On Being Yourself

Who are the saints in your life? Lincoln? King? Mother Teresa?

It is probably not a surprise to learn that saints are not perfect. Like you and me, saints are troubled by doubt, tempted by desire, attracted to power and popularity.

So what makes them shine so brightly in our lives?

Marcia Dane was a saint in my life. She was born into a wealthy New England family. In her infancy, Marcia was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Back in those days, doctors did not know as much as they do now about this disorder. Her impairment was referred to as “spasticity,” an attempt to describe the effects of Cerebral Palsy, the muscles of the body move involuntarily, the mouth and jaws twitch, arms flail about.

Marcia’s family provided the best doctors, some offered risky, experimental operations on her feet and ankles. Others provided physical and speech therapy and psychological counseling so that she might live a “normal” life. She would cry about this and beg not to have to work at it. But her therapists were firm. Like a good coach they caught her up short. “Listen to yourself, and make a decision. You either want to improve or you don’t. Make a decision. Right now. Or go home.”

More than anything, Marcia wanted to fit in. She worked harder.

Going to public school was painful for Marcia. No one wanted to be friends with a “Spaz.” Eventually, she was sent to an all-girls boarding school because her parents felt that the people there would be nicer.

Marcia was a fine scholar, but boarding school and college at Mount Holyoke had a troubling effect on her. She learned to control her spasms, but she still walked with a limp, and her mouth still had twitches. She was preoccupied with being popular. She went out of her way to be liked by the sorority girls—organizing parties and arranging dates for the popular girls. She had two handsome brothers, and they had friends, but none were keen on dating Marcia.

In college, Marcia was often lonely in her heart. Listening to the other girls talk, she would pick up on the whispers: “Who would want to dance with her?” “No boy would ever want to kiss her.”

In those days, when the women’s colleges like Smith and Holyoke held dances, men were invited from colleges like Williams and Amherst. Dance cards were distributed to the women, and men would fill them in. Mary would dance the first dance with John Doe, Dance 2 with Adam Jones, Dance 3 with Bill Smith, and so on. Girls shared their dates with their friends. “You can have my Bill for dance #2.” “OK, you can have my Jimmy for #4.” and so on.

Marcia was a wallflower. She sat on the sidelines because no one wanted their date to have to dance with Marcia.

Hurt but ever prideful, Marcia persevered in her quest for acceptance and popularity.

Until mid-term of her senior year.

That was when a big senior social was held. Determined not to be a wallflower for this dance, Marcia asked one of her brothers, a junior at Bowdoin, to come be her date. It was all arranged, but when he arrived he was not alone. He explained that it would not be fitting for her to have to settle for her brother as dance partner, so he brought a friend. When Marcia’s friends saw her date, they nearly fainted. He was a drop-dead handsome, athletic, self-assured gentleman, and he looked like he would be a great dancer. Of course Marcia was all too willing to share his name on all of the other girls’ dance cards, and the girls were all too happy to accept and exchange their dance partners with Marcia.

But something different happened that night, something that changed the course of Marcia’s life.

Marcia was not that bad a dancer. She had learned to manage the impairment well enough to be able to enjoy movement and music. But she had not intended to dance, but eager to introduce her date to her new friends.

How surprised she was when he declined. In a firm but gentle manner, he said, “I came to be with you, to dance with you. Make a decision. You either want to dance with me or you don’t. Make a decision. Right now. Or go sit on the sideline.”

Marcia was puzzled at first. And then he explained: “When your brother described you to me, I had no idea you would be so graceful and charming. Thank you for inviting me. It is my wish to dance every dance with you, and only with you”

The other girls were astounded. They could not understand, especially the glamorous ones, why the most handsome man they had ever seen would want to spend his entire evening dancing with Marcia.

Something began to change in Marcia’s priorities and commitments after that experience. She continued to seek friendships among her peers, but stopped trying so hard to be accepted and liked.

She graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1925, went on to Columbia to earn a masters degree, left her family in Boston and headed to Brooklyn, NY to do social work. Later she returned to Cambridge and took a second masters degree in education. Every step was a battle; not only was she a woman, but a “spastic” woman.

Marcia died in 1997 at the age of 92. She never married and never had children. Her life was devoted to rescuing those who had lost their way, men and women with dreams and goals, but without support or means to achieve them.

I was privileged to know Marcia for over 40 years, and I was sitting with her when she drifted into a coma and died peacefully. One of the people she rescued was my mother, and after my mother, …,

… well, that is another story.

The point of this story is that saints are folks like you and me, but maybe more determined. Who is the saint in Marcia’s story? Her mother and father? Her doctors and therapists? Her brother? Her unnamed, handsome man? Marcia?

Saints often start out self-centered and arrogant. Over time they throw off their pettiness and become steadfast in their convictions. They resist equivocation, they do not read the polls first and then make choices according to what is popular.

Most of all, saints choose to live boldly in the world, with all of its mess and shame and suffering. They live with dignity and treat others the same way.

I see saints as those who choose to follow someone like Jesus, not to the next world, but back into this one. They are coaches, teachers, and doctors, cooks, mechanics and fisherfolk—people whose voices beckon the best in us.

Saints see through barriers and follow the truth.

Never let someone tell you a male can’t coach a women’s team, or a white teacher can’t teach black history, or Christians can’t make peace with Muslims and Jews. It simply isn’t true. The New Testament message is not about making a difference but making a connection.

There is a Gospel story in which Jesus calls Lazarus back from death and into the world, and I wonder why. The best answer I can come up with is this. We are all God’s children, and thus we belong to God. But belonging to God is not about being in heaven, admiring angels. It is about being in the world, right here and right now, doing good and calling on others to do the same. Saints encourage others to have faith, and to make decisions, right now.

And when someone like Jesus shows up to dance with them, they dance.

What If?

The idea that God forgives, wants to forgive, continues to forgive, with no strings attached, is not a new idea. It is a pre-Christian idea. Jeremiah passed on these words as the Word of the Lord: “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” I interpret these words as affirmation that God wills that we have joy and abundant life, free from the suffering that results from guilt and sin, and that no person should ever feel that he or she must suffer alone.

One of my mentors, as a young man, was Bishop John Colburn of Massachusetts who said that at the heart of the Christian life there is a great mystery: suffering and joy are inextricably bound together. But the absence of physical suffering is not the same thing as true joy. We all know people who have many more comforts, food, clothing, money, education, health, and many other things, but have not joy.

Bishop Colburn wrote, “There is no abiding joy except that it rises out of suffering. The greatest joy for a Christian is to know that, as he or she gladly embraces suffering for the love of God, a bit of God’s power is released in the world.”

It is hard for most of us to walk before others in righteousness. We may not even know what that kind of journey means. But history notes that there have been saints who have endured suffering and even death with dignity and courage. Their faith released some of God’s power in the world.

Two years ago, I went on a trip with my students to South Africa. We learned a great deal about the apartheid regime. I discovered that an Anglican monk named Michael Lapsley had been part of the movement against apartheid. Months after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Fr. Lapsley received a letter in the mail. Placed between the pages of a religious journal was a letter bomb. The explosion left him with no hands, one eye, shattered eardrums and other injuries. He spent a long, long time in hospital. His story was printed in a recent Lenten Study pamphlet put out by Episcopal Relief and Development. I found the following most compelling. It says that when people inquired about how Fr. Lapsley survived, he answered: “Somehow, in the midst of the bombing, I felt that God was present. I received so many messages of love and support from around the world that I was able to make my bombing redemptive—to bring life out of death, good out of evil.”

Out of pain came Fr. Lapsley’s greatest calling as a priest. He founded the global ministry Institute for Healing of Memories. “I am more of a priest with no hands,” he said, “than I was with two.”

My question today is: how can we bring more joy into our own lives? Maybe one way is to believe that there is an interrelatedness of the Spirit in and through all relationships—in families, communities, political groups, and nations. When all is said and done, the greatest gift we can give each other is to accept our own suffering joyfully for the love of God and thus release as much of God’s power into the world as we can, that our friends and families, enemies and world powers, may be strengthened by God’s Spirit to carry the crosses of suffering with authentic dignity and true courage.

On Global Care

A familiar hymn begins, "Morning has broken," and this morning was a good morning, a very good morning. As the words of the hymn state, "Praise for the singing, praise for the morning, … ." May we appreciate this and every morning as a sacred gift.

When I was 14, it was June of 1967, I woke up to the news that Israel was carrying out surprise air strikes against what was then called The United Arab Republic. It was a quick (six days) and decisive victory for the newly founded nation of Israel. Israel wanted to control the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula in place of Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in place of Jordan, and the Golan Heights in place of Syria.

What I did not know then was that The Jordan River was a huge part of Israel's modern strategic plan, and that the river is still a major factor in the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts in the Middle East.

Imagine that River.

Water is essential to Life. The first sentence of the Bible is about water. Our Jewish ancestors tell us that God was about to utter those unforgettable words, “Let there be light…, let the waters be gathered together…, Let the earth put forth vegetation…”

And there was life.

But not before there was water.

Water and wind were first.

Water and wind made up the formless void.

We thank you, God, for the clean air we breathe and the clean water we drink.

For the past two days, I have been away at the Diocesan Convention of the Episcopal Church in Delaware. At the close of the convention, a spokesperson for Episcopal Development and Relief in Delaware rose to speak; and as he did, he took a sip of water, clean and sparkling water. And he asked each of us (2 or 3 hundred people in the room) to raise our hands if we had had a drink of water that day. And we all did. And he asked if we had washed our hands that day. And we said yes. And he asked, did we know that 884 million people on this planet have no access to clean water—to drink, to wash in, to reflect on, as we do this morning, on what was present when God was said to have breathed life into this planet—884 million people who cannot imagine it because they have never known what it is like to have clean water.

884 million people have no access to clean water. Imagine a community where everyone has clean water except those on the other side of the tracks. Imagine your half-quadrant with no showers, no drinking water, no bathrooms at all. That is what it is like for the 884 million.

Brothers and sisters, reflect with me, if you will, on the story of Naaman, a commander of the Syrian Army, who suffered from leprosy, a highly contagious and debilitating skin disease.  I did a little research on Naaman and found that, in Bernhard W. Anderson’s extensive and scholarly work, Understanding the Old Testament, Mr. Anderson makes clear that the Syrians and Israelis were at war with each other in 850 BCE. The war was over water rights.

They are still at war! And the war is over water rights.

Water is life! Since the beginning of time, living things have organized their societies in places where there was water.

Around 850 BCE, a little Jewish girl was abducted by the Syrian Army and put to work in Naaman’s house. One day she said to her mistress, “I know a man who can heal my master Naaman. He is a holy man who lives across the Jordan River. He is the prophet Elisha and Yahweh is his God.” To make a long story short, Naaman, the Syrian army commander, was granted permission by his king to go check out this miracle cure. The doctor, so to speak, was the prophet Elisha, and Elisha simply wrote a prescription. Naaman was offended by this because he thought that he should be seen in person. Elisha declined to see Naaman, but on the advice of his servants Naaman decided to trust the prophet and so he washed in the Jordan River. Scripture says, “So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”

Friends, I don’t know about you, but I want to live in a world where miracles like that can happen, do happen. I want to live in a community where the message from the wise and the faithful is one of hope and promise. The message of the Old Testament is that God is a God who makes covenants—promises, that both side are bound to keep. Jesus broke bread and poured wine on his last night with friends, as a sign of the new Covenant—a promise that God wants something better for you and for me.

Morning has broken, like the first morning is a reminder that we are living a sacramental existence, older than anyone reading this blog.

I remember hiking with my wife, Mary, before we were engaged to be married. We were young and had stronger legs than we do now. We were hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and we were thirsty. We had stumbled onto a stream. Parched and dry, we knelt to drink the cold, clear water at a place called The Basin, where the water flowed down from the mountain. It tasted great. It was refreshing beyond our imagination. Could we do that today? Is the water flowing in our planet’s streams safe or polluted?

Friends, the planet is sick right now. Planet Earth has leprosy, and we are not doing enough to cure its disease. We are exploiting our fragile earth, our island home, in order to make temporary profits, profits that will pay a one-way ticket to oblivion and reserve a front row seat for our children to unknown suffering and disease.

Some say that small sections of the Jordan's upper portion, near the Sea of Galilee, have been kept pristine for baptisms, but the 60-mile downstream stretch is polluted. Environmentalists say the river might recover, but it would take decades to restore its quality to safe standards. In 2007, Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) named the Jordan River one of the world's 100 most endangered ecological sites.

I will finish with one last story. When a group of students and teachers visited South Africa two summers ago, we spent several days at St. Mark’s School in Jane Fyrse. At one of the morning chapels (they have one every day to start the school day), we were asked to share what we had imagined about South Africa before we came. Our students from America said things like: beautiful stretches of land, jungle animals and exotic birds. Then a student from St. Marks stood up to share, and she said one thing. There was one thing she imagined about America. Can you guess what it was?

Water.

“I imagine a place where everyone has plenty of clean water.”

Water is life. The Naaman story is a sweet reminder that The Jordan River has a mysterious power to heal. We must be mindful that for many nations and religions, The Jordan River represents Life and Spirit. In it Jesus was Baptized. I believe that it is our sacred responsibility to protect it and all our natural rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, seas and oceans.

"Morning has broken, like the first morning, … praise for the singing, praise for the morning, … praise for springing, ... ." Praise for courage to do all we can to ensure that future generations can stand and sing, "praise this new day."

Where is God's Voice in Today's Church

Where is God’s Voice in Today’s Church?

The Holy Scripture begins with God’s voice (Genesis 1). The Psalmist affirms that God’s voice is strong, majestic, powerful and confident (Psalm 29). The Holy Gospels describe God’s voice as parental, tender and loving (Mark 1). Holy Scripture teaches that God’s voice breathes life into things, brings light into dark places, and blesses all creation. God’s voice is central to everything.

Churches are places where there is quiet enough for communities to gather to hear God’s voice. The men and women who plan, build and maintain churches consider God’s voice central to the purpose and meaning for The Church. Every brick and beam they place and paint, creates sacred space for God’s awesome voice. 

Yet, one has to wonder: Did those who built the holy spaces for God before the Internet imagine the voices that would one day compete with God’s voice in this complex world? Let us, for a moment, count the ways that other voices tempt us from God’s tender call, demanding our attention and distracting us from the all powerful and loving voice that is God speaking from the heavens, “You are my son. You are my daughter. In you I am well pleased.”

These competing voices call to us from ipod and laptop, Skype and Foursquare. We stream our TV programs. We download lectures and music from itunes. We share and view video clips, send thank you notes and greeting cards on email. We can be reached anytime, day or night, in the car, at the supermarket, at graduations, weddings and funerals.

One online add I read just yesterday said: “With this app you can access sounds from anywhere.” 

Where is God’s voice in all of this noise?

The technology and education seminar I attended last week ended with a three-and-a-half-minute barrage of the voices that will revolutionize our intellectual and social landscape over the next four years. You can view this at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCsdFSt5bXI

Here are just a few of the messages from that video:

• 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute; 

• Facebook has over 750 million active users; 50% go online every day; 

• Google is the fastest growing network in the history of the world; 

• Facebook tops Google in US visits and use; 

• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

• 1 in 5 divorces are blamed on Facebook; 

• If Wikipedia was a book, it would have 2.25 million pages. 

• Wikipedia is 80% accurate.

All this is happening as I write, and the media revolution is moving ahead at a rapid pace. 

By the end of the 3.5 minutes I was literally sick in my stomach, dizzy and nauseous at the thought of how this revolution is changing our social and spiritual lives.

The lesson of technology is: “Don’t sit around waiting for the storm to end. Learn to dance in the rain.”

Last week, I was given a glimpse into a thundering storm, with a dissonance so loud it knocked me off balance. I heard nothing but noise. Tempted by must-have technological creations, I asked myself: “What if God were to speak again? Would God’s voice be heard?”

Once upon a time, long ago in the human understanding of God, “The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually …  and it grieved God’s heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created--people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’”

And God caused a great flood, and only a remnant was preserved.

Is God sorry about the Covenant made with Noah? 

Is God troubled about today’s social media frenzy? 

Did the scoffers and doubters who witnessed Noah’s alternate path think his ways were passé? Did they laugh and say, “What’s all the fuss about a storm? Come dance in the rain!”

In the town, where I live, a group of clergy meet once a month at a local Starbucks. You will not be surprised to hear that many of our conversations are about what some fear is a storm rising in The Church: Interest in parish life is falling off, pledges are down, Sunday School attendance is at an all-time low, young parents and children spend more Sunday mornings at the fields and gyms than in church. Sometimes a priest will call attention to this or that “other” church—the one with a big screen video, a rock band, 5000 members that meet in small groups made up from all the “best” people, especially those in thriving local businesses and politics. 

And the question is: “Should we become like them?” That is when I hear the still small voice of Jesus say, “Lead us not into temptation.”

Dear reader, I do not fear for the Episcopal Church in today’s social media revolution because I know that when I go to church or lead a service, there is only one voice, one focus, one reason to come: To hear the voice of God, the only voice that really matters. And I know that, as long as there are people who truly search for God, they will seek that still small voice. 

Now don’t get me wrong, the social media revolution offers many wonderful, useful, awesome and life-changing opportunities to access God’s voice. Just as the Bible was a more practical and compact way to compile, organize and package scriptures and scrolls, our ipads and smart phones give us easy and practical access to a world-wide “Bibliothèque.” Perhaps we should name this media revolution the Software Standard Version, having already been bitten by The Apple.

The Gospel of John opens with these words: “In the beginning was the Word,” reminding us that God’s voice was in the beginning framing life and naming things into being. Later God would say to Noah, “Never again will I curse the ground … this is my sign, a bow in the sky;” and when Jesus came to John at the Jordan, God spoke and said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

As long as there are human beings who venture forth in faith and with courage, they will come to church; and as long as churches remain true to a mission of love, and a purpose of service to others, their doors will invite us to hear again the only voice that matters.