Witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses

Last week I took a few days off to read and write alone in the second home of a parishioner in the old gold rush town of Julian, California. On my second day there I was visited by two Jehovah’s Witnesses. As is their practice, one did the talking and the other was silent, learning by observation. The one who did the talking began by offering me a positive, encouraging selection from Scripture—in this case, a few verses from Psalm 37 about deliverance from sin. Naturally I agreed with it.

When the next step began about worshiping Jehovah-God, I jumped out of the “anticipated response mode” that Jehovah’s Witnesses are trained to use, and said that I knew something about their religion and that it was about being saved by works rather than faith, but that I believe that one is saved by faith in Jesus. She agreed, but said that works were important. “Jesus said, ‘faith without works is dead.’” After I corrected her that it was James who wrote that and not Jesus who said it, I said that indeed works are evidence of saving faith. She nodded.

I went on to say that my experience with Jehovah’s Witnesses (I used the term for the first time at that point) was that they prefer to argue with people rather than really present them with Good News. Coming to truth was not as important as arguing about what it is. She asked me for an example, and I pointed out their translation of John 1:1—“… and the word was a god” rather than “… and the Word was God.” She gave me a knowing smile, but before she could respond, I said, “You see, you use your own translation rather than any of the translations that are recognized throughout the world. Do you really think that you know better than the many millions of Christians who have translated and read the Bible for hundreds of years?” (Blast. I was entering the “argument” mode myself.)

She didn’t answer, but pulled out copies of Awake! and Watchtower, and asked me if I were familiar with them. I said that I was, and she asked what I thought of them. I responded that I didn’t like them—once again, because they emphasized salvation by works rather than faith, and especially that I knew that Jehovah’s Witnesses got “credit” for the number of stops they make and the number of tracts they distribute, but that I believed in a God who loves us and asks us for a trusting relationship in Jesus by which sins are forgiven, etc., etc. “It’s about a loving God, not a god who demands that you earn your salvation by going door-to-door.”

She then turned to the end of Matthew and read the Great Commission to support “going into all the world and preaching the Gospel to every creature, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” For a split second I was tempted to leap into argument about the Trinity, but instead I said, “You are right, and that’s what I’m doing right now.”

“You’re doing that to me?” she asked, aghast. I glanced at the silent partner and smiled. She wore what looked to me like a tense expression.

“Yes, indeed! I want you to know about the true love of God that comes as a gift to you by faith, so that you will know that you don’t have to earn it.”

She replaced her copies of Awake! and Watchtower into the bag she was carrying and put her Bible on top of them, told me that she hoped that I would have a nice day, and she and her partner left.

I did have a nice day, mostly, but I was a little disturbed at how I’d handled the encounter. Of course, as usually happens after the opportunity has passed, I thought of better things I could have said, but mostly I entrusted the two women to God to do for them whatever he wanted, through the encounter that we had had. After all, if I thought too much about how I could have done “better”, it might have meant falling into the trap of depending too much upon “works” rather than the grace of God.

The Anglican Communion and the Ordination of Women

Recently I did some research on the Anglican Communion. The number 70,000,000 has been widely used for years as an estimate of its worldwide membership. I wanted to find out for myself some of the particulars of each of the 38 provinces, including where they stand on the ordination of women. What I discovered was surprising to me, although I will readily concede that I’m wrong if someone can provide me with better information.

A year ago, when I began my research, I went to the website of every Anglican province that has one, and added the membership figures. These websites showed that membership in the Anglican Communion stood at approximately 60,000,000 although there are seven provinces, all in the Third World, whose membership numbers are not available. Some of these are almost certainly quite small, but two or three may number in the low millions; an optimistic estimate might bring worldwide membership to something approaching the oft-quoted 70,000,000.

However, this number assumes that the Church of England has 25,000,000 members. I have read several independent reports that realistic estimates indicate that active membership may actually be about 2,000,000. If this is so, a more reasonable estimate of the membership of the Anglican Communion is closer to the low forty millions.

I learned that the largest province is Nigeria, with 15,000,000 or more. Africa overall has approximately 23, 000,000 Anglicans. Mexico and Central and South America have approximately 1,000,000 Anglicans. The South Pacific has approximately 500,000 Anglicans. Asia and the Middle East have about 1,500,000 Anglicans apart from the rich Asian provinces of Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea, which have only about 90,400 Anglicans altogether.

The rich western provinces have a little more than 10,000,000 Anglicans unless one wishes to count the 23,000,000 inactive members of the Church of England—which I don’t.

The Ordination of Women

For the following statistics, I will assume that membership in the Church of England is the active 2,000,000 rather than the 25,000,000 that is reported. If that is so, then about 72% of the world’s Anglicans live in the Third World, and only 18% live in rich “First World” nations.

Five provinces, comprising 43.1% of the total, do not ordain women at all; four other provinces, comprising only a small percentage (in two of the provinces the Anglican membership is unavailable), ordain women only to the diaconate; ten more provinces, with nearly 11,840,000 members comprising about 32% of the Anglican Communion, ordain women to the diaconate and priesthood; nine other provinces comprising 11.9% of the total permit women to be ordained as bishops but as yet have not done so; only three provinces (the United States, Canada, and New Zealand), comprising about 9.7% of the total, have ordained women bishops. Australia has just elected its first female bishop, and I expect that she will be ordained soon. In two other provinces and a number of extra-provincial territories the status of women’s ordination is unknown.

In summary, a little more than 43% of the Anglican Communion does not ordain women to sacerdotal orders; 32% ordain women only to the priesthood; 22.5% permit ordination of women as bishops; and the status of women’s ordination in about 2.5% of the Anglican Communion is unknown.

Plowing the Sea

“Can one plow the sea with oxen?” (Amos 6:12) This is the prophet’s image for misguided people thinking they are okay when in fact, having departed from the way of God, they are trying to do something that is both impossible and foolish.

A few days ago I went into a tobacconist’s shop. For many years, I have considered smoking to be one of the two greatest evil causes of death in the world. (The other is abortion.) If the figures I have heard are accurate, tobacco has caused more misery in the form of grotesque tumors, lingering illnesses with prolonged suffering, and more widespread death and grief than any war.

Yet, I must admit, there is a mystique about smoking. The scratch of a match, the aroma of a butane lighter, tamping aromatic tobacco into the bowl of a pipe, wreaths of smoke can be strangely seductive. Sherlock Holmes, hobbits and wizards, and Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver’s dad (I think) all smoke pipes. Gandalf even blows smoke rings. While I was in the tobacconist’s shop I almost toyed for an instant with the idea of buying a cigar just for the fun of blowing smoke rings. Forty years ago I did it a few times for the mystique, but I didn’t like the awful aftertaste, headaches, ruination of my taste buds, and stale repulsive odor in my clothes.

The reality is that even a little smoking is unpleasant, malodorous, and makes you sick. There is nothing redeeming whatever about it. As long ago as the 1950s when I was a child, cigarettes were sometimes called “coffin nails”. The Surgeon General’s Reports that began to come out as a result of many studies only revealed what was already commonly known and widely believed. The reports just gave us more information about it, and showed that what we all knew was even worse than we had believed.

So I always shake my head in wonder whenever I see anyone smoking today, especially a young person. It isn’t cool, fun, or impressive. It’s a sign of empty-headedness.

Like heresy. It’s not just wrong. It’s not just cruel. It’s a sign of empty-headedness. Whenever one goes off the beam of authentic, adventuresome, exciting, evangelical, Catholic Christianity, and holds to that wayward course, disaster eventually results. When it is nearly the entire leadership of a Church and a lot of followers of “where the power is”, the disaster becomes extensive. But it isn’t permanent, though much damage is done to many souls during the time of apostasy. (See this old post of mine on the subject.)

And so it is today in the pseudo Episcopal Church. The spiritual warfare that has been eating the Church from within for decades is becoming more identifiable for what it is. Under its current leadership, the most public assistant is a lawyer. We haven’t heard much about “inclusivity” lately, I think. The principle of “inclusivity”, which for the past thirty years or more has been the banner on the flagship of the juggernaut to falsehood, has been abandoned. The lust for power seeks now, openly and boldly, to root out the opposition and, like a spider, reaches out clutching limbs in a widening circle, grasping after control. Those who believe that they are in power enforce the canons to the slightest jot and tittle in order to inhibit and depose faithful priests and bishops; they encourage lawsuits, crush charitable relationships between people of differing convictions, and contemptuously brush away appeals from all other authorities—and often do so with disregard for canonical and due process, and scorn for anyone who points out that they are doing so.

But they are not in power. They are plowing the sea. Both impossible and foolish. Doesn’t history show repeatedly that those who clutch for power always lose? Like smoking, there is a mystique in power, and the adulating fans of the higher leadership of the Episcopal Church want to reach out and touch it. But in the long run, it is not power but perseverance in the faith, not fans but faithfulness to Jesus, not plowing the sea but planting the seed that get results. It has always, always been so. Heretics, hypocrites, and heavies are empty-headed—as foolish as those who take up smoking. Plowers of the sea.

They are not in power—they only think they are. The Church is God’s, not theirs. Their time will come.

Wounds That Don't Heal

Isn’t it curious that the risen, glorified body of Jesus retained the wounds of his crucifixion? “Jesus spoke to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand. Put it into my side’” (John 20:27). For that matter, how did Thomas know before he believed in the risen Jesus that the wounds of Jesus remained in the Body that the other disciples claimed had been resurrected? “Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands …” (John 20:25). Maybe the others told him about them.

There is glory in the wounds of Jesus. The last book of the Bible makes that clear: The One who has triumphed is described as the “Lion of the tribe of Judah”, but is presented as “a Lamb that seemed to have been sacrificed” (Revelation 5:5-6). But why? The wounds of Jesus on his hands (almost certainly wrists), feet, side, and brow were imposed during the time he was mocked and then crucified. The five red wax nails in the Paschal candle represent these wounds, pressed into the heart of this central Easter symbol. By the shedding of Jesus’ blood, the world was remade—hence, the glory of the wounds. (I have reflected on this profound mystical reality on this blog before, such as here.)

What, then, of our own wounds that don’t heal? There are some hurts that are “life wounds”. They don’t heal. Ever.

Shortly after I became Rector of Blessed Sacrament, a family in the parish suffered a great grief. A five-year-old boy had come home sick from kindergarten. The next morning his parents woke up and found that he had died during the night. The boy’s name was Thomas, and he died on December 21, St. Thomas’ Day. Every St. Thomas’ Day after that, his father attended the Mass until he retired and moved away. He told me once, probably twenty years after his son had died, “It doesn’t hurt any more,” but I am sure that it did. How could it not?

Some wounds are “life wounds”. They don’t heal. Oh, one learns to get by day after day, and the immediate shock subsides, but the hurt remains like an interior stigmata, always bleeding and never healing. Wounds that children receive in abusive families. Even the very best of families can inflict “life wounds” on children. Betrayals by friends, spouses, and others whom we trust. Tragic losses like house fires that destroy heirlooms, permanent debilitating injuries, and so forth wound us in ways that never heal. One learns to get by day after day, but the hurt remains.

How can our “life wounds” become, like the wounds of Jesus, avenues of glory? The easy, and probably correct, answer, is that those with “life wounds” are to take them to Jesus. Easy to say, hard to do. What does it mean to “take them to Jesus”? Well, sometimes I think it means not having the pain removed or healed, but learning to accept it as a burden by which we, and often others, are shaped more into a Christ-like mold than we are now. Discipleship must include some unwelcome facets.

When I was very small and attending Sunday School at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, I remember in the children’s chapel a very large black and white photograph of a man dressed to look like Jesus, standing on a rock and carrying a lamb on his shoulder. Jesus is our Savior, the One who “calls his own by name”, the Good Shepherd. A great image for a child.

But Jesus is also the One who said that his followers must take up a cross. He said that his yoke was easy and his burden light, and that those who labored and were heavily burdened were to come to him. Still, however you look at it, discipleship does include wearing a yoke and carrying a cross. That must mean that sometimes discipleship will be hard. We are to die with Christ so that we may be raised to the new life. Death comes first. Resurrection requires that death come first—otherwise, it is merely healing and not resurrection.

The longer we live the more “life wounds” we get. I suspect, faith being my support, that such woundedness is for this life only, and that in the next the wounds we have carried faithfully and patiently—or at least learned eventually to be patient with—will be marks of glory. They serve a purpose. Now and then I can even feel it in this life, like seeing a light through gauze. Maybe the mystery of unresolved pain is to compel us to put our trust more and more in the only One who will never be cruel to us, betray us, or abandon us—ever. And who promises that the “tears of every eye” will be wiped away (Revelation 21:4).

Ballroom Dancing Teaches a Godly Truth

Last summer my wife and I began to learn ballroom dancing. To my surprise, I learned that ballroom dancing is hard work! Being used to the individual practices of gymnastics and martial arts (both of which I have done for many years), learning to work with a partner in every technique was a challenge. Both of us had to learn together and be patient with one another. It took me a few months to learn that most of the mistakes my wife made were my fault.

In partner dancing, the man leads and the woman responds. The woman needs to be ready for a number of possible moves, and be able to respond to her partner’s leading in an instant. The man, however, knows what he wants to do, and is responsible for communicating his lead effectively without words, i.e. with body movement. If he doesn’t lead well, his partner doesn’t know what to do.

The man doesn’t lead by pulling his partner’s arm or pushing her in the direction he wants her to go. He might think that that would be easy, but it doesn’t work and the woman doesn’t like it. Women don’t want to be pulled or pushed; they want to be “led” to the move so that the couple may flow as one. The man leads, rather, with his whole body, and must communicate gently but clearly by how he moves. When it is well done, it is exhilarating for both the man and the woman; they are constantly communicating without words, and moving in a rhythmic partnership to music in give-and-take patterns as a couple that neither can achieve alone.

One day, one of the female instructors (in an apparent attempt to transcend perceived cultural sexism) declared, “Most people call it ‘leading’ and ‘following’, but I prefer to call it ‘inviting’ and ‘responding’. The man ‘invites’, and the woman may choose to ‘respond’ or not; maybe she will want to do something else.” Well it seemed to me, beginner that I was, that if the woman does “something else”, it wouldn’t be dancing.

Apparently the women in the class felt the same way as I did, since one of them said firmly, “But we want them to lead!” And the others nodded. “Leading” and “following” is what creates dancing. One is not superior or inferior to the other. Each is unique, different from the other, making a complement so that a single unit is created in the dance. Change things from what has been done for hundreds of years, and all at once you’ve got competition between individuals rather than a partnership, and you don’t have a dance any more.

Both the man and the woman know the dance and the possible moves. She needs to know clearly what he wants her to do, so the man must lead, being single minded and setting the direction. The woman, usually able to “multi-task” better than her partner and therefore move almost instantly in the direction he sets out of a number of possibilities, follows to create the flow of the partnership. Unclear leading muddles the entire dance.

For a time our instructor was a woman. In order to show me how to lead effectively, sometimes she would “back lead” me—that is, as I danced with her and tried to lead, when I was unclear she would lead me in the leading I ought to have done so that I would learn how to do it. But it was not a reversal of roles—it was the instructor teaching the student. She did not abdicate her role as “follower” to my “leading”, but rather showed me how to do my part (“lead”) better so that she could do her part (“follow”) better. It was partnership without inequality.

Now our instructor is a man—a very skilled and gifted young man named William. In this video on youtube he talks about “leading” and “following”. As William says, leading and following have a lot to do with trust.

I am sure that there is a great, Biblical truth here that our culture needs to learn and many of our churches need to relearn. “God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Men and women were created by God to be different from and complementary to each other. When we understand this, relationships can go far toward being respectful, joyful, and fulfilling. Forget this, and we get… well, a lot of what we see in our world today. Much of the grief so many people suffer in relationships, perhaps, is brought about because many men have abdicated their place in relationships with women and families. Dancing is one way that the believer can see how God intended things to be.

At least so it seems to me.

Imagine That

This blog’s new direction
It’s been a month less a day since I last posted on this blog. During that time I have pondered how best to use this blog, or what new direction would be best for it. Having done so, I think I’d like to use it as a forum for reflecting on the Christian spiritual life. Writing on suitable topics will help me to sort through my own commitment to Jesus, and maybe help someone else who might read what I post. This blog already contains a good number of posts with that purpose and, although they were the most difficult to write, I think that it was worth the effort. So below I will put up the first post with this old/new direction. I have others already planned.

The Inner Longing
Two or three times a year, a friend of mine sends me a series of beautiful photographs of hidden places on the earth. They affect me profoundly, for they are able to reach deeply into my heart’s deep longing.

Whenever people want to have an experience of God, many leave the city and go into the desert, forest, mountains, or other “hidden place” on the earth. In such places, somehow, God seems more accessible. Probably that is because in such circumstances we set aside many of the artificial defenses we have against his presence and activity. The “inner longing” for God that is in the heart of human nature is given proper attention and can emerge.

It’s risky to do so, of course, because the longing can never be fulfilled in this life. We know that to experience genuine longing for God, then, is to experience a measure of grief, of wanting something that is outside the world, something that is inaccessible, something we can never fully have in this life. Because this is so, one’s longing for God will always have a measure of painful unsatisfaction in it. And the greater the longing, the greater the lack of satisfaction. However, the pain of unfulfilled longing for what is radically true and the only source of complete joy, is itself a kind of holy pleasure.

Of all the photos this individual has sent me, this is the one that I would keep if I were told that I could have only one.

This photo puts the viewer clearly into a place where he is a stranger and yet also has right of entry, even passage. There is a road, but it is a way through something. It does not show its end. The trees are tall and classic, giving the viewer a feeling that they have existed long before he came upon the scene. The trees don’t “need” anyone—certainly not the viewer; nor are they at risk because of his presence. There is darkness among the trees, indicative of enormous mystery far beyond what the road shows. Yet there is also bright green, indicative of new life, beauty, growth, and even welcome. Sunlight comes into this place. The darkness and the sunlight are not at odds. There is peace here.

I don’t know who took the photo so can’t give credit, and I don’t know where it was taken —which is probably good because if I knew, probably a whole lot of others would know too, and many would go to the place and then it would become spoiled. This is a place of the imagination, not a place that a GPS could lead you to.

As a reader of many books, appreciator of much music, and gazer at a lot of art, I know that it is absolutely essential that the connoisseur of books, music, and art have a good imagination. It is imagination that ultimately makes use of what the senses receive. One’s imagination, I think, is one of the human attributes by which we love and long for the beloved. Without it, or when it is misused, no amount of beautiful or profound stimulation can have much of an effect.

Nearly two years ago, someone wrote to me and asked, “I was wondering what your thoughts were about the use of the imagination in the Christian life. I am extremely resistant to using my imagination in this context. I’m not sure how to explain it exactly but it seems that I have a great fear of “making up” my experiences with God and it’s as if I expect God to reveal Himself to me entirely independent of myself. I think I have a fairly powerful imagination and I am afraid of “pretending” to experience God and “imagining” that God is comforting me or guiding me, etc. when in reality it’s all in my own head. I realized that this resistance may actually be hindering me from experiencing God in more full and powerful ways - I can see how it affects me in prayer, worship, etc., but I don’t know how to trust that what I think of in my head is truly of God or if it is simply my imagination. What do you think?”

This was my answer:
Imagination is part of what it is to be human. Imagination, therefore, has an important, even vital, place in how human beings relate to God. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” No part of us is left out. We worship God with our bodies, minds, emotions, and everything we’ve got—including imagination. The question is discovering what the right place of imagination is. You are right to guard against taking false experiences as true, but I think that you have gone too far in that direction.

A safe course is to realize that God will use your imagination to provide what imagination does in other places in your life, e.g. entertain, add an emotional sense of security or assurance, fill out or enrich the “bare bones” of an experience, etc. Whenever you read fiction or see a movie, the medium can only provide so much; your imagination must do its part or you are not really engaged in the experience. Whenever you see a movie, your imagination must add the third dimension (depth), scents, etc. Whenever you read fiction, your imagination must add sounds, etc. Your imagination, then, is an essential part of receiving the message in the book or movie.

God works in the same way. He made our imagination and intends it to be used. Read Scripture and other holy books, go through the liturgy, etc., and allow your imagination to put yourself into the situation along with your mind. (When I preach, I try deliberately, intentionally to draw emotion from the hearers or engage their imagination in order to add depth to the message, especially if the topic or passage of Scripture is something they are already familiar with.)

So far, I hope, so good. This tells you that imagination should have its place in your devotions and your overall relationship with God. But how do you guard against error? That’s the other part of your question. There are several dependable guardrails.

Any experience you have of God that is dependent mostly on your imagination must be consistent with Scripture and the tradition of the Church, i.e. the common experience of the faithful throughout the ages. If your imagination takes you off the mark of your relationship with God, it is at least suspect. If you feel suspicion, it is a sign that there are correctives within you to what imagination might do. Imagination never acts alone.

There are guardrails on certain mountain roads because there is need for them, and occasionally people scrape them. Applying this analogy to your relationship with God, this means that you don’t need to worry too much about “getting it wrong” or “pretending”. If you do make a mistake, in most cases a good response should be “so what”? Give God credit for caring enough about you to bring you back on the beam. Scraping the guardrail is not the same thing as flying off the cliff. You’re not always going to get it right all the time. That’s kind of why those bumpy things define the lanes on the freeway. If you drift too much to one side they rattle your tires and you jerk the wheel back to the center.

Besides, suppose you use your imagination in your devotions and have very warm and comforting experience of God, and he feels really close. Is it “only your imagination” or is it God using your imagination to produce those feelings? And how are you going to know the difference for sure??? And is it really important to know? If you conclude, or fear, that something good is “only your imagination”, then what you’re saying is that God is not really close to you and you’re only providing a “wish fulfillment” experience for yourself. To put it another way, you’re looking at yourself and not God. Another side of your doubt is that you might be uncertain about whether you are truly, unconditionally loved—by God or others. (This is extremely common, by the way—probably universal! The condition just manifests itself differently with different people.)

If you really believe that God loves you (at least intellectually), then whether it is “only your imagination” or God using your imagination to produce those feelings is really beside the point. It is a true experience. In other words, you can’t ever tell for sure whether it’s “self delusion” or truly from God because both experiences are identical! Therefore take it, safely, as being from God. The only alternative is that he’s not there and is indifferent to you. I, for one, don’t believe that!

Pulling your imagination back for fear of being uncertain about your “good experiences” with God is itself one of those bumpy things in the spiritual road, but it is telling you to use your imagination more, not less. Without using your imagination, or at least keeping it in tight check, might mean that your devotional life can be pretty dry or mostly intellectual. Another word for that state might be “boring”. A healthy, mature relationship with God should rarely be dry or boring. (I am not contradicting the “dark night of the soul”—even the “dark night” has joy in it.) The fact that you are asking about the use of imagination might mean that you are ready to engage your imagination more in your devotions.

Above all, depend upon God. As you want to move closer to him, he won’t abandon you or let you fall.

As I gaze at the photograph of the simple path through a dark forest of tall trees, I am drawn quickly and easily out of myself with my fears and pains and hesitations and insecurities, and far along the desire for God. I do occasionally wonder where its reality is to be found. But not too much. In a way, I already know where it is in its most important place—in my imagination, that which reaches out to such a place and painfully, joyfully embraces it, knowing it to be truly the threshold of God.

Saul in Tarsus

I’ve been back from sabbatical for over six weeks, and it does seem as if things at the church are pretty much back to normal now. But I myself have changed—especially since the three-week intensive retreat. In fact, I am pretty sure that I have changed a lot. Identifying what those changes are, how they are emerging, and how they are being put into practice is a process, i.e. it is happening over time. In many ways, it is pretty uncomfortable, because if I have changed, my relationships have changed. Not everyone wants to recognize the changes or even hear about what I learned when I was away. I hadn’t really anticipated that.

In the past year there has been more upheaval in my life, parish, and the wider Church than at any other time. And nearly all the upheaval so far has just brought ambiguity and irresolution. Nothing much has been “solved” or come to closure. Although this is uncomfortable, it is not bad by any means. I see it as a necessary transition time in which God is working.

Shortly after I returned home the house was recarpeted. That meant that just about everything in the place had to be taken out and then put back in. It was a ton 0f work and there are many details of reorganizing still to be sorted out, even a month later. The recarpeting was a super symbol for returning from the three-week retreat. It’s the same house, of course, and it is definitely recognizable for what it is—but the interior is both the same and also very much different. There is still a lot of stuff in the garage that needs to be unpacked. Some will be put in a place other than where it was before, some will go into storage, and some will be given away.

So today I mused on the time when Paul went to Tarsus after his conversion in Damascus. Setting apart his own somewhat different story (in Galatians 1:15-24) of the post-conversion events, I looked at Acts 9:1-30, especially the last five verses. Saul had gone to Damascus “breathing threats” against the Christian believers, got converted, and then began to preach what he had just tried to destroy. That raised murderous ire in some folks. Then he went to Jerusalem to try to join the other disciples but they were initially distrustful of him. Once again his preaching inspired a murderous response. So “the brothers … sent him off … to Tarsus” (Acts 9:30). He doesn’t appear again until Acts 11:25 when Barnabas sought him there and brought him back to Antioch to assist in the church. From there, after at least a year, began the missionary journeys and eventually the Pauline epistles.

Of course I had read this account many times, but only today did I ask, “What did Saul do in Tarsus?” We are told nothing about it. It is reasonable to expect that, at least in the beginning, it was a time in which he was pretty disconcerted. He was a highly trained rabbi with a powerful testimony. His effectiveness in Damascus was remarkable, his teaching even incontrovertible. When he came down to Jerusalem, he may well have expected that he would have been welcomed by the believers—which, eventually, he was. But this “highly trained rabbi” found himself subject to one-time fishermen who had been described as “uneducated laymen” (Acts 4:13)—not only that, but apparently he stirred things up enough in Jerusalem that the “uneducated laymen” sent him home to Tarsus. That couldn’t have been pleasant, nor would it have boosted his ego.

So I ask again, “What did Saul do in Tarsus?” What part did his stay there play in his later effectiveness? I expect that a time of tempering, including growth in humility, was vital to his Christian profession and subsequent preaching. Like many of the good things in life, time is essential for the ingredients of something to blend properly. Tea has to be steeped, wine has to be aged. I think spaghetti is better on the second day. Music played too fast becomes comic. Changes in life have to be assimilated and lived out.

I think that what I am going through now is learning to live with the ambiguity and irresolution that have so strikingly characterized the past twelve months. I very much doubt that it is a coincidence that so many important issues and events have been left open-ended—a state I have previously found to be prickly at best. At the very least, the irresolution means leaving the timing and details of things to God—and other people—as matters unroll. Patience. Humility. More listening and less talking. Putting familiar furniture back onto new carpet, etc.

Gradually things will get sorted out. Even the new direction this blog needs to go in is emerging. I doubt it’ll be too different from what it was before—like putting the furniture back into the house. But since the writer of the blog has been changed, what is written will be done a little differently.

To Everything There is a Season

This blog started up fourteen months ago, and I’ve posted an average of a little less than one entry per week. Now that my sabbatical has ended I have come to a place in which I note that the more I have reflected on personal and spiritual issues, the less I need to say. It seems good to me now to step back from blogging.

Since John One Five started up, my blogposts have been on several themes. One theme, and the one that got the most hits, was Being Orthodox in the Episcopal Church. Things are now moving quickly in this arena, and many people are writing and speaking about them. I’ve made my contributions to the exchanges, and I think that they were unusual and cogent—such as Jawbone of an Ass, Winner Take Nothing (one year ago today), and Martial Church. Now I believe that my place is to be silent for the time being. But let no one conclude that silence means indifference, acquiescence, or surrender.

I’ve also posted on the theme of Office and Person—what it means to be a priest and pastor but also a person. The posts I wrote on this theme took more time to compose than any others, and affected me—and a few other people—more than any other. The more I thought, reflected, and then wrote, the more complex the matter showed itself to be. Whatever the complexities, however, I have concluded that no matter what the nature of the relationships I may have with members of the parish—friend, sensei, supervisor, employer, spiritual director, etc.—the role of pastor will be and should always be uppermost. I must hold fast to that one in every case; any other relationships that there may be will always come first from pastoring and be subordinate to it.

I’ve posted on a number of topics regarding the Christian Spiritual Life, like personal evangelism, the importance of showing affection, hearing confessions, reconciliation, and devotion to the Virgin Mary. I’ve been generally pleased with these and wouldn’t change much about them, and hope that they have been helpful to others.

Finally, I’ve written about a number of Miscellaneous Personal Matters like the value of hobbies and the treasures of memories. These posts probably had little merit other than entertainment, if that. These have interested some readers and perhaps bored others, but they were fun to write.

On the sabbatical I went more deeply into my own heart and memories than I ever have before, and now words are not sufficient for what I feel called to do. Words in a blog, no matter how carefully thought through or prayed about, are no longer the best way to communicate as I wish to. I won’t close the blog down and will probably still post once in a while, but I think that John One Five has served its purpose. Or maybe it will take some time to rethink what direction it may be moving in.

“To everything there is a season. …There is a time for speaking and a time for keeping silent” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 7b).

The Golden Thread

I said I would report back later. Yesterday I returned from the three-week intensive retreat called Journey. It’s a program offered by Dr. Bryan Van Dragt in Gig Harbor, Washington. Bryan is a remarkably gifted and skilled Christian psychologist/spiritual director.

I have been on a lot of retreats, but never anything like this. The retreatant is to have no distractions—no internet, no telephone calls, not even books (except the Bible). “Boredom is your friend,” said Bryan early in our time together. You just have to trust that that is so, and discover what emerges in the empty hours.

The retreatant meets with Bryan very early in the morning Monday through Friday for a double appointment, and then returns home to the cabin that is provided for the duration. Bryan gives you a topic for that day’s reflection, very generally, in a very few sentences. For the rest of the day, apart from meal preparation and other necessary labors, there is nothing but silence and a journal. I filled 194 pages with handwritten notes—probably more than 30,000 words.

The cabin is located on Fox Island in Puget Sound. Here is a photograph taken from a fishing pier at the east end of the island, looking south.

Although there are many residences in the area, most of them are surrounded by old growth forest. Many homes cannot even be seen until you are right upon them. Here is a photograph of the cabin from one of the nearby streets.

Journey is not intended to be a restful retreat, but an encounter with God in the depths of oneself. I found it very hard at the beginning but the rewards began to come within a few days. Toward the end of the first week, I began to do almost nothing but go through all the memories I could possibly bring up from the first two dozen years of my life. Doing this at age 59 was, well, amazing. After a few days, a life without distractions had become almost second nature, and my reflections continued without ceasing, even during meal preparation, taking a shower, or during walks. A great peace settled into me that remained until the end. Then I was ready and eager to come home.

I was greatly blessed by the experience. It was astonishing how many of the great mysteries of my life were solved. Patterns, feelings, habits, attitudes, fears, interests, and joys that have marked my life for decades, whose origin I never knew or understood, became clear and fit together into a whole fabric. I might even say that I have no major questions left, and have come back very much changed.

Sometime early in the retreat, as I drove back to the cabin (eight miles from the office), there was early morning fog through which the newly-risen sun was shining with spectacular beams. I took several photos; this one seems to be the best of the lot. If there is a single photo that could capture what Journey was like for me, it would be this one.

One foremost theme that came through my reflections, the journaling, and the appointments is that there has never, ever been a time when I wasn’t aware of God’s presence and guidance, from my very earliest memories up until now, even in the darkest and most painful of experiences. In my journal I called this “the golden thread”. In everything God’s timing has been flawless, even in dreadful reversals and times of suffering. In periods of joy but also in every single dark, agonizing, or confusing period of my life, there was always the “golden thread” for me to follow, which I knew was the sureness of God’s presence. Bryan said that if he could give one gift to everyone, it would be that.

It will take some time, of course, to assimilate the changes, and maybe to show them. I have one more week or so to ease back into normal life, and to reflect on the experience. I will be back at church on Sunday, November 18, and my sabbatical will be over.

Garden

In the early 1970s, when I was in seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia, there was a tiny shop in the downtown area called The Anglican Bookroom. It was run by an elderly couple, Albert and Florence Edge, long gone to their reward. They were simple and devout people. Their shop, also long gone, had many inexpensive treasures in it. I was greatly blessed by Mr. and Mrs. Edge and by several valued items I bought from them and still own.

One of them was a small book called The Hidden Garden of Prayer. It was written for children, first published in 1931 and reprinted in 1953. It is an exquisite handbook for teaching prayer, both deep and simple, childlike and mature. The author was an English Cowley Father, Edward Sedding, S.S.J.E. (Society of Saint John the Evangelist). He delivered his captivating teaching through an account of the cultivation of an English garden—preparing the soil, putting down a border of rocks, weeding, setting out the flowers, and of course enjoying them. The book began with an account of unlocking an old wrought iron gate to get inside the garden. I have since found ten or so copies of this little book, and have given some away as gifts and retained some on my bookshelf.

Here is the cover.

Here are a few internal illustrations. Beautiful in themselves, they also match the tone of the book.

I mention this enchanting book because I have the feeling that during the next three weeks, I’ll be living it out somewhat as I go on to the next step in my sabbatical. About halfway through the sabbatical now, I have come to feel like a garden that is being weeded, dug up, turned over, maybe fertilized, and definitely prepared for some new planting.

On Saturday morning I’ll fly up to Gig Harbor, Washington to continue my sabbatical with a three-week intensive retreat called Journey. I will stay in a cabin on an island in the Sound, surrounded by trees. Once a day I will drive across a bridge to meet with a psychologist/spiritual director. The rest of the time will be spent without any distractions—no internet, no telephone calls, not even books. Nothing but silence and a journal.

Of course, there will be the necessary housework like preparing meals, cleaning up, doing laundry once in a while—but other than that, there will be only prayer and reflection. It’s okay to walk in the woods, but only if it is conducive to deep deliberation. This is not intended to be a restful retreat, but an encounter with God in the depths of oneself; there are to be no distractions—not even too much exercise. The prospect is simultaneously attractive and daunting.

Six or eight other members of the parish have already gone through this experience, usually reserved for those in the Spiritual Direction program at Biola University. With two or three others, they comprise my primary prayer support for Journey. As one of them said to me recently, “If you ain’t scared, you ain’t taking it seriously enough.”

I’ll report back later…

Mid-sabbatical Reflections

Two days ago this blog turned one year old. In that time I’ve put up 52 posts (counting this one) totaling over 61,000 words. Its readers—or at least browsers, since I’m not sure how many actually read this blog—have come from 63 countries, some of which I’ve never heard of. I have posted on several themes, such as what it’s like holding orthodox beliefs in the Episcopal Church, musing on issues connected with being a priest and pastor, essays on personal spirituality, theological reflections, and miscellaneous personal matters. Whenever I posted something that had to do with confronting the course of the Episcopal Church in its headlong flight into wherever its going, the number of hits shot up into the hundreds for a few days, and then dropped off again. Usually this blog muddles along with a couple of dozen hits a day, many of them the same few.

For most of the past month I’ve been out of state on matters connected with my sabbatical. The sabbatical was severely derailed last May when I entered hospital through the emergency room. That was followed by an unexpected consuming pastoral matter that took up a lot of time and energy. By midsummer I was back on track, and plans that had had to be put off from the spring were rescheduled for the fall. After ten weeks back in the parish, I restarted the sabbatical September 17 and won’t be back until mid-November. A number of amazing lay leaders and staff, three assisting priests, and seven vocationers to Holy Orders are keeping the parish running admirably.

CREDO II
September 17-24 I spend in Loranger, Louisiana at a CREDO II conference. This course for priests is offered through the auspices of the Church Pension Fund, with a strong emphasis on “clergy wellness”. This is an intense program with plenary sessions for presentations by experts, small groups, optional individual appointments, and time for personal reflection and writing. CREDO (Clergy Reflection Education Discernment Opportunity) addresses clergy issues in four major categories of personal and professional life. I attended the first CREDO in October 2001. Being naturally suspicious of programs offered by Episcopal officialdom, I had to be urged to go the first time. A good recommendation by a priest of noted traditional credentials convinced me to give it a try. It was very good. I went without reservations to CREDO II, which was more in-depth.

The conference was held at the Solomon Conference Center, a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. The center is located on a paw of land surrounded by a lake shaped like a horseshoe. One side of the property is thick forest through which there are several paths. I spent much time there.

In the abundance of material that was presented and in the overall experience, there were many worthwhile nuggets, and I am glad that I went.

NASHOTAH HOUSE SEMINARY
At the end of the program, I flew to Milwaukee. While in the air, I noticed that we were flying between two cloud layers. I'd never seen that before, so I snapped a photo with my cell phone.

Once in Milwaukee, I rented a car and drove 30 miles to Nashotah House Seminary, the Anglo-Catholic seminary of the Episcopal Church. I had been invited to conduct the fall retreat for the student body and faculty. It was supremely heartening to see that, after alarmingly lean times in the past twenty or thirty years, the seminary was now packed with students, most of them young, most of them holding traditional views. The community life is solid, built around the daily offices and the Mass. Here's the chapel:

It was a rich and complete delight to have frequent visits with Micah and Jenn Snell and three-year old Elisabeth. Micah is the farthest along of the ten vocations to Holy Orders that Blessed Sacrament is nurturing at present. Micah is in his final year at Nashotah House, and is scheduled for ordination to both diaconate and priesthood in 2008. The Snells and I had dinner together at least three times, and visited other times just to “hang out”. Standing out in my memory are watching the ballet “Swan Lake” on DVD with the spellbound Elisabeth, and sailing on Upper Nashotah Lake with Micah and Elisabeth on their own sailboat while Jenn enjoyed some time to herself. Here's a photo of Upper Nashotah Lake through the trees.

The retreat wasn’t scheduled to begin until a week after my arrival, so while I had the chance I spent a few days wandering around the seminary grounds, getting to know its routine and observing the students in community. The seminary was founded in 1842—just 66 years after the Declaration of Independence, in the days when people owned slaves and Wisconsin was the western frontier of the nation. The campus is spread out; the chapel is about a half mile from the married students’ housing where I was given a guest apartment. Making the round trip two or three times a day was good exercise. The cemetery is located directly across from the housing, and contains the mortal remains of several generations of Nashotah faculty, staff, graduates, and students, including Bishop Jackson Kemper and James Lloyd Breck.

One day I drove into Milwaukee where I had been asked to lunch by David Kalvelage, editor of “The Living Church”. I have written a number of articles and many devotions for the magazine during the past ten years or more. Mr. Kalvelage and I had corresponded during all that time but had not met in person until this occasion. The offices of “The Living Church” are located to the left in the gray building in this photo. The cathedral offices are on the right.

BLESSED SACRAMENT CHURCH, GREEN BAY
The weekend before the retreat was to begin I took three days to travel. I had brought CDs of four of the Chronicles of Narnia as dramatized by Focus on the Family. I had previously listened to the first three, and used the time of my driving now to complete the Chronicles. This is a magnificent production that I highly recommend.

I visited personal friends I had made through email contact, and concluded the journey with a stop at Blessed Sacrament Episcopal Church in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

That parish and my own are the only two churches out of about 7,000 in the Episcopal Church that bear that name. We have been informally connected for 26 years, but this is the first time I was able to be present on a Sunday. The Rector, Father John Cell, SSC, invited me to celebrate the second Mass on Sunday, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Father Cell has a true pastor’s heart, loves his ministry and his people, and is a gracious host. He’s been Rector for a little more than 25 years and hopes to stay as long as they’ll have him.

Here are the only two Rectors of Blessed Sacrament in the Episcopal Church:

THE RETREAT
I came back to Nashotah House and began the retreat on Monday evening, October 1. Over the next few days I delivered six addresses of 30-45 minutes each, heard a number of confessions, had a few appointments with students for spiritual direction, and finished up my official presence there by preaching at the matriculation Mass in the evening of October 4. It was a lot of work but extremely enjoyable.

The theme of the retreat was “Our God is a Consuming Fire”, with the six addresses dealing with matters of priestly life and spiritual leadership. I chose topics that can be learned best by experience and cannot be taught well, if at all, in an academic setting. My goal was to provide thought-provoking material for students who are called to the priesthood, and their families. The addresses were all recorded and will be available soon in MP3 format. They should all fit on one CD.

SPECIAL VISITS
The day after the retreat was finished, I packed up and drove four hours to Peoria for a two-day visit with George and Lettie S. and their charming 20-month-old daughter Orinthia, called “Rinn”. They had moved from Blessed Sacrament to Peoria a little more than a year earlier. While in Peoria, the See City of the Diocese of Quincy, Bishop Keith Ackerman, SSC, gave me two hours of his time on a Saturday morning. Micah Snell had previously described me as being one of Bishop Ackerman’s “five hundred closest friends”.

With George, Lettie, and Rinn I enjoyed two wonderful dinners out, a drive through the gorgeous tree-clad “grand view” area of Peoria with its mansions and view of the river, a visit to Jubilee where Bishop Philander Chase founded a school in the 1830s and in whose cemetery he is buried, and finished with Mass on Sunday afternoon at Zion Episcopal Church in Brimfield where I was permitted to preach.

A long drive to Chicago brought me that evening to Trinity Evangelical Seminary where Adam Johnson is a doctoral student. I stayed that night with him and his wife Kat and their two small boys, Reuben and Nathan. The Johnsons had moved from Blessed Sacrament more than two years before. Having to catch an early flight the next morning, I was up before light and drove to Milwaukee where I turned in my car and began the flight home.

The visits were not over, however, as Matt and Charity Anderson met me during my layover in St. Louis and kindly bought lunch for us all in the airport. Matt and Charity had moved away from Blessed Sacrament just six or eight weeks earlier.

By that evening I was home, arriving just as the red ball of sun lowered to the western horizon. I had been gone 22 days, the longest time I have ever been separated from my wife in over 36 years of marriage. It was a rich and rewarding time away, packed with many different kinds of ministry, but I am glad to be home again.

More on Reconciliation

I reflected on “Sin, Forgiveness, and Love” with two posts a few weeks ago (here and here). To my surprise, continued reflection revealed layers of even greater complexity that I had known well but that hadn’t come to my conscious mind before. So here is one more post. This one is on the nature of reconciliation between human beings.

I assume in this post that all parties are Christian believers. Reconciliation with an unbeliever can, of course, happen, and should, but it is done a little differently and I don’t intend to write about that.

By the command of Jesus, when we sin against someone or someone sins against us it is not enough just to seek our own healing. At some point we must be truly concerned about the other party as well. When we are, the measure of healing when it is achieved can often be multiplied beyond our best imagining, and we see the grace of God working powerfully.

Seeking forgiveness from God is comparatively easy. Even a sacramental confession, scary as it can be, has a dependable outcome. One can always trust God to love and forgive, and (in this life) we know that we don’t really have to face him directly. Seeking forgiveness from another person, however, immerses us in a thorny real-life application of what we claim to profess. This can be very risky because (1) we DO have to face someone directly and (2) there is no guarantee or assurance, as there is with God, of a “happy outcome”.

I must add quickly, though, that whenever I have sought reconciliation with another person, or another person has done so with me, it has invariably been an easy and rewarding experience. The only hard part is thinking about it first.

I think there are four main reasons why people may choose a course other than reconciliation whenever they have sinned against another person, or been sinned against: pain, fear, anger, and pride. All of these are very powerful and can influence even devout believers, causing a detour from the way that Jesus has commanded us to follow. They must be overcome before reconciliation can take place.

For example, this is how pride affects those who are sinned against: there can be a kind of sweet, contrary pleasure in being wronged, because it creates an illusion of power over another and produces a false sense of “rightness” in oneself at suffering an injustice: it is easy to think, “I am better than the person who wronged me.” I confess there are times that I have felt this masquerade pleasure and have given it up only reluctantly. When I did so, a genuine pleasure immediately followed.

Reconciliation does not, cannot, and should not mean that a relationship will go back to the way it was. The past can be redeemed, but not changed or treated as if it didn’t exist. “Forgive and forget” is a secular saying; it is not Christian. “Forgetting” is not part of genuine forgiveness. The saying becomes Christian when it means “forgive and then allow the sin no more power to continue a rupture in your relationship”—i.e., “forgive and let it go.”

Reconciliation can mean either rebuilding and strengthening a relationship or closure with a measure of peace. That is, in reconciliation a relationship that has been damaged by sin can be renewed with greater strength and power than would have been possible before, or it can come to a peaceful, if poignant, end with the assurance that there is no unfinished business.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are processes; they often take place over a span of time rather than in an instant. Sometimes the span of time needs to be long. One can ask for, or grant, forgiveness too soon. Doing so may mean that one wants an illusion of peace without allowing oneself or the other party an opportunity to do the necessary work. For forgiveness to be full, it must be freely, completely, and knowingly given. To ask for it, or grant it, too soon is not really to know it in its richness; it is to settle for an “easy fix”. Sometimes it can take fifteen or twenty or more years to ask for or grant forgiveness.

Sometimes time is needed just because one or both parties need to mature to the point where they are able to address the process of forgiveness and reconciliation sufficiently and properly. Adults who were abused as children, for example, need adult maturity to process and understand the issues involved before any forgiveness they offer can have full richness.

I remember being told of a woman who had been severely abused in childhood for years by her mother. Eventually the woman came into contact with a certain Episcopal Bishop (who told me the story himself). Through the Bishop’s ministrations the woman eventually chose to release the harm done to her by her mother and forgive her. As soon as she did so, her mother—who had long been estranged from her daughter and lived across the country from her—suddenly felt a great burden lifted from her. In the power of the abrupt lightening in her soul, she sought out her daughter and the two were movingly reconciled.

The one who asks for forgiveness may need a long time to prepare for the request, but the one who is asked to grant it may be taken by surprise and therefore be unprepared to do so. I have sought out people against whom I had sinned twenty years before, and others have sought me out after many years. In these cases asking for or granting forgiveness has invariably been a rich and exhilarating, liberating experience, but it took those years for both parties to be ready to do what needed to be done. A delay longer than necessary, however, can multiply hurt, sorrow, and damage more than necessary. It is always sin that is messy— forgiveness and reconciliation are just about always simple, deep, energizing, and powerful.

There was a time when I took a severely injured party to meet with the offender more than two decades after the offense, when even two therapists strongly counseled against it. The offended party, however, decided to follow my suggestion and as it turned out, there was gratifying reconciliation—not perfect or complete, by any means, but a good beginning that eventually involved others. The injured party decided to risk much for the possibility of much greater reward—and got it.

Sometimes it takes the immanence of death to bring about the right opportunity. I know personally of someone who had caused grief and sorrow to her family for many years. When she was dying, she hung on until her husband said, “I forgive you.” A tear fell and a peaceful death followed shortly afterwards.

In this blogpost I have not considered the effects of ancillary relationships that parties in a broken relationship have. They also heavily influence the course of sin, injury, forgiveness, and love. That is, whenever a bond between two people has been damaged by sin, all the other relationships both parties have, both past and present, influence the course of what happens next. “Family of origin” issues and the present counsel of friends and advisors all contribute either to further estrangement or reconciliation.

Even a brief glance at the personalities in “Romeo and Juliet”, just to pick a well-known example, shows the truth of this quite handily. And these observations are just the barest beginning of real-life complications that I have seen all too frequently, or been a party to. I will not take the time here to share my reflections on the complexities of these issues. It is beyond the scope of this blogpost to look further at this element in dealing with sin and forgiveness, but it is important to point out that, regardless of the influences other people have in our lives, ultimately each individual must decide personally what he or she is going to do about the estrangement that a sin has brought about, and only the individuals who are most affected by the sin have the power to tip the scales—friends and advisors do not have that much power unless we give it to them.

Over all, in the universe of glory and the boundless ocean of God’s love, is it not obvious that even the worst sins are like dust motes? What will the relationship be like in heaven between Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and the persecutor Paul who consented to his murder? It is inconceivable that there would be bad blood between them. Do we not see from this that any sin can be forgiven—not only by God but by the offended party as well? —that what is complicated on Earth becomes the easiest and most natural thing when we do things God’s way? Can we not see that the sole “unforgivable” sin—the “sin against the Holy Spirit”—is eternally refusing the unutterably consoling and life-giving love that God endlessly offers his people, of which forgiveness of sins and the reconciliation of sinners is an essential facet?