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| Out of Nowhere, by Lane Denson, Southern Sage and Jazz Musician |
Change
The liturgical calendar reminds us today that it's the anniversary of the first Book of Common Prayer and that it got started back in 1549. That was about a big change that people didn't much care for then any more than they do now.
Change is on everybody's mind these days. The presidential aspirants talk a lot about it, whose change is better, whose change is worse. Nothing seems to be spared. Talking about change usually creates some serious pastoral problems in the church. If there's anything we churchers get nervous about, it's change. When I think about it, a lot, if not most, of my energy over the past half century as an east Texas country preacher has been used up dealing with change.
First of all, there's the gospel we're supposed to be preaching. That's an ongoing problem that keeps rearing its head. It's not only about the big change as such, the one that conversion is about, but if the story about the widow's mite means anything at all, it's also about small change, the one the Every Member Canvass usually ends up being about. But every time I tried to say much of anything about the gospel as change without using carefully veiled terms, there'd inevitably be something come up at a vestry meeting in opposition to it. Like one of our members said once, they all act like a bunch of colonels trying to tell the general how to run the army.
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And then there are all the lesser changes down through the years. About the time I got out of seminary, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was coming along and folks were saying things like If the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for them. If that wasn't enough, here came the Seabury Series of Sunday School material with all its so-called maieutic midwifery talk about teachers and students. That really made people nervous to think it was going to be about telling little children where babies come from, and that it was not Chicago like they thought.
Then there was the National Council of Churches which some claimed was a communist front masquerading behind a Christian mask. Next there was Bishop James Pike, and people began to realize that Isaiah wasn't so nice after all. Then it suddenly began to dawn on people that Jesus probably loved all the races about the same, and we started integrating the schools and even the churches alongside. A reporter called me up one Saturday, said he was going to bring some black people to our eleven o'clock service the next day, and what was I going to do about it. I told him we'd usher them to a seat and give them each a pledge card. He said they'd go somewhere else, and they did.
Not long after, we got into ordaining women and changing the prayer book and the hymnal all in about the same time and opening up all kinds of ways of |
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getting the laity up front to lead the liturgy. One of our bishops got so incensed about it, he called it the creeping gangrene of participatory democracy.
Now it's sexual orientation. Trouble with that is that people think it's about sex when in fact it's not about sex at all. It's about orientation. And it's orientation that's always bothered churchers. When that gets out, we'll really have a problem, because orientation usually means change or at least paying attention to where you're headed and to what's going on. Now that's a real problem, especially when you've still got the 1928 prayer book memorized and are wondering when it's ever coming back.
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| Brian McHugh, Episcopal priest in California |
Deal With It
Drought burns basins to dust,
Light rain is a dew of mockery.
Receive without complaint,
Work with fate.
- Deng Ming-Dao (Taoist)
Deal with It – whatever “it” may be. That’s the point here.
I wonder if this is what people on the Christian path meant originally by “It’s God’s will”?? Now it seems to mean, “God has afflicted you”. But this is utter stupidity. Why would one be interested in a God who sits around deciding who has hangnails and who doesn’t?? I think it originally meant simply, This is what Life has brought; deal with it in an appropriate way. Do what is sensible in the situation. God provides the strength, the vision, the peace at the heart. As Deng says about “following the Tao”, One should simply ascertain what the situation requires and then implement what one thinks is best. As long as one's deeds are in accord with the time and one leaves no sloppy traces, then the action is correct. In other words, if there is a drought, don’t plant a water-hungry garden; a cactus will do. (Yes, this is a metaphor.)
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I think we have been taught to work against the givens of Life. Here’s something to think about: - if there is something wrong with us, we have been taught to pray to God to take it away, make it better. Most of the time, of course, God does not do either, which is why when it does happen, we shout “miracle”. Which is why I have long rejected God as the Fixer. The Cross seems to say, “I’m with you in this; we’ll find the way together”. This is more sound thinking.
The prostate cancer I have been diagnosed with I am taking as a reminder to deal sensibly with the issues of getting older, of embracing mortality, of developing a “lightness of being”. No point in wasting energy complaining or in frustration.
Live as fully as possible, and be with those who help.
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| Elizabeth Ayres, essayist in southern Maryland |
Musings in the Month of May
A knot is what it is, my heart, and when it needs untying, I walk in the woods, or ramble along the shore, or stride through some meadow under an open sky, it doesn’t matter where, any door takes me to the place I need to be.
Home. Where someone will shower my bruised soul with soft whispers and sweet kisses: the sound of small wild things scraping in the underbrush, or the touch of a gentle breeze on my face, or the tender, glassine caress of waves on sand.
My mother. Who knows me better than I know myself, and speaks my true name when everyone else has forgotten, and answers life’s triune interrogatories: who are you, what do you want, where are you going?
Who am I? I am this immensity, this tangled profusion of living, breathing, growing, changing. My name is sycamore, sassafras, sweetgum. If you call out to the wind-borne gull or hawk, I will answer.
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What do I want? To be free. To dwell beyond the reach of mechanism and artifice, task and successful execution thereof, because beyond all formulation of petty desires there is the great, round wheel: spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer, round and round, an ancient purpose, my only necessary commitment.
Where am I going? I do not know, and I do not want to know, but for this adventure I will need courage that rises like sap. And the exuberant, spontaneous wisdom possessed only by things that arrive at beauty through routes wild, uncultivated, unplanned.
A knot is what it is, my heart, and when it needs untying I go home to Mother. Who tells me what I need to hear: I can never be satisfied or content except with something greater than myself. When I feel worn and tossed about, like some little scrap of cloth, Mother’s truth is a sharp needle, it flashes in and out, it stitches me back into the fabric of earth and sea and sky. When I’m frightened, Mother assures me all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. For Mother’s consoling presence I am thankful. Nor can my gratitude be measured by any instrument known in space or time. It is infinite. Like her. Through whom we all came to be.
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Hallmark makes no cards for this, but Mother herself provides us with the perfect celebration: the month of May. Think of all those flocks, herds, hosts, packs, droves, drifts, swarms, covies. Skulks of foxes, clowders of cats, gams of whales, skeins of geese, charms of finches. All that progeny, issue, offspring, that hatching, spawning, whelping, those broods, gets, litters, clutches, farrows, sons, daughters.
Somewhere in all of that, you and I. Who are we? This immensity. What do we want? Alignment with this great purpose. Where are we going? We don’t know, but for such an adventure, let’s all ask Mother for courage. And the wisdom to journey by her preferred routes – those that are wild and unplanned.
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