the seven-mile drive that culminates at our customary camping spot at the site of the mud caves.

The Adventure Begins
After driving slightly more than a mile, the Ford (which I was driving) got stuck in sand. Although the road has always had sand on it, I have never seen it as unpredictable as it was this time. There were pockets of sand in ruts level with the hard road so that it was very difficult to tell where soft ground was located. The fact that we entered the road near twilight made discernment even more difficult.

At first I thought that it would be easy to grind out of the sand, but a little work and observation showed me that I wouldn’t be able to extract the vehicle without help. Putting branches under the tires and pushing didn’t help at all.

Things became more complicated when I noticed that the front tires were pointing in two different directions; the right tie rod had snapped. Aaargh! We weren’t going anywhere without some professional mechanical attention. The adventure had begun, especially since we were about 35 miles from the closest town and it was rapidly becoming dark.

So we unpacked what we needed for dinner, built a fire and roasted hot dogs. I surmised to the group that we would probably have to camp right where we were. I checked my cell phone and noted, to my surprise, that it had coverage. Just a short distance away, a little farther into the desert, coverage is nil. I called the Automobile Club for assistance, and was told that my policy did not cover me if I were “off road”. I replied that I was on a road that even had a name, although it was a dirt road; I wasn’t driving pell-mell across the desert. The dispatcher I talked to wasn’t quite convinced but said she’d send a truck out anyway.

We Prayed
So the nine of us gathered into a circle and prayed something like, “Lord, we are in your hands, as we are in all things. You know our needs. We pray that you will deliver us from our situation safely, quickly, and in the best way. Give us patience and build our trust in you; in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”

Not long after that, a truck came toward us from the direction of the mud caves. A young man and his girlfriend stopped and asked if we needed help. When we told him our situation, he smiled and said that he could pull us out. “I do this all the time,” he said. “He does this all the time,” echoed his girlfriend.

He had a thick strap in the back of his truck, attached it to the rear of our Ford, and slowly pulled. We watched the front of the Ford to make sure that the wheels would handle the towing okay. As soon as the Ford was free of the sand, he stopped towing. We thanked him and I asked their names, “Chris”, he said, and his girlfriend was Katie. After some more pleasantries, they drove off.

Chris, I thought. Short for ‘Christopher’—meaning, ‘one who carries Christ.’

Next, the tow truck driver called me and asked for clearer directions about our location. I provided them and then said that I would meet him at the turnoff. Kevin and I got into the Jeep, turned around, and headed back toward the asphalt. Less than a quarter mile from the Ford, I quipped, “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the Jeep got stuck in the sand?”

Kevin, driving, looked at me out of the corner of his eye, unamused. Within ten seconds were we stuck in the sand.

A couple of minutes later a pickup truck carrying eight or ten highly elated young people, probably in their early twenties, came by. Most of them were in the truck bed. Later, we came to call them “The Exuberant People”, for they had been partying and were probably heading into the desert for more partying.

When they saw Kevin and me standing outside the Jeep and looking disconsolately at our vehicle, they stopped and asked if we needed anything. When we explained our predicament, they said that they could help. They all leaped out of their truck.

In the meantime, the tow truck appeared in the distance, the row of amber lights atop its cab shining across the road in the dark. The driver was creeping forward and finally stopped where we were gathered. He dismounted and I approached him and explained how the situation had become more complex.

He shook his head. “This truck weighs eight tons. If I get stuck in the sand, it’s all over. I don’t think I can do this. I can’t even turn around.”

“We’ll do it!” shouted two or three of the Exuberant People. They asked to borrow the tow truck’s shovel and chains. The dug around the Jeep’s wheels, tied the chains to their own truck, and began to pull. About six people got behind the Jeep and pushed. Dusty sand spewed back into these folks as the Jeep inched out. When it was free, the entire crowd whooped, hollered, and danced as if they were at a football game and their side had just scored a touchdown.

Then Kevin drove the Jeep back to the turnoff, where the asphalt was. The Exuberant People followed him to make sure he made it there safely, and then drove him back to us. Kevin was electric with excitement at driving in the back of the pickup with a crowd of such party-driven young folks. During the drive he told them that I was a priest. Shocked, they immediately told Kevin that they were all going to hell because they do such bad things. “But you just did a good thing,” Kevin rejoined, and added, “besides, I bet the priest will pray to God to bless you.”

“Really?” they gasped, “He’d really do that?”

Meantime, I’d been talking to the tow truck driver. “Naw,” he apologized. “I can’t do this. I can’t go any farther. This truck weighs eight tons, and if it gets stuck in sand it’s all over.”

“That’s okay,” I said. I signed his work order, noting that his name was “Kris”. Hmm, I thought. Some form of Christopher, maybe. Again, one who carries Christ. He helped in the way he could but he was probably right. He backed out (literally) from our situation, with the parting advice that “there are professionals who can come get you out, but they charge $180 per hour.”

“Thanks!” I shouted, waving toward his vanishing headlights. The only professional in the group, a friendly fellow with good intentions and wanting to help, had been influenced by fear not to continue. Maybe he was right. I had no complaints.

By this time, an orange moon just past the full had risen over the black ridge of mud hills to the east. Its beauty made me catch my breath. Stars were appearing in the ever-darkening sky. It was cool but not too cold—just very pleasant. It stayed that way all night.

In the meantime, another truck full of young people had come by. These were about four or five young men. They’d passed the tow truck and stopped when they saw our crowd, and had overheard the final conversation. The driver leaned out the window toward me and confided, “He could have made it. He could have turned around on this road no problem. Well… where is your other truck?”

He followed me the three hundred yards to where the rest of our party had been waiting, and pulled to a stop. He leaned out the window again and said, “It happens that I am a Ford mechanic. I’ll look at it. I’m in no hurry. We don’t have any place to be, except our own camp.” He stepped down from the cab and lay on his back under our Ford’s right front fender. A friend held a flashlight for him.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a tie rod. Not really a big deal. You can get these in most auto parts stores and probably put it in right here. But…” He slid out, went over to his truck, and came back with some wire, plastic ties, and a couple of tools. “Hold the light right here,” he told his friend. I heard the sound of metal against metal. Our party as well as all of the Exuberant People watched. One of the Exuberant People called her mother to say, “We just pulled a priest out of the sand.” She was floating with excitement over our adventure that had become her adventure.

Five minutes later the fellow slid out again from under the Ford. “Alright,” he said. “You can probably drive it back to S-2. Don’t drive any farther than that. As long as you drive forward the wheels should naturally hold their position, but if you go backward, you’ll twist them.”

“Right,” I said, and got in, thinking that now I’ll have drive forward, find a place to turn around in the dark, and then come back. I was thinking about how the tow truck driver had said that if he turned around, he’d get stuck in the sand for sure. I started the engine and drove about ten feet.

“Wait a minute,” interrupted the mechanic, putting his hand on the door. “How about if I turn it around for you?” I tried not to appear too eager as I leaped from the cab. He managed to do a careful three-point turn, backing it up with a steady hand and then pulling it forward. “There you go,” he said.

I thanked him and everyone else, and felt we were all but delivered. I ensconced myself in the cab with four passengers and drove off, churning forward slowly but steadily and without changing speed once I got the vehicle going. The Exuberant People and the young men continued their journey along the dirt road. I thought to myself that we had prayed in a place far from civilization, and within an hour three different groups with a total of at least 15 people had shown up to help us, the largest group convinced that they were hell-bound.

I made it to the highway without incident. Both vehicles and all supplies were now safe at the roadside. I left my passengers and walked back along the road to meet the rest of our party who’d had to walk the mile or so from where we’d been stuck. Before too long our entire party was together again.

We set up camp and in an hour or so everyone was bedded down.

An hour or two later, the Exuberant People came roaring by, whooping and hollering as before. When they saw our trucks, they shouted, “Everybody okay out there?” I wasn’t quite asleep yet —I think—and I smiled wryly when I heard the shout.

“Yeah!” someone shouted back—I think it was Kevin.

“Great!” they shouted back. “Be sure you don’t drive that truck any more, or you’ll kill yourselves!”

“We won’t!” responded Kevin. “Thanks again!”

Their truck continued out to S-2, and off they drove with a series of whoops that didn’t stop, but merely faded with distance.

The Adventure Continues
On Saturday we woke to a bright day already well in progress.

After breakfast I tried to call the Auto Club again and arrange for a tow, although I didn’t know where I could have the truck towed. I toyed with the idea of driving the Ford “slowly” to Julian, the lovely gold-rush town we pass through on our way to the mud caves. A quick look under the truck showed me that I could probably have made it at least ten or fifteen feet before the makeshift job would quit on me.

I turned my cell phone on and noticed that 1) I had no coverage and 2) my battery was flashing low. I’d figured I had maybe half a charge before leaving home but knew that at the mud caves there was no coverage whatever, so I just brought the phone as it was, thinking I’d only need it for when I was driving.

I began to walk around the desert, looking for a place where the phone would work. I finally found a live spot and called for another tow. While the tow truck was on the way, I had to figure where to have the Ford towed. The previous tow truck driver had said that he didn’t know of any garages in either Julian (population about 1,600) or Borrego Springs (population about 2,500). Borrego Springs was somewhat back in the direction we needed to go, but on another road that swerved out of our way. I was a little familiar with Julian and didn’t know of any place there where I could get the truck fixed, so I decided to try Borrego Springs. The Exuberant People had shown me a flyer the night before and I had written down the phone numbers for both the Ranger Station and the Visitors’ Center in Borrego Springs.

The Ranger Station was closed. I called the Visitor Center and a man answered the phone. I quickly explained our situation and asked, “Do you know of any mechanic in Borrego Springs who is open on Saturday and does a good job?”

“It just so happens, I do!” he said. “Call Tito’s. He’s even got my car right now. He’s good and honest and inexpensive.” He provided the number. I called, and Tito said I could bring the truck in. I breathed a sigh of relief. I could now almost see the end of the tunnel. With every problem, we had to do three things: 1) get the facts about our situation, 2) consider our options, and 3) make a decision and act on it. There was always a solution.

An hour or so later the tow truck arrived and pulled the Ford onto the flatbed. Can you guess the driver’s name? No—it was Bobby. The two vehicles got started, caravanning north on S-2 to Borrego Springs. Bobby dropped us at Tito’s. Tito looked under the truck and said, “I’ll have to order the parts. I can’t get them until Monday.”

I agreed, of course, and then called a member of the parish who owns a home in Julian. Her daughter was one of our party. We made arrangements to meet someone who had a key to the place. With that, we had a place to stay.

There was only one more problem to solve. I asked Tito if he knew any place in Borrego Springs where I could rent a car. Not likely, I thought, in a desert town of 2,500 population.

“Sure,” he said. He called someone. “They have one car left,” he reported back. “I’ll drive you there.” There was an airstrip about the size of a band-aid a mile to the east. Tito drove me there where I made arrangements to rent a Saturn Ion—pretty banged up but drivable.

“Sometimes the ignition won’t let the key go,” said Louise, from whom I rented the car. She gave me a second key in case I needed it. In a few minutes I was back at Tito’s and we loaded up what we needed from the Ford into the Saturn. Then we drove into the center of town for lunch.

Then we drove the 35 miles or so from Borrego Springs to Julian, and arrived in the late afternoon. I made several necessary calls, noting that with each call the battery got lower and lower. We unpacked and, for the first time, relaxed. About 5:30 p.m. I said Mass for the group.

During the Mass we prayed, thanking God for delivering us from the desert and asking a blessing on all the people who had helped us—especially the Exuberant People, who had been so surprised that someone would pray a blessing upon them.

And then we ate dinner. After dinner, the kids watched the movie “Annie”.

The next day four of our number departed after breakfast, driving the Jeep back home where those four had commitments that couldn’t wait overnight. Leslie and I were left with three preteens—Zinnie, whose mother owned the house in which we were staying, and Leslie’s son and daughter, Phillip and Olivia.

My phone went totally dead in the morning, and wouldn’t even turn on. Leslie had been using her phone sparingly since its battery was also low. It became our only way to make or receive calls.

We spent the afternoon in Julian. The key to the Saturn did in fact stick in the ignition a couple of times, but I managed to work it loose after a minute or two of patient jiggling. When we got home at night, however, the key wouldn’t release from the ignition no matter what I did. After fifteen minutes I finally gave up, concluding that that was why Louise had given me two keys for the car. I could leave one in the ignition, lock the car, and then unlock it the next day with the second key. We watched “Annie” a second time that night.

The Adventure Continues Again
The next day we cleaned up the house thoroughly, repacked the car, and loaded ourselves into it, planning to drive to Borrego Springs to pick up the Ford about 5:00 p.m., which is the time that Tito said it should be ready. I turned the key, and the battery was the deadest battery I have ever seen. There wasn’t a sound, not even a click. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I pursed my lips and borrowed Leslie’s phone to call the Auto Club for the third time. I had to walk to the end of the block to get coverage.

An hour later another tow truck showed up. A man who looked like Santa Claus in the off-season got out and opened the hood. The Saturn battery was unlike any I’ve ever seen, and it appeared to puzzle the driver too. After a few minutes he managed to put his cables into a workable position and asked me to try to start the car. Nothing happened. He repositioned the cables, and this time I got a click, but no more. He said we should just wait five minutes for the battery to charge and then try again. After five minutes the engine started.

He removed the cables, advised me not to turn the engine off for at least fifteen minutes, got into his truck, and headed out. We all piled into the Saturn again and reversed down the driveway. I realized immediately that the power steering had gone out. It was like trying to steer an elephant as I made the three-point turn to head toward the highway. (I found out later that it was a blown fuse. Easy to fix.)

I parked the car with the engine running, and flagged the tow truck driver down, who had made a U-turn down the street and was passing by us. He pulled over. I explained the problem and he responded that power steering was outside his area of knowledge. He asked for the owner’s manual, which I found. We looked up power steering and read that if there is a problem we should call the dealer. Fortunately the dealer’s number was in the front of the manual. He advised us to drive into Julian and park there, then call the dealer and ask what to do. He wished us luck and drove off.

I followed him and realized that driving wasn’t so bad now. Instead of driving like an elephant it was more like a hippopotamus as long as I was going fairly straight. I quickly conferred with Leslie and we decided just to try to drive all the way to Borrego Springs rather than turn the car off after just a few minutes and then probably need to call the Auto Club a fourth time. We made it along the winding roads through the hills east of Julian to the desert floor and all the way back to Borrego Springs without mishap.

We’re okay now, I thought. We’ll pick up the truck and be home in three or four hours.

The Adventure Continues Even More
We pulled up at Tito’s in the early afternoon. He came over and said, “I called your cell phone. I can’t get the parts until tomorrow. They have to come from another source.”

Leslie and I turned to each other and said, as we had before, “the adventure continues.” I used Leslie’s phone to check with Zinnie’s mother, who said we could stay a third night in her home. We’d turned her house key in and now had to arrange for it to be left for us a second time. I called the fellow who had it, and he was on his way out of town to get his car fixed! Well, at least that confirmed my suspicion that there were no garages in Julian. He said he’d be back later that day but not too quickly. Well, that was okay.

I used Tito’s phone to call the airport to see if they had another rental car by now, and they did. I drove the Saturn back and traded it for another one. The new one, equally old and banged up, only had a trunk whose lock couldn’t be worked with the key, but the engine worked fine. I took it. We had to open the trunk from inside the car.

We packed up again, had lunch, drove to the Visitors’ Center for an hour’s relaxation, and then returned to Julian. We ate dinner out, and then drove back to the home well after dark, where the key fortunately was where it was supposed to be. Then, leapin' lizards, the kids watched “Annie” for the third time.

Well, after that things went rather smoothly. The next day we cleaned the house a second time, drove into the Anza Borrego Desert for a picnic lunch on top of Ghost Mountain (see this previous blogpost), where Marshal South had lived with his family from 1930 to 1946, and then back to Tito’s in Borrego Springs. Work on the truck was completed about an hour after we arrived, we returned the Saturn to the airport, and drove home. We got back to the church about 8:45 p.m.

Lewis wrote, “In [prayer] God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayers is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one—from that revelation. What He does is learned from what He is.”

We never made it to the mud caves on this trip, but we had an adventure that bound the travelers together as we worked to solve our problems. We saw our prayers being answered repeatedly; we are convinced that there were far too many “coincidences” for them just to be chance. Even a blogpost this long does not recount everything that happened and all the blessings we received. Yet there were no “miracles”, and we certainly had to live with the consequences of our decisions, such as not charging our phones before leaving home. At no time did any child wonder where we would eat, where we would sleep, or how we were going to get home. No one was ever afraid, no one got impatient. No one complained. Throughout all, there were confidence, joy, and deepening love for one another. We were blessed far more than we had even asked for in our prayers.

Eunoia

2009-10-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago I found out that eunoia is the shortest word in English that contains all the vowels—unless you want to count iouea which is a genus of creataceous fossil sponges, which is the shortest four-syllable word in English. However, I don’t count it; it’s too obscure and eclectic. Of course, eunoia is neither.

When I found out that eunoia means “beautiful thinking”, my devotion to the word was sealed. I suppose it could be translated “good thinking”, for its component Greek words are eu (good) and noia (thinking).

The first word is found in eucharist—thanksgiving, another name for the Mass; it literally means “good gift”, eu charism. It’s also found in the word Tolkien coined: eucatastrophe—some awful thing that happens that turns out to have been a necessary occurrence for a tremendous blessing. If eu goes beyond “good” to meaning “beautiful”, though, what new meaning is put into these other familiar words: “beautiful gift” and “beautiful catastrophe”.

Noia, according to the very smart Micah Snell, is the participial form of the Greek verb noeo, which means to perceive, to think, to suppose, etc. It is a very deep verb obviously related to nous—which is equivalent to “mind”.

Micah points out that metanoia is thus an “after-thought”, whence it readily becomes “repentance”; and paranoia is “beyond thought”, or derangement/madness.

Good thinking can mean thinking logically or maybe even being able to add inspiration or creativity to logic, thereby coming to a result that not only makes sense but is pleasing. Beautiful thinking, though, says that and more. It recognizes that “beauty” is a quality or virtue in things themselves—that the concept of “beauty” is not merely a subjective evaluation, i.e. a matter of opinion, but is a reality inherent in the order of things. The difference is of incalculable significance.

To think “beautifully”, then, is to be able to use one’s mind in harmony with the order of things. It’s a great Buddhist or Taoist concept, but best of all it’s a striking Christian concept. It means laying aside the “sin which clings to closely” (Hebrews 12:1), which is “crouching at the door” (Genesis 4:7), whose desire against us must be ruled over. The mind is the first spiritual battleground, for whatever evil we commit must begin by being thought about and then consented to.

We regularly confess that we have sinned against God and our neighbor in “thought, word, and deed” (Book of Common Prayer, pages 331, 360); I hope that most serious Christians are able to identify sins of “word” and “deed” pretty effectively, but sins of “thought” may be more difficult to identify, for they occur only within our own minds; no one hears them and no one is affected by them—at least not directly or observably. Sins of thought include inner pride, lustful fantasies, contempt of others, dreams of wealth and luxury, “what I would do if I ruled the world”, whining and self-pity, daydreams of manipulating people to suit our wishes and pleasures, entertaining vortices of thoughts of self-righteousness and holding grudges against people, refusing to forgive others or ask forgiveness from them, attributing attitudes and motives to others that permit us to hold them in contempt, and the like. These things are all muddy thinking that lead to perverse and wicked thinking and mental acts of the rebellious will—decidedly unlovely and unattractive. Ugly.

Eunoia, then, beautiful thinking, is where virtue begins, for eunoia cannot abide ugly thinking. Beautiful thinking is what results in genuine love and strength. Paul commended eunoia when he wrote, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). This does not mean, “daydream about these things,” but rather, “put these things into your mind as the basis of your life,” for when whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise is at home in one’s mind, there cannot be much room for anything that is false, underhanded or manipulative, prejudicial or partisan, debased, ugly, perverted, exploitative, rapacious, or shameful.

Eunoia is the shortest word in English that contains all the vowels. Vowels are sounds that are neither truncated nor hard. Vowel sounds can last as long as there is breath to make them. Select the “voice” option in a synthesizer and you get the vowel sounds of “ooh” and “aah” to express wonder and joy and excitement. “Eunoia” has all the vowels wrapped up closely. I’m committed to it.

Remember the Strengths of Anglicanism

2009-10-16T18:14:00.001-07:00

For any traditional believer or traditional congregation in the Episcopal Church, these are dark and grievous days. News is abundant and widespread of persecution of traditional believers, and continuous and progressive rejection of traditional beliefs and practices by the leadership of the Episcopal Church. Many traditional Episcopalians are well-versed in these apostasies and travails, and have developed facility in doom-saying and disparagement.

Nevertheless, it is unbecoming of Christians to let these things be uppermost in our life, for life in Jesus is always joyful and full of hope that does not disappoint. It seems good to me to remember and recount some of the great strengths of Anglicanism. Though they have not always been foremost in our tradition, and are mostly the exception today (at least in the Episcopal Church), these strengths are fundamental to the heart and life of Anglicanism.

At the time of the Reformation Anglicanism succeeded in actually “reforming” itself, i.e. it maintained the riches of the undivided Church while purifying its doctrines and practices. Because of this, for example, Anglican laity have a place in leadership; we recognize saints in the original, “old fashioned” way; we permit pious opinions to differ on lesser doctrines; and we allow priests and bishops to marry. Anglicanism is neither authoritarian nor congregational. Anglicanism was one of the first Communions at the time of the Reformation to restore the liturgy to the language of the people and the only one to emphasize and balance both Word and Sacrament. Its liturgy remained Catholic but became accessible to the laity.

Anglicanism is known for beautiful liturgy; there are few services more beautiful than Anglican cathedral Evensong. Anglicanism is known for producing good music and has produced some of the best hymn writers and musicians in the history of the Church. Anglicanism is known for “good taste”, at its best being neither too maudlin in its prayers, nor too shallow in its teaching, nor too sterile in its theology.

Anglicanism has the humility never to have claimed to be “the” Church, but rather has striven to be the via media, the “middle way” that is attractive to Christians of many different styles and backgrounds. Therefore Anglicanism was able to recognize the strengths and gifts in each of the fragments of the broken Church, and was the first to exercise leadership in ecumenical matters, striving to bring Christians of differing churches, backgrounds, and convictions into unity.

Anglican missionary practice is to move leadership to indigenous people as quickly as is practical. Anglicans are consistently good financial givers. The best Anglican theologians are parish priests and educated laity rather than academics or monastics—that is, our understanding of theology is grounded in daily life rather than “ivory towers”. At its best, Anglicanism does not compromise the truths of revealed and received Christianity but lives them out in pastoral situations—that is, in the daily lives of the faithful.

Anglicanism is truly comprehensive, able to live from time to time with anomaly for the sake of truth. Anglicanism values moderation in all things, thereby becoming able to see the “whole picture”. Anglicanism values the place of the human mind and reason in educating and shaping people into sanctity. Questioning is encouraged not to make a virtue out of doubt, but to provide the occasion for deep conversion and formation of individuals and communities.

Anglicanism is centrally Scriptural without being either unthinkingly, rigidly fundamentalistic or tolerant of a disregard for Scriptural authority. Anglicans produced the King James Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Most of the great renewal movements of the past few centuries that have influenced many other churches originated in Anglicanism. Many of the greatest preachers of past centuries have been Anglicans. Many of the most influential and effective teachers, writers, and workers of the Christian world over the past few centuries have been Anglicans. Off the top of my head I can think of C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Charles Williams, T. S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Florence Nightingale, William Wilberforce, William Law, Richard Hooker, John and Charles Wesley, John Donne, and George Herbert.

There may be some readers of this blog who will want to post a response listing the many exceptions and violations of these principles, or postulate that what I have written is mostly a nostalgic remembrance of past glories that are no more. They may be right; time will tell. Even if they are, however, I think it is good to remember the glories of our heritage, for what is not of God will fade, and what is true will be preserved. There is much in Anglicanism that is true for all time, not found very often in other churches, and which we must make sure that traditionalists do not permit to slip away because we are too busy complaining.

Diverse and Inclusive, or Catholic and Evangelical?

2009-09-18T18:13:00.000-07:00

Recently I received this comment as a response to my blogpost of July 27, “Blessed Sacrament Decides”:

The strength of the Anglican Communion is its diversity and inclusivity, as well as the freedom to dissent from the powers that be. Schism, even if based on conscience, is inconsistent with that. In reaching the accomdation that you did, you failed in your duty as a leader and rector. You can - and should - vociferously express your disagreement with TEC policies. You also can - and should - encourage your parishioners to express dissenting views from yours. Your job as Rector is create an atmosphere of unity through enforcing respect for the differing opinions that will always be present in a truly Anglican communion. It is that diversity, that tolerance of disent, that makes us Anglo, and not Roman, Catholics.

The writer was a parishioner of Blessed Sacrament for several years, and moved away roughly twenty years ago. Although he stated that he was responding to the blogpost, the assertions and accusations he put into his comments show that he’s not familiar with what we have published or what we are doing—and not even aware of what the blogpost said. As I read what he wrote, I scratched my head wondering if he had even read what he claimed he’s responding to.

His comments tell me what I can and should be doing; these statements puzzle me since I have been doing these very things in the parish for over thirty years. He should know this first-hand from his time as a member of this parish; I DO encourage parishioners to share their convictions when they differ from mine and from each other. This individual was certainly allowed a place in our parish life without being muzzled in any way, and stayed with us for many years—comfortably, I believe, and hope.

Read my print: This parish is NOT going into schism, and we have consistently rejected that course of action, and repeatedly explained why. Further—along with most of the Anglican Communion—this parish has vociferously and publicly rejected the escalating and continuing apostasies of the Episcopal Church. We will not accept them and we will continue to protest them, though it is evident that the leadership of the Episcopal Church is swelled up with monstrous arrogance and determined to keep the pedal to the metal as the institutional juggernaut (not the same thing as the Church) hurtles along the downward slope toward unrecognizablity. A report on the state of the Church prepared for the General Convention provides a number of telling points: 1) The Episcopal Church is rapidly losing members; 2) The Episcopal Church has to cut back its budget severely because of diminished income; 3) the biggest reason for this is conflict in The Episcopal Church over its revisionist policies and practices; 4) full speed ahead!

The writer mentioned “freedom to dissent” and “tolerance of dissent” as a strength of Anglicanism. “Tolerance of dissent” can mean a number of things. When it means living charitably with anomaly as things settle out, it is a vital Christian virtue well described in theory and practice in the New Testament. If it means letting people hold beliefs and maintain practices inconsistent with the faith of the Body, then it is abdication of leadership, which is powerfully condemned in both Old and New Testaments. Genuine leadership must show both clarity and mercy. This is notably different from espousing “inclusivity”.

Further, the often-touted “inclusivity” of the Anglican Communion in general and the Episcopal Church in particular has rarely existed in real life. From the days of the English Reformation, Anglican authorities have consistently and strongly persecuted every renewal movement that arose from its ranks. (For details see the article I wrote for “The Living Church” years ago called “The Myth of Anglican Tolerance”.) Unless I am wrong, the term “inclusivity” has not been claimed by or applied to the Anglican Communion; it is a term only recently devised in the Episcopal Church to apply to itself. Watching recent history unroll leads me to conclude that this term, dubious from the beginning, was used to hoodwink the trusting faithful and manipulate them into thinking of themselves as “open minded” by tolerating the “revisionists” who sought positions of influence in the Episcopal Church. Once the “revisionists” had enough votes, one didn’t hear about “inclusivity” much any more—instead one heard about “conformity”, with serious consequences for not adhering to the “doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church”, which obviously meant whatever those who had the votes could install without regard to any recognizable elements of generally accepted and authoritative Christian doctrine, discipline, or worship.

For a decade or two or more, many Episcopal bishops and other authorities have persecuted bishops, priests, parishes, missions, and lay leaders who disagreed with their revisionist ideology, and violated canon law and even basic principles of fairness and ethics to do so—none more openly, egregiously, and arrogantly than the current leadership. A genuinely liberal and charitable bishop, such as Bishop Jon Bruno, is the rare exception.

Moreover, the sloganistic words “diversity” and “inclusivity” have little or nothing to do with the Christian faith of the New Testament, which is the foundation of our life. Diversity and inclusivity are valuable principles only when they are expressive of the much richer and deeper Christian virtues of firm adherence without compromise to revealed truth, lived out in powerful charity. When these convictions are held, then “diversity” and “inclusivity” do not need to be mentioned, for they are already being done. I don’t think you can even find these words in the New Testament—you find much more powerful and richer words than “diversity” and “inclusivity”. How can one be more inclusive than to “preach the Gospel to every creature”? When one is committed to preaching to every creature, one doesn’t have to repeat how “inclusive” one is being. The very appellation “Evangelical” requires “inclusivity”. And how can one be more diverse than “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female—you are all one in Christ Jesus”? Being incorporated into Christ does not obliterate or ignore these real differences, but rather affirms the uniqueness and value of each believer and revels in the differences that make up the one Body. The very appellation “Catholic” requires “diversity”.

If “diversity” and “inclusivity” are not part of the evangelical and Catholic Gospel, then they are little different from masks for allowing people to believe whatever they want without standards of discernment or authenticity. Recently the principles of “diversity” and “inclusivity” have been the catchwords of narrow and tyrannical ideological rigidity: “The Episcopal Church is inclusive, and the authorities will tell you what that means; if you don’t agree, you will be put out.”

If holding to these principles implies “failing in my duties as leader and rector”, then I am unrepentantly guilty. However, I call it “keeping the faith”, and the good fruits of that faithfulness are abundant at Blessed Sacrament—a parish that welcomes and accepts all people, and holds up a standard of the fullness of faith and the call to holiness without compromise.

My New "Job" Description

2009-09-12T19:51:00.001-07:00

This past week has been physically and emotionally rough, due to brutal side effects from some medication I had been taking and probably also cumulative stress through almost unmitigated overwork and overstimulation. Because of these things I missed the ordination of a friend and parishioner that took place in another state where I had been scheduled to preach, an event I had looked forward to for a several years. That grieved me and angered me, but during the week I also had some enforced quiet moments, although rarely far from electronic communication like email.

Electronic communication is, or can be, very exciting and beneficial. I’ve definitely been extremely blessed by email, websites, online searches, etc., in ways that I could not have known without electronics. I’ve made new friends, found old friends, collaborated on and written books, and studied online. But electronics are like the sea, at once incredibly wonderful but also unrelenting and destructive, pounding even rocks into sand. For months, I have been sleepless well into the night, my mind whirling with messages I’d read or needed to respond to or to initiate, not to mention what St. Paul calls the anxiety of the church(es). (I only have one, he had dozens.) Ministering to people, administering the ministries of others, wielding the sword of the Spirit, jumping into crises, teaching, nurturing the weak and fallen, lamenting the departure of both pilgrims and victims, welcoming neophytes, evangelizing the searching and the resistant, etc. etc. Not to mention seeing to my own spiritual health.

During this past week I realized that there is a lot in my life that is under my control—probably a whole lot more under my control than most people have the privilege of enjoying. I realized that I had allowed myself to become too busy, too pent up with too many things that demand my attention. Too many emails logging in at both home and church, more than I can give proper attention to. Etc. This is not a new lesson, by any means; there have been previous occasions in which I’ve learned that lesson and changed myself because of it—but stuff has a habit of creeping in, and patterns of life change, so that “accumulation” looks different from what it did before.

I took on this blog almost three years ago at the request of a number of people who wanted to see what I’d write, and while it was (and is) fun and cathartic and (I hope) useful to some, it also took time. I like these entries to be reasonably well written, even though if they’re read at all, like a newspaper they’re quickly out-of-date and rarely if ever referred to again.

Then I took up Facebook a few months ago. Not so much “quality writing” is expected, but a lot of information can be put out there and a lot can be read in a short time. Facebook is shorter and busier than a blog. I like it.

But when I found that Twitter is about 144 characters at the most (or whatever) to allow people to whip snippets of information to crowds of other twitterers, I snarled and refused to participate.

Then a day or so ago this verse from Job came to me: “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed” (Job 38:11). The “you” in that passage did not refer to me but to the things that would overwhelm me if I let them. So I drew a line and took back some control. I realized that sometimes what God wants is for us to NO into all the world.

So now I will refuse to let things overwhelm me. Here shall their proud waves be stayed. I’m taking this on as my new “Job” description. Sadly, some emails will not get answered—not because I don’t want to answer them but because I just can’t. Those that do get answered may not get the polished writing I’ve tried to maintain. Even this blogpost is not going to be carefully sculpted and polished. Twitter can go blow. I won’t read church emails on my day off, and whenever possible I will shut down the electronics early in the evening.

My favorite time of the year is autumn. The nights are mild, often there is a very light breeze. There is beautiful music to be listened to in dimness. There is a wife to spend time with. There is a God to be simply enjoyed. Enjoying him is better than constantly serving him. Jesus called it the “best part”. I hope that by committing to this new direction I am being a better pastor than before; I think it’s good Christian living and a good example to set for others. If anyone doesn’t think so, be sure to send me an email about it.

Blessed Sacrament Decides

2009-07-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

Blessed Sacrament Church in Placentia, California is an active and healthy Anglo-Catholic congregation in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Our membership of roughly 350 people includes many who have been in the parish for decades, as well as a considerable contingent of young families with children and dozens of college students from missionary and evangelical backgrounds. We have had about half a dozen vocations to ordination in the past four years, with two more currently in process. At the moment there are six priests (five of them part-time non-stipendiary) and one vocational deacon on staff. The theology of the parish is generally that of Forward in Faith or the American Anglican Council. Several people of decidedly different convictions are also active members. For us, holding to the revealed truth of the Gospel is an uncompromised principle, and unreserved love for all people is a standard. In these times of the hijacking of the Episcopal Church we have always rejected discouragement and defensiveness. On the contrary, rather than see ourselves as a place beleaguered, we are intentional about being a family where love, truth, joy, and light in Jesus prevail regardless of circumstances.

The Discernment Committee of Blessed Sacrament was formed well over two years ago. The Committee was comprised of about twenty volunteers. They were to be members of the parish who took the issues seriously but had not already decided what we ought to do. I charged the committee to make a recommendation for our future and provided several axioms for their work: they were to pray through their labors; all meetings were to be open; our Bishop, Jon Bruno, would be kept informed; only verified first-hand sources would be used; everything would be done in charity; no action that could involve lawsuits would be contemplated (since Scripture forbids that course); individuals representative of various convictions in the Episcopal Church would be invited to share in face-to-face discussions; and there would be no deadline.

In the course of the discernment, our Vestry met twice with Bishop Bruno, who offered us another bishop to serve as our pastor under the provision for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight. We accepted that offer, and the Bishop of Northern Indiana, Ed Little, began to serve us in that capacity about a year ago. Bishop Bruno also suggested that we redirect our Mission Share Fund to causes both he and the parish could wholeheartedly support, and we accepted that offer as well with the understanding that we would be given credit for paying our Mission Share Fund in full. Without going through the diocese we now support international missionary work, the scholarship fund at Nashotah House seminary, and local charities.

When the Discernment Committee drew near to the completion of its work, it had emerged that three courses were open to us: to remain in the Episcopal Church, to align with the emerging Anglican Church in North America, or to seek some sort of arrangement with the Roman Catholic Church. Most members of the parish were drawn to one of these three options. On the one hand, it was quite evident that no one of these three options appealed to the entire parish. On the other hand it was also quite evident that nearly all the people were determined to retain the unity of the parish family—that is, most wanted to remain at Blessed Sacrament. We had come to an impasse.

In December of 2008 I suggested to the parish in a sermon that we adopt a plan in which all three options could be followed to the benefit of all. Three general meetings of the parish this spring responded to that sermon and applied the Committee’s work into setting a direction.

We recognized that putting the decision to a vote would be disastrous. Voting assumes from the beginning that there must be a division with “winners” and “losers”. We rejected any decision in which there could be winners and losers. We determined that, rather than voting, our model for decision-making would be that of the New Testament—to come to the point where we could say, “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). By that, we meant that we must come to a godly consensus in which everyone could say, “I can live with that.” With that commitment, clarity emerged. We believe that our decision may be unique in the cheerless and escalating stresses of these times.

The way forward came to look like this, although details still have to be worked out: most of our people will remain in the Episcopal Church under the DEPO arrangement. A significant number of others will remove themselves from the Episcopal Church and align with the emerging Anglican Church of North America but continue to connect—as Anglicans—with Blessed Sacrament. We are currently investigating several attractive ways of doing this that will strengthen all the faithful rather than weaken either group. A few people—perhaps fewer than a dozen—will enter the Roman Catholic Church (some have already done so) and receive sacramental ministrations there while also retaining their participation at Blessed Sacrament. When all three groups have settled in to who they are, the parish will deepen and expand its ministries, especially those of education, evangelism, fellowship, and outreach, to ensure that we remain bound together in spite of the different courses our people have chosen. All ministries will continue and be done jointly/ecumenically.

One Episcopalian from a local parish said to me recently, “I hear that you’re dividing your parish up into groups.” I responded, “No, it’s not that at all. We are intentionally not dividing. What we’re doing is diversifying.” We remain a single family with an expanded sense of membership. The canonical key to the success of this approach is the recognition that the property of a parish is in the exclusive hands of its Rector. If a Rector can permit groups not connected with the parish to use the facility for a number of reasons, then certainly he can allow a group of non-Episcopal Anglicans to use the facility for worship and ministry. And if that group worships at the same time as the “Episcopalians” and shares the same ministries, there is nothing whatever in the canons that forbids it—and nothing that can prevent it, either.

I have been clear that those who follow what we are calling The Stand Firm Option—remaining in the Episcopal Church—must refuse to appear as if they are merely “accommodating” to the apostasies of the Episcopal Church or are hesitant to “make a stand”. Rather, those in the parish who “stand firm” are bearing witness within an apostate body; they follow the example of Amos and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and other prophets whom God called to bear a witness of fidelity and challenge to a rebellious house. “Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they will know that a prophet has been among them” (Ezekiel 2:5).

I have also been clear that those who follow what we are calling The Anglican Option—leaving the Episcopal Church for the Anglican Church of North America—must refuse the choice merely to “quit”. From the earliest years of the tensions, I have consistently rejected the sadly common but always ill-fated rationale, “their heresy demands our schism”. Schism is not an answer to heresy; it is in fact one form of heresy itself, just as heresy is one form of schism. Those in the parish who follow the “Anglican option” are like those who “remove the dust from their feet” when they depart from those who refuse the Gospel. With those who are creating the Anglican Church of North America, they are building an ark for the faithful before the storm comes.

With such an understanding, both “stayers” and “leavers” bear effective testimony—“speaking the truth in love”. Both courses are clearly Biblical, and it is obvious (I hope) that God calls different people to different vocations so that his will overall may be achieved. Both courses require courage and conviction, and both work best when they work together.

The decision has not satisfied every member of the parish. A few have expressed their regretful intention to leave the parish toward the end of the summer. One can never please everyone; though I believe that the reasoning I have heard from those who are leaving the parish is seriously flawed, I do not know everything about how and when God speaks to people or what his complete will is for them, so I shall see that the partings are amicable.

There are a few individuals who are troubled or grieved by the course we have chosen, yet the time to choose had come. “Not to decide is to decide”—and not to decide is usually to decide poorly. I think that the great majority of our members are confident of a new beginning and a more solid parish than we have been, and I am hopeful that those who are not will find that their fears will not be realized. The influence of the General Convention Church has pretty much been stopped at the borders of Blessed Sacrament, except for those concerns brought inside by our own members. At the same time, such influence as we have goes forth and bears fruit. I am delighted that attendance at Blessed Sacrament is significantly up over last year at this time, the money’s not too bad, even during the summer, and the morale seems good. I am feeling quite positive personally.

One young member of the parish wrote to me in mid-June, “I was doing lectio one morning last week in the Ephesians 6 passage about the armor of God, and the part about spiritual forces of wickedness made me think about the spiritual wickedness at work behind the actions of the Episcopal Church, and how the current mess is a spiritual battle playing out. And I had this image of Blessed Sacrament, tiny amid the black clouds that were swirling about her, but bright and protected by a bubble that the darkness could not penetrate, standing firm against it as Paul exhorts us to do. And I felt this sense of calm, like I didn’t need to worry about the future of Blessed Sacrament because God was taking care of her. I know you've basically been saying this for years... but now I think I believe you :-)”

It was intensely gratifying to receive this message. It was, I think, at least in part, a sign that the strategy I had described in this post was bearing fruit. Discernment is rarely, if ever, easy, and there are many alluring but false paths that appear throughout the process that must be carefully weighed, identified, and rejected. Having avoided a number of pitfalls during our discernment process and come to a decision that I believe is Scriptural, godly, logical, and unassailable, after the way forward was set I was filled with an overwhelming calm.

In that place I was ready for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which met July 8-17 ten miles from us in Anaheim. (General Convention is the body that sets course and policy, etc. for the Episcopal Church. It meets every three years. It is the General Convention that has made so many decisions over the past few decades that have caused immeasurable harm to the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion.)

Our parish provided about ten or a dozen volunteers to work either at Convention or in one of the exhibits. I myself served seven shifts as a volunteer. One reason I wanted to volunteer was to acquire first-hand information. Although I didn’t witness any of the decision-making process, I read many of the proposals that were acted on, and participated in several “behind the scenes” discussions as I worked. I was also an usher for four of the Convention Eucharists.

At the end, I drew a few conclusions. On the positive side, I was impressed at the effective organization. The Convention was well run. I also met many friendly people. Some of the Eucharists I attended were, to my surprise, well done, and the preaching I heard was mostly good. One sermon in particular was excellent. It was full of Jesus and a traditional interpretation of Scripture.

The main purpose of the Convention, however—to make decisions and set policy for the Episcopal Church—was predictably disappointing. With many traditionalists no longer present, it was a foregone conclusion that the Convention would follow the same direction as the injudicious decisions it has made in previous decades. A new and significant insight began to come to me in one discussion I had with a group of volunteers; it came out that many of them had gone to very prestigious universities: Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford, etc. Yet it was apparent that not one of them knew how to think critically, much less theologically. One priest even said, “Well, I’m not an expert in the Bible.”(!) (“Logic!” said the professor, half to himself. Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?” —C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, chapter five)

Even the official statistics provided in the Blue Book for the General Convention—the manual of information and business matters—show that the Episcopal Church at large continues to diminish in size, and those same statistics show that the primary reason for the waning of the Church is decisions the General Convention has made over the past thirty years and the resulting conflict in both congregations and dioceses. Further, the same statistics show that many faithful congregations and dioceses are thriving. Yet very few deputies or bishops seem to get the obvious lesson. The General Convention Church’s budgets are being cut; it continues its commitment to litigation against other Christians without accountability for the funds spent for the purpose; its “gospel” is reduced to incantatory “justice” issues and “building God’s ~~kingdom~~ reign on earth”. What may be called “the General Convention Church” appears to be lurching into free fall.

At the risk of drawing a conclusion from anecdotal data, I surmised from the discussion I heard and (much more so) from the result of the votes, that the General Convention is so unaware of the realities of both world and Gospel that it has become pretty irrelevant and therefore powerless. I found it ironic that as soon as the revisionists had finally achieved nearly complete control over the decision-making process of General Convention, they lost power to affect or do much. Who really pays attention now to what decisions the General Convention of the Episcopal Church makes? Just about no one but the revisionists themselves. While admittedly some very good ministry is being done, generally the Episcopal Church is a faltering juggernaut of the liberal 1960s with traits of coming collapse: rapidly diminishing membership most of whose youngest members are about in their forties, and declaiming ideals that are increasingly ossifying. One deputy wondered if they were becoming the “fundamentalist left”; they are certainly no longer genuinely liberal. Only ruin awaits if they “stay the course”—and there is no sign that any other option is even envisioned, much less considered. [NOTE: For an excellent comment on this paragraph and my response to it, please see the second and third comments on this blogpost.]

It struck me that my remarks to the Convention of the Diocese of Los Angeles in 2006, about being prophetic to those who had claimed to be prophetic, were coming true. The Church that had touted itself in 1992 as being a Church of “no outcasts” has self-contradictorily engaged in “theological cleansing” of traditionalists to the point that its inherent fatal flaw has become obvious. While publicly proclaiming a commitment to “inclusivity” and “valuing a variety of views”, etc., the revisionists are put into a bind whenever that means actually making a decision in support of any traditional position. I.e., “inclusivity” as a party line in the “new Episcopal Church” is really an untenable position for them since, in fact, the General Convention Church is intolerant of traditional positions and therefore cannot be inclusive as they define inclusivity. To put it another way, those committed to a partisan position (i.e. “the General Convention Church”) in spite of a claim to be inclusive, etc. cannot really be generous, i.e. cannot live with anomaly and be true to their own partisanship. By cleansing themselves of traditionalists, they have put themselves into a position where they cannot survive except by repentance.

Orthodoxy, in sharp contrast, is truly generous and can live with anomaly as truth is being discerned. This means that only the orthodox can be truly liberal. Any attempt at liberalism without orthodoxy will fail in both. Whatever is true and loving will always remain. That’s why I named this blog JohnOneFive: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness could not overpower it.”

Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

2009-07-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

In 1993 while on sabbatical I wrote a book called Love Stronger Than Death. In three parts, it tells what Christians believe about eternal life, provides case histories of a number of real people to whom I ministered as they faced death, and describes the blessings God provides to Christians in the time of grief.

Today I ran across this photograph for the first time—one of the most moving images I have ever seen. To the eyes of faith, it displays almost everything I wrote in my book of about 85,000 words. Archaeologists judge that the couple was buried 5,000-6,000 years ago, their arms wrapped around each other in an eternal embrace.

Reuters released the photograph on February 6, 2007. Experts believe that the prehistoric pair were a man and a woman who died young, as their teeth were intact. An initial examination of the couple revealed that the man (on the left in the picture) has an arrow in his spinal column while the woman has an arrowhead in her side.

The skeletons were found at an archaeological dig site near Mantova, Italy. Five thousand years ago the area was marshland crisscrossed by rivers. The tribes of the area thrived through hunting and fishing, and traveled along the waterways in boats. The burial site was discovered during construction of a factory building. The slab containing the skeletons has been preserved entire.

We can never in this life know the story behind these remains, yet whatever the details of their unknowable story, their tale is something that people of any age and time can understand.

From a poem by George Herbert (1593-1633)
Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,
Nothing but bones. …
But since our Saviour’s death did put some blood
Into thy face,
Thou art grown fair and full of grace…

Here is where I first ran across the photo. No better place to see it first, I think...

The Gift of a Penny

2009-05-28T00:16:00.000-07:00

When I was about six years old, my mother was driving my two younger brothers and me somewhere. I think we had just finished a visit to my grandparents and were returning home. Suddenly my mother was taken with a migraine and had trouble seeing. She pulled the car into the parking lot of a small grocery store and bent over the steering wheel, her eyes tightly closed and her forehead wrinkled in pain. She said that she needed a sudden infusion of sugar to give her some quick energy. At least I think this is how things were; I don’t remember exactly.

But I do remember very well that she asked me to go into the store and buy her a candy bar. She was not able to do it herself. She reached into her purse and then handed me a nickel—that’s what candy bars cost in the fall of 1954.

I swelled with pride that she had entrusted me with this errand of signal consequence. Relieving her of pain and saving the journey home had become my responsibility, mine alone, without an adult to watch over me. Clutching the nickel, I dashed out of the car and sprinted into the store. I picked out a candy bar and took it to the checker. Excitedly and proudly I set it down on the counter with the nickel beside it.

“That’ll be six cents,” the checker said.

I still remember the feeling of utter collapse that dropped my insides into ruin. I had been punctured. I had failed in my mission. A sense of shame began to wash over me.

Before the feeling of disgrace had time to grip me fully, a man behind me pushed a penny across the counter. “Here,” he said. For me it was as if a film of a collapsing building began to run backwards—everything went back to normal, and I could once again anticipate returning to the car in triumph, the prize in my hand.

I don’t remember if I thanked the man. I don’t remember if he were young or old or anything else about him. I can only see again his right hand with the forefinger extended, pushing a penny toward my nickel. Of course, he had no inkling that I was on a mission to save my mother; he could only have thought that I was a kid buying candy for himself. He could not have known the full implication of his good deed.

Even I didn’t know at the time the full implication of that deed, but I never forgot that kind act done well over half a century ago; I have brought it to my mind many, many times since. His act of spontaneous thoughtfulness and kindness to a child—being only a penny, I don’t think it can be called “generosity”—to a stranger, a little boy, changed me thoroughly, from the inside out. From that incident I learned, in a very practical way, that love of neighbor means love of stranger, and must be shown in particular actions.

As I grew older and continued to remember this incident, I grasped the reality that God can do things of immeasurable good with even the smallest of gifts. Over ten years ago, I began to remember that man in my prayers regularly, thanking God for him. In this life, he never knew that his gift of a penny had changed a life. I cannot overestimate the blessings I have received from that gift. As I look back, I realize that from that moment I have tried to be kind to children, never knowing what effects doing so could have.

Move ahead fifty years or so. About three years ago I was standing in line in a store. In front of me a teenage girl was paying for her purchase. The checker said, “You’re a penny short.”

Instantly I lit up, and I could almost literally feel myself swelling up with portentousness. Like a bolt, I was certain that my moment had come. Excitedly, almost frantically, I plunged my hand into my pocket to bring up a handful of coins. I knew that I had several pennies.

And then the checker said, “Oh, forget it.” I was stunned with dismay and struck speechless at the lost opportunity. If I’d been a bit more with it, I’d have cried out, “Wait! Wait! I’ve got a penny here! You have to take it!” And I would have told the story.

But the moment was gone. The girl said a perfunctory, “Thanks,” and walked toward the door. Emerging from my fleeting stupor, I smiled to myself ruefully. A penny in 1954 is worth twelve or thirteen cents in today’s money, I suppose. These days if we see a penny in the road or on the sidewalk we rarely stoop to pick it up, though I guess most people would pick up a dime.

Of course, it wasn’t the penny. I wanted to give where I had been given to—not to make things equal or release some kind of moral debt, but to return a favor—to treat another as I had been treated. If I had been able to get a penny out of my pocket in time, would it have changed the girl’s life as my life had been changed? Not very likely. Had I pushed a penny across the counter for her, I would have felt that I had gone “full circle” and become like the man who had blessed me so mightily and so unknowingly when I was a little boy. I would have felt deeply connected to him and been doubly blessed by his gift.

But it wasn’t necessary. I have been enormously blessed by many hundreds of people over the years of my life, and I am confident that I have been a means of blessing others in my turn. There can be no “record-keeping” of such things. I will never, ever forget, though, the first time that the lesson was impressed on me. The gift of a stranger’s penny changed the course of my life. God bless him.

P.S. Coin collectors who look closely may catch something noteworthy in the above scan of the penny.

Duh

2009-05-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

One of the oddest sayings of Jesus is, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather” (Luke 17:37b). In context, Jesus is teaching his disciples about the Day of Judgment, with the refrain, “one will be taken, and the other left.” When he finishes his teaching his disciples ask, “Where, Lord?” Jesus answers with the enigmatic, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.”

Umm…what does that mean? Well, I don’t know, but here’s a thought. If “the body” refers to the Church, the Body of Christ, then in this world it will always be assailed by vultures, right up to the Day of Judgment. On that day, “one will be taken, the other left,” but until that day, the Church will be under attack. And so it has been and is. The Church militant, the Church on earth, almost always “gasping for life” in a hostile world, will be surrounded by the harbingers of death, eager to rip its carcass.

It’s not a negative attitude. On the contrary, when the Church is under attack we can be pretty certain that we’re doing something important, something effective, something that bothers the attackers. The pattern is so remarkably obvious throughout Scripture and history that the wonder is not that it is so, but that the attackers just don’t get it. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”, etc. etc.

During the Sudanese war (1983-2005), when government troops tried to eradicate the Christians in the south, they displaced over four million people and killed more than two million others—over a million of them Christians. And during this time, the Church grew seventeen-fold! —from 5% to 85% of the population. “Way to go, persecutors! Thanks for furthering our evangelism, as you dumbheads always have.” Okay, okay, “love your enemies” and so forth, but loving them doesn’t make them any the less dumbheads.

A few people have mentioned to me recently that they are alarmed to learn that evil has entered the Church. My answer: Duh. The household of God is always under attack. The list of examples in Scripture is too long to put into a blogpost, not to mention the list of examples from the time of the Ascension, forward. The New Testament is full of conflict bent upon the Church, from inside it as well as from outside. “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” said Jesus.

I think it’s pretty cool that when Jesus said, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”, it implies that it is hell’s gates that are being assailed by the Church, and not the Church being assailed by the minions of hell.

The Lattice

2009-03-24T22:19:00.000-07:00

In my profile on this blog, I wrote, “Probably I was a mystic and a theologian from my earliest years.” What I mean by that is that as far back as I can remember I had a powerful sense of wonder that made me want to see beyond the edges of the world, beyond matter, beyond the realm of the senses, where I was convinced there was something of supernatural beauty to be found. “Want” is far too weak a word; I was enamored of the concept of the quest for beauty, driven to find whatever was just out of reach, for I knew it was the source of the joy my heart longed for and knew must exist.

Because I had parents that took me to church I was pretty convinced that what I sought was God, whom I believed was close to me, in my very room, but whom I could not see. I wanted to see him. Sometimes I wanted that more than anything. I could sit and look at rain falling, or the patterns of leaves in a tree, or clouds at sunset, and believe that he could be found somewhere in those things. I was convinced that there was more to what only my senses could take in.

Because of this longing, from my earliest years my favorite hymn was “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”: in the words of this beautiful hymn, mortal flesh is commanded to keep still and silent as the divine Presence draws near from infinite realms. Now that I have lived more than six decades, that choice has never changed, though other hymns have come close and for the same reason.

Youtube has several versions of this hymn. One good one is here, in which an orchestra and choir sing it at a Lutheran church near St. Louis at Christmastime. There is also a haunting version here, accompanied by a photo montage of ethereal beauty.

Near, so near, yet always just out of reach. I have mentioned on this blog before (see Garden) the little book I found in the early 1970s that introduces prayer to children. In it one chapter begins with these words: “There is a painting in Tissot’s Life of Christ, illustrating the verse from Solomon’s Song, ‘he looketh forth at the windows, showing Himself through the lattice’, in which you see, amid tall sunflowers, the Face of the white-robed Christ gazing through an Eastern trellis.” (The verse is Song of Solomon 2:9. Tissot's four-volume set of watercolors and sketches of scenes in the Holy Land was published in 1909.)

As soon as I read this part of the book for the first time, I looked in my seminary library and was pleased to find a copy of Tissot’s book. More than thirty years later, for my 54th birthday, a member of my parish gave me the first volume of this now rare and expensive book as a gift. I scanned that particular image and now use it in my devotions.

It is the symbol of my great longing, which I have long known is the desire to be one with Jesus. Though he is the overwhelming Presence who descends to mortal flesh, he is also the Friend who peers in at the lattice of my home, seeking me out. Because he is both in my heart and the One whom my heart seeks, he is both my Satisfaction and my Desire.

If anyone reads this blog, I apologize for not posting for such a long time. I have at least a dozen ideas for posts, and I hope to put them up in a more timely manner.

A Far-off Place

2009-02-12T16:45:00.000-08:00

I said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee to a far‑off place and make my lodging in the wilderness” (Psalm 55:7-8). Every time I read this verse in the psalms in my daily devotions it tugs at me a little bit. From my earliest memories, far-off places have appealed to me. At first I think it was a wish to escape pain and avoid risk, but it was also, and mostly, a desire to come to the edge of the abyss that was the mighty, immeasurable ocean of the love of God. I pictured myself as a small boy going alone somewhere far off as far away as I could, and then standing on tiptoe reaching up as high as I could toward roiling clouds.

As years passed, I gradually came to realize that the “far-off” place could be found very close to me. It was in parks. It was in gardens. It was in the Blessed Sacrament that I could take in my hand and could give to others. It was in my memories. It was in my relationships. It was in the people closest to me, whom I love. Finally I realized the obvious—that it was everywhere.

Just a few days ago I came across a love song called “Al di là”, from the 1962 Italian movie, “Rome Adventure”. I find it movingly beautiful. I found a clip from the movie on youtube where the song is sung. In the clip we learn that “al di là” means… well, one scene in the clip explains it:

“What does ‘al di là’ mean?”

“It means… it’s kind of hard to explain. ‘Far, far away.’ ‘Beyond the beyond.’ ‘Beyond this world.’ That’s how much he loves her in the song.”

I guess that’s a good explanation for finding the love of God. It is “al di là”. Like God himself, it is something that is both so far off that it is “beyond the beyond; beyond this world” while at the same time it is as close as every moment of one’s life. In theological terms we say that it is simultaneously “transcendent and imminent”. It means that we can hold the universe in our hands—that we are forever in the measureless love of God.

Thy Turnbuckle and Thy Bo, They Comfort Me

2009-01-23T23:11:00.001-08:00

When I was in seminary, one of the professors commented on the well-known line in Psalm 23, “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4b, KJV), and pointed out that the shepherd had both a rod and a staff. The staff, the traditional “shepherd’s crook”, was designed for leading, turning, or redirecting a sheep. The “hook” part at the end tenderly snagged a sheep going in a wrong direction and gently brought it back to safety.

The rod, however, was for those sheep that were defiant or purposely wayward. When the staff was not effective, the rod provided a clearer, unmistakable message that was hard to ignore or defy. Both rod and staff showed the shepherd’s care for the sheep as the sheep required; both, therefore, provided “comfort”.

Recently I was presented with two items. A member of the Vestry (church board) gave me a turnbuckle. I had seen one of these before but didn’t know what it was called. He said that a turnbuckle is a piece of hardware used for pulling together two walls that are bending outward from the weight of the roof over them. Without correction, they will eventually buckle and collapse, bringing down the roof. A turnbuckle joins two cables, each of which is connected to one of the walls. Tightening the turnbuckle gently but inexorably pulls the walls back to the vertical.

The person who gave me the turnbuckle told me that sometimes ministering in a church can be like that. The ministry of responsibility for leadership is often pressed to bring together people or parties of different convictions so that the congregation doesn’t collapse but rather enabling both sides to “pull together”, thereby becoming more true to themselves and so work for the common good.

A day or two after I received the turnbuckle, a family in our parish’s martial arts program gave me a bo for Christmas. A bo is a six-foot staff used as a weapon. Although a bo is usually made of hardwood, this particular gift was made of hard bamboo—for ceremonial or demonstrative purposes rather than actual combat.

The donor had had the fruits of the Spirit incised in Chinese characters on the bo. The fruits of the Spirit—“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22)—are recited by the students at the beginning of each karate class.

Putting both these gifts together, it occurred to me that they were rather like the rod and staff of Psalm 23. The turnbuckle, like the staff, is a symbol of gentle correction. The bo, if I were so inclined, could be used as a “rod”—a stubborn student could be “thwacked” with the bo on the forehead, leaving the imprint of the suitable fruit of the Spirit. After the application, I could advise the individual, “Now go look at yourself in the mirror and meditate on the fruit of the Spirit you lack!” Doubtless such a student would be “comforted” by the application.

Some sensitive readers of this blog might object to the notion of a student’s being thwacked. To those well-intentioned but misguided bleeding-hearts, I ask whether they would prefer that I take a shepherd’s crook and yank people around by the neck. I don’t think so.

Besides, in these days when people by the gazillions are paying good money to get tattooed and pierced, who’s going to complain about a thwack on the forehead? Additionally, for the few days when the imprint remains visible on the student’s forehead, probably plenty of people will ask, “What’s that thing on your forehead?” –and that will provide the student with a grand opportunity for evangelism: “That’s the Chinese character for ‘kindness’; it comes from the Bible. The Bible is about Jesus. Let me tell you about Jesus…”

And what is more comforting than the truth about Jesus?

Finding Magnolias

2008-12-23T22:42:00.000-08:00

When I was a young teenager in the early 1960s my mother took my brothers and me on a walking tour of downtown Los Angeles, where she had grown up. We went into an old-fashioned candy store and browsed. Her eyes lit up when she saw a type of candy she loved but hadn’t seen for many years.

We bought a few boxes of them. I remembered that they were small sugar balls with flavored liquid inside, and I also recalled their strange name: magnolias. As years and then decades passed, I occasionally searched for them and asked about them in various candy stores. In every case, no one who sold candy had ever even heard of them. Eventually I stopped asking.

Early in 2008, I thought about searching for them on the internet and discovered an article about them! Someone had found magnolias, had bought a crateful, and then raved about them online. Fortunately she also provided contact information. I immediately called Startup Candy Company in Provo, Utah and spoke to Jon Startup, the fifth generation owner of the company. (Yep, Startup is really the family surname.)

“Yes,” he said—not only did he sell magnolias but the founder of their company had invented the candy in 1876. Startup Candy Company was and always had been the only source of magnolias. He claimed also that his great-great-grandfather had invented the candy bar in the middle nineteenth century, and that at one time Startup Candy was the largest candy manufacturer in the nation. The Great Depression had nearly caused them to go out of business, but the firm had managed barely to survive. Jon now runs the company—a fairly small, family operation since the 1930s; Jon answers the phone himself. He did say that every now and then someone calls up, as I did, with a story that he or she had been looking for magnolias for thirty or forty years. “Oh, so you’re one of those!” he said when I explained the background to my search. I ordered a box and after it arrived, I enjoyed it so much that I immediately decided to put a post about magnolias up on my blog. It’s taken several months, but here it is!

The little can is a facsimile of those sold across the nation in huge quantities a century ago. The one ounce can is pictured, but magnolias can be purchased in a ten ounce box too. Startup’s website says that magnolias were also known as Perfume Candies. Magnolias were the forerunner of breath mints. They come in assorted floral flavors and have a liquid center. White - Carnation, Pink - Rose, Orange - Jasmine, Yellow - Cachou, Green - Pear Blossom, Blue & Purple - Violet. The artwork on the 1 ounce tin is a reproduction of a package from the early 1900s.

Maybe some of the readers of this blog will order some magnolias; whether or not you actually like this candy, it is a rare and historic confection! Here’s their website.

Evidence That God Loves Me

2008-12-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

Back about 1964 and 1965 the Mattel toy company put out some guns called “shootin shells”. You can find some photographs here . The guns came with “bullets” that looked real (check the photo about halfway down the page on the link above). The “lead” was a gray plastic gismo that you could push into the shell until it clicked and stuck. The shell had a spring inside it affixed to the end. You could load these bullets into the attractive revolver. Pull the trigger and the hammer would smack the end of the shell. The spring inside would fling the gray plastic bullet head a few feet.

Mattel also sold sheets of “stickem” caps to put on the end of the bullets to make a rather wimpy little “bang”. A stickem cap was a circle of green paper about a quarter of an inch in diameter with a little mound of gunpowder in the middle. A good concussion would make it “pop”.

A friend of mine named Glen and I took these Mattel “shootin’ shell” guns and turned them into apparatus that would be the envy of most teenage boys of the time. We discarded the contemptible gray plastic bullet heads, and with needlenose pliers yanked out the springs from the inside of the brass cartridges. Then we drilled a small hole in the back of the resultant empty casing and put a stickem cap on its smooth and inviting flat end with the mound of gunpowder placed carefully over the hole we’d drilled. Then we poured a suitable amount of gunpowder into the shell (acquired by patiently opening up fifty or so caps and depositing the few grains of gunpowder each provided into a growing pile), and then pushed a small wad of paper into the casing and rammed it tight with a construction nail that had a proper-sized flat head.

Put them headless bullets into your Mattel “shootin’ shell” gun and you just ached for some smart aleck to provide you with the leanest excuse for pulling out your iron and sending some flaming paper flying his way with a boom that could set dogs barking for several streets around. Lacking some unsuspecting kid toodling about the neighborhood waiting for us to shoot him, we staged gunfights while we stood on opposite sides of the road as cars approached. Once we got chased by some busybody driver who had an overdeveloped sense of community service or something.

We also took some gunpowder, painstakingly acquired by the method described above, and grew a pile on a piece of wax paper about three or four inches square, put a bolt or a marble over the pile, and then twisted the wax paper into a teardrop shape. These made highly satisfactory bombs for throwing. The intensity of the explosion was, of course, directly proportional to the amount of gunpowder used and the weight of the bolt or size of the marble employed.

I remember when Glen and I were out somewhere and saw a girl we both knew. Peacefully, casually, almost aimlessly, she was riding her bike. Our eyes bulged at the providential opportunity that had been afforded us. We hastily dug into our pockets as we both yelled her name: “Hey, Cindy!” Forty feet away, she stopped her bike and turned toward us, an innocent and unsuspecting smile spread across her countenance, as we hurled two or three bombs apiece. One or two seconds passed—that sweetly delicious but all-too-brief span of time in which you know that an unforgettable, thrilling moment is about to precipitate, while your oblivious and naïve victim hangs suspended in time, puzzling just what it is that she has done to earn the wide but somewhat lopsided grins on your faces—and then small clouds of gray smoke erupted from the ground on all sides of the girl, micro-seconds apart, accompanied by dearly satisfying eardrum-shattering detonations. Cindy’s eyes opened wide and popped out like hard-boiled eggs as if she’d been hit hard in the back. Panic-stricken, the unfortunate lass dropped her bike and fled.

It is a miracle that neither we nor our victims were crippled, defingered, disfigured, or blinded, or that none of us now has wattled epidermis, the lasting result of hundreds of inextricable microscopic shards of marble glass that had sprayed into our adolescent bodies. Considering the idiotic chances we took with these homemade explosives, I now consider my good health and complete anatomy as strong evidence that God loves me.

Once, however, as I was cramming a wad of paper into a “shootin’ shell” with a large nail, the explosive detonated. Glen and I, sitting at his dining room table, looked around for the nail until I found it firmly driven about half an inch into the end of my left index finger. Just as we saw it and started laughing, his mother’s voice wafted from the back of the house: “You boys be careful out there!”

“We will,” responded Glen with a smirk.

NOTE: The author of this blog disavows any responsibility if some idiot reads this material and then tries to duplicate or excel the lunacy herein described. Don’t try this at home or anywhere else. It’s stupid. I used to be crazy and foolhardy, but I’m smart now and usually know better. “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Deuteronomy 6:16, quoted by Jesus himself in Matthew 4:7).

The "Mountaintop Experience"

2008-11-29T13:01:00.000-08:00

A day or two ago my son climbed to the top of Island Peak in Nepal. Its summit is at 20,300 feet. The mountain is only two or three peaks away from Mount Everest. In the past few years my son has also climbed to the summit of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Aconcagua in Argentina, Elbrus in Russia, peaks in Ecuador, and throughout the sierras from Washington State to California.

This photo shows him a few feet from the summit of Island Peak.

How often in my teen years a good friend and I set out to explore the mountains to the north of us. The youthful desire to discover, find adventure, break away from adult constrictions, and stake a claim on independence pressed us to go beyond the asphalt streets and manicured lawns into wild territory. “Wild” territory was just following a stream that somehow managed to survive the shackles of neighborhoods and shopping centers.

I noticed one day about 1964 that this stream flowed along its gentle course adjacent to my high school, that it came from the north, and that to the north was a ridge of mountains. I reasoned that the stream must have a source somewhere within a few miles of us, and I suggested to my friend that he and I follow the stream until we found the spring that brought its waters to the surface.

For a number of Saturdays we hiked alongside that stream, passing through neighborhoods we’d never otherwise have known, cutting through fields, passing underneath rows of eucalyptus, and eventually coming into the foothills. When we got far enough away, we had to depend on our mothers to drive us to the place where we’d left off the previous Saturday afternoon, and pick us up eight hours later.

As we had feared that we might, once we entered the mountains we came to places we couldn’t get through on foot—steep slopes with Gordian tangles of briars and the like. We had to go around and then guess where the stream, ever narrowing, picked up. I’m pretty sure we did find its source—somewhere on a slope. The stream burbled down the incline into a narrow dell, turned to follow the decline, and went off to the points south where we’d come from. And it was obvious that the water had to emerge from the mountain at some place veiled in the briars. We considered our quest achieved.

By that time, though, finding the spring was only one reason we were hiking; we’d found so many hidden, rural places that our pleasure was not limited to completing our goal. We pressed on until we came to the peak of the mountain. There were four old pepper trees near the summit. Under their shade we ate our sack lunch and looked out over the valley in which dozens of incorporated little cities lay and a million people had their homes—including us. We returned to that small grove near a mountaintop several times over our teen years.

There is a theological reason why Moses met God on a mountaintop, why Jesus was transfigured on a mountain. Even the crucifixion took place on “Mount Calvary”. The term “mountaintop experience” refers to some sort of revelatory experience with God. Many people need at some time in their lives to be at the top of a mountain, whether it is low or lofty. The vision they are afforded must be literal as well as internal. Sometimes people need to see for miles and miles in all directions. Human minds and souls need remote horizons, not compaction.

Firestorms

2008-11-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

As I write, the Yorba Linda-Corona fire is burning a few miles to the east of me and the Brea fire is about three miles to the north. I didn’t see the signs of fire until about midday, when I noted a great brown and orange cloud to the east. I wondered how far away the fire was. It was obviously the kind of cloud that only a massive wildfire can produce. I’ve seen more than one of them in the years I have lived in Placentia.

At this time of year there are warm, dry winds that blow from the east, and much of the land is hard-packed and dry. What growth covers the hills is dry as well after a hot summer and before the rainy season begins. This part of California sees fires often in late autumn. Sometimes they are set, but a chance spark can also ignite them. I think this is the third season of firestorms in five years, but never have they been so close to me. It is the first time I have felt personally anxious about such a fire.

Within two hours of the time I first noted the cloud to the east, the entire sky was dark as dusk. Smoke filled the air and the only place I could see sky was far toward the western horizon. The sun was dull and surrounded by a red halo. Ash drifted downward like a light gray snowfall, and the smell of massive burning was overpowering. By late afternoon the wind died down and much of the smoke had dissipated, but now it is rising again. The winds are not expected to blow out until late tomorrow afternoon. A lot can happen in that time but most likely the church will be safe. Thousands of homes will have to burn before the church goes up, and that’s not likely to happen.

By early evening I had identified and called every member of the parish I could think of whose home might be in danger—about twenty families. I probably overlooked some since I’m not sure where their address is located. Fortunately nearly half of those I called reported that they were safe and not likely to be threatened. Four others were safe for the moment but one or other of the fires was near. There were eight who were either preparing to evacuate or whom I couldn’t reach. In two or three cases a recording picked up that said that “technical difficulties” prevented my call from going through. I suspect that some of those whose phones did not pick up had already left their homes, and it is probable that some will lose their homes to the wildfires. In fires like these, the heat is so intense that metal street signs melt.

Probably one or two families will be sleeping at the church tonight. There are other places they could go but they prefer the church. After I post this item I’ll go over to the church and see who’s there and if anyone needs anything. Tomorrow’s Masses are bound to be out of the ordinary. However, as always, I expect that Blessed Sacrament will be filled with loving people. Gotta go now.

Update, 2:00 p.m. on Monday, two days later:
I am astounded and grateful that of nearly two dozen families in the parish who were very close to the fire, many of whom had to evacuate, NOT ONE lost a home even though one home was right on the edge of the fire and another family's home was well within the red zone. The fire whipped through a canyon near their home but left it standing. They are already back in residence.

The Yorba Linda-Corona fire and the Brea fire did eventually meet to create one large swath of burning. A map of the fire's devastation as of midday Monday, November 17, can be found here. My home and the church are located a little bit above the "n" in Placentia.

Right now the skies are clear and blue, a light breeze is blowing, and it is pleasantly warm outside. It's a beautiful fall day in southern California. Though a couple of hundred homes, some schools and businesses have been lost, most of our community has been spared.

The Faithful in Babylon

2008-11-05T23:31:00.000-08:00

In the age after David and Solomon, the kingdom divided. Israel lay to the north, and Judah was in the south with Jerusalem as its capital. Both kingdoms progressively apostatized. Injustice grew until it became commonplace and accepted. The Law was little observed or taught, and therefore eventually was forgotten. Exploitation of widows and orphans by the rich and powerful was widespread. As godly morality declined into depravity, and fidelity to God was cast aside for syncretism and eventual idolatrous abomination, the ministry of the great prophets arose to call the people to repentance.

Israel refused the call and was eventually wiped out. Judah likewise rejected the call and, seven centuries before the birth of the Messiah, was conquered by the armies of Babylon. The rightful king, 18-year-old Jehoiachin, was captured by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, deported, and held in captivity in a foreign land. Not long after, Jerusalem was destroyed, the Temple looted and burned, the nobility and well-educated taken to Babylon in chains, and the poor of the land left to fend for themselves. They suffered and died from hunger and disease. The prophets had threatened this fate to the nation that refused to heed the word of the LORD, and that word was fulfilled.

Question: in spite of the rampant disobedience to God for several generations before the disaster, were there not people in Judah who were faithful? Of course there were. There are many indications in the annals of the books of Kings that there were many faithful, though few were prominent. God himself told Elijah that there were “seven thousand” who had not worshiped Baal—7,000 is the symbolic number “seven” (which means a full, round, plentiful amount) multiplied by “a thousand” (which adds great emphasis to the number). Even in the days of worst apostasy, there remained uncounted faithful in Judah. Most were apparently neither influential nor in positions of prominence—but they were faithful. The apostasies and corruptions surrounded them but they resisted.

Second question: in the conquering of Judah, then, and the subsequent deportations to Babylon, was it not likely that there were many faithful among the exiles—people who did not deserve and had not earned the punishment enacted against the nation? Of course there were.

Is God unfair then, to punish the innocent along with the guilty? Of course not. What then is going on? The destruction and deportations are disaster to the guilty, for they lose everything they had clutched to themselves as of most value. To the innocent, it is a time of suffering, to be sure, but also a time of challenge, refinement, and even renewed vision. They, who had never put their hope in fame, wealth, influence, or intrigue had little to lose, then, when these things were swept away. They, who had preserved their hope in God, in exile found that hope deepened and even made more pointed.

In short, they who could not possibly have “won” the day in a land where all was corrupt and in which they were without influence or power, found themselves in a position where, of all their people, they alone knew hope and knew what hope meant, and therefore lived in hope. And to the exiles who were dragged from what they craved into foreign captivity, it was only to the faithful who retained hope that they could go in any repentance and renewal. It was only the faithful who had hope to show and to give to those who could finally want it! Eventually, at the age of 55, Jehoiachin was released from prison and through him the descendants of David continued in unbroken line to Joseph, husband of Mary.

For fifteen years or more, it has seemed likely to me that the current time of apostasy and all the ills of the misguided Episcopal Church provides an opportunity for the faithful to dig in, strive for continuing fidelity, and hold onto the seeds for the time when the soil shall be ready to receive them and produce a rich harvest. Only God satisfies. Nothing else can. Any genuine hunger for God will lead the searcher to him. People can only live on spiritual snow cones and M&Ms for so long. The real food is always waiting and offered. As the most recent statistics on the Episcopal Church show, membership continues to decline and the money continues to increase—a recipe for spiritual catastrophe.

In the first millennium before Christ the age of rampant disobedience and graspingness was also the age of the prophets. They went together. And the age of the exile was the age of rebuilding the faith on firm foundations. This is the theme of the Book of Daniel, unique in the Old Testament. It is this book that features the famed “handwriting on the wall”.

There are a number of ways today that the faithful of the Episcopal Church can fulfill their calling, and are doing so. Let us not stumble, nor grow tired, nor become discouraged. The handwriting is on the wall.