Home Stretch of Holy Season

by Sibley Fleming

This morning as we gathered in the Beech Grove with our palm leaves, it occurred to me just how close we are to the end of Lent. I guess the palms were a good clue, the triumphal procession Jesus made riding on the back of a donkey into Jerusalem to protest Roman military oppression. And now we are only a week away from the resurrection.

So how did it go so fast? It seems only yesterday that we were eating pancakes and Nancy Dillon and I were trying to decide which piece of the King cake the plastic baby was buried in on Fat Tuesday (sorry, Shrove Tuesday). The tables were decorated in green, purple and gold, a taste of Mardi Gras and Bill Hancock’s good cooking.

That was the point that historically I suppose people are supposed to start giving up foods and habits that are perhaps considered indulgent. But that’s not necessarily how it’s done at St. Dunstan’s. During Lent, we don’t give up so much as we add.

We add more books and time in study and contemplation, prayer and special services—Ash Wednesday, for instance. Many of us walked the Stations of the Cross for the first time. We searched and we questioned, walked the path in the woods up behind the church with our feet. We went in pairs and groups and alone to perhaps feel the meaning of the death and resurrection.

And while we studied and practiced, we gathered together—a lot. We sat around tables and broke bread—from the supper at St. Bede’s that preceded the first Lenten lecture “God on Trial” by Joe Monti, to the supper last Friday night where Bill Hancock fed us fish fried two ways: in beer batter and Southern style in corn meal. The Japanese magnolia tree outside the parish hall blossomed. The hawks did a mating dance, which Patricia caught on film.

Then yesterday it was Saturday. I was scheduled to meet Tom Gibbs at the church to rehearse for Easter Sunday. (Tom says he likes to rehearse, which is a good thing because whenever I play anything these days on my flute, I need a lot of practice!). I walked in at 2 p.m., a young man was putting away his trumpet and Gilda was putting the final touches on a flower arrangement for the altar—long strips of palm leaves dotted with small, blood-red roses. It was perfect. “Sometimes it’s about knowing when to quit,” she said.

As Tom and I were wrapping up our practice, Gilda left a bouquet of fresh cut flowers for us to share, I think some kind of zinnias, whitish green and lovely.

Then this morning after rehearsing again with Jane and Elizabeth and Molly, after drinking a couple of cups of coffee, standing around watching Claudia and Barbara Bradshaw pulling together goodies for coffee time--some kind of blue berry crumb cake that I had a hard time keeping out of—after all of that, Maggie gathered the Passion readers into the office and gave us direction. The play and service went off with only a few hitches, the imperfections made perfect by our laughter and fellowship.

Sibley

Walking the Stations of the Cross

By Jeanne Taylor

Today I walked the Stations of the Cross for the first time ever. Tim had spearheaded the stations for the past two years and this is his last year with us. I thought I had better get myself there before he -- and the stations -- went away. There were two other walkers besides me: Jenna, a second year seminarian; and Claudia Gimson. Tim led us in the prayers and readings.

I started out by saying that in all my years as a Roman Catholic, from birth to the day I married Josh, I had never walked or even prayed at the stations in any church I had attended. The stations were always on the walls of the sanctuaries, some sets pretty to look at, some drab and boring. I knew "something" was done before each plaque during Lent, much kneeling and dolorous murmuring, but I was never interested in even finding out what it all meant. Holy Week was an event that melted into the anticipations of Easter Sunday -- translate that into a new outfit, shoes, and the very best, a decorated straw hat!

Then today as I was walking the path (created all those years ago by Justin Bradshaw), I realized that I had participated in the station pathway for years as a member of the choir (duh). We have sung some beautiful music at the Good Friday service over the years and there is more to come in two weeks. I was already conditioned to sit and "be quiet" for three hours by my Catholic mother who said under no circumstances were my brother, sister, and I to even think about doing any kind of "fun" activity during that time. Thus, sitting in the choir loft for three hours is not a hardship.

In 1997, Josh and I went on a cruise from Istanbul to Athens, stopping in Southern Turkey, among other places. One bright and sunny day after touring the ruins of a very large temple, we were sitting at lunch talking with some shipmates about the upcoming stop in Israel, highly anticipated by us all. One lady described a pilgrimage to Jerusalem she had made years before with her church. She became tearful as she described her experience walking the Via Dolorosa. It was noisy, crowded, dirty, and hot, full of humankind mingling, buying, selling, stepping on and around each other. In the midst of it all, there was the overlay of Jesus carrying the cross, being stripped, taunted, nailed, bleeding from the crown of thorns, drinking vinegar and then dying. It sounded, to me, like nothing had changed since Jesus' time. At that time and for a long time afterward, I blew off her story, thinking that she was disappointed because the Via Dolorosa WAS so very ordinary, not at all like the pictures of beautiful gardens and "God sky" that we were shown in Sunday School.

Today I feel differently about this story. Perhaps my cruise mate really did feel the way I described, but just maybe she experienced the Via and the stations as holy among the ordinary and painful and that is why she cried. Anyway...

Walking the stations today shifted my view. God knows I am no theologian, just the missus from Peoria, but standing before each station (especially the one with the stole made by Elizabeth Mark from her mother's clothing), I started seeing the stations in another way: that even in chaos and death, there is life.

St. Patrick

It's both an honor and a joy to sing in the St. Dunstan's choir. The choir is a loving group which works well together. I'm thankful they let me sing with them. I'm also thankful for all the tidbits of information Tom Gibbs shares with the choir regarding the source of the music we're singing, or something about the style or the period from which it comes.

I want to share an email he sent to the choir today:

(from Tom)
Hi, everybody, on St. Patrick's Day. Someone last week asked what I was going to do for the choir on this day. Not green beer, but here is my offering for the day:

St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer

Here we have the Breastplate, the earliest example of European poetry in the vernacular, in the well-known metrical translation by Cecil Frances Alexander (she of "All things bright and beautiful" fame). We then have a newer translation that, since it is not designed for singing, offers perhaps a version closer to the original. I first saw this translation in James Cahill's HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION. Cahill writes that "spells of women" should be more correctly rendered as "spells of witches," but he makes no other changes.

This web site calls the poem "lorica." A lorica is a chant, an incantation, that one sings while dressing or arming for battle. ("Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart" is another early Irish lorica.) Legend has it that Patrick sang the Breastplate prayer as protection from the pagan Irish king Loegaire and the Druid fire-worshipers who were attempting to prevent Patrick and his followers from reaching Tara where they would proclaim the Christian faith. The power of the lorica caused Patrick and his band to appear to be a herd of deer, thus sparing them from attack. This hymn is sometimes known as "The Deer's Cry." (For more about this, and much other fascinating information, see the HYMNAL COMPANION, ed. Glover, a very scholarly and complete set of reference books published by Church Publishing.)

See you tonight!
Tom

Okay, it's Steve again. If you were at the Choral Evensong this past Sunday, I hope it was meaningful for you. If not, you missed a simple service with some very nice music. But wait, there's more. Holy Week is coming up, with several services and a lot more music. I hope to see you at some of the services (not just Easter Sunday). It will make Lent, and therefore, Easter, mean a lot more to you.

Steve Mark
(Hey, there's a Fish Fry this Friday evening at the church. I'll be there. Will you?)

The Wax Museum That God Did Not Build

“I choose not to discuss that which I wish to forget.” That’s what my friend Lyniece Talmadge always said when someone she loved disappointed her with bad behavior. Make that very bad behavior. In taking this attitude, she never confronted the loved one, nor drew from a well of anger. These words were never spoken. The confrontation placed neatly in another room.

Basically I’m a lot like Lyniece, who is one of the best friends that I never see that I’ve ever had. I’m particularly like Lyniece when it comes to the Almighty God. Hundreds of thousands die in Haiti, but do I express any righteous indignation about God’s lack of action to prevent or minimize the suffering? No. I don’t want to go there. This would make God seriously bad and probably dissolve all of the evidence of a good God that I’ve seen firsthand.

Given that I don’t like confrontations, especially where God is concerned, in hindsight I think it is strange that I was actually looking forward to hearing Joe’s lectures this weekend: “God on Trial: The Earthquake in Haiti and the Indictment of God.” The Lenten lectures were spread over two days—Friday night at St. Bede’s with supper and Saturday morning at St. Dunstan’s with breakfast. I probably wasn’t looking forward so much to the topic as I was to sitting in Joe’s “class,” which is never anything if it is not thought-provoking.

The first night we looked at the indictments—Haiti, Katrina, Nazi concentration camps, public lynching. We reviewed His acts—Job, Abraham—the terrible behavior of a God who is basically an ego-maniacal control freak. How do you let a Guy like that off the hook? Maybe the answer is you don’t. You give up worship immediately, board up the church and go home and hide behind your door with a shotgun. This is a God to be feared, not worshiped.

Unless, of course, this is not God but a construction of men to keep us all in our places. This God, they say, is responsible for everything, our actions, the weather. This God punishes for our sins or the sins of our children or neighbors. This God sits on a throne, looking on idly as millions are slaughtered in the genocide in Rwanda.

As I thought, it occurred to me that this is probably just not an accurate interpretation of what God is at all. Man, yes. But God, no. For starters I just don’t believe that God is a control freak. If He’d wanted to keep the world and everything in it completely under His thumb—from the way the wind blows to what we crave for breakfast on a late Saturday morning—He could easily have built a wax museum.

But She didn’t. She chose to be with us if we choose to be with Her. She chose to be found if we choose to look for Her. She appears wherever there is humility and whenever we find the courage and strength to face suffering and death. There is evidence of Her in the faces of everyone we meet. She is on earth, of the earth, and She comforts us. It is nearly impossible not to see Her work. The smell of pine needles. The parishioners who build wells for clean drinking water in Haiti. The person who stops on the street to look a homeless person in the eye, and offer a smile and respect, and maybe even a dollar or two.

I’ll say one more thing—or at least I’ll lift something from the service that preceded Joe’s lecture this morning at St. Dunstan’s—a part of the reading from Philippians 2:2-11: “Do nothing from selfish ambition and conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

Okay, really the last thing I’m going to say. It’s this. I think my interpretation of God, now that I’ve been forced to think about it by attending Joe’s lectures, is that She is quite easy to find. And I think that if I reflect on the words of the living Jesus, I can pretty much tell you what I think She wants from us: “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.”

Love your neighbor, all of your neighbors. Do Her work, delight in Her will and walk in Her ways.

From Portland to Atlanta to Jerusalem and Beyond

By The Rev. LTC Peter E. Bauer MS USAR

Year ago, when I was about 13, I would walk out the Fifth Avenue entrance of the City Hall in Portland. My mother worked there as a senior auditor. I would visit her frequently in her office after school. I would also visit her friends Mary Conzleman, Lydia Lucker, and Hattie Yamada who would become like aunts to me. All three attended my ordination service more than 30 ago. They were all strong women who had strong opinions about everything and I cherish that they were a vital part of my life growing up.
One afternoon, I walked out of the Fifth Avenue entrance with its Italian Renaissance architecture and at the corner of Fifth And Jefferson, I stared up at the gleaming modern Georgia-Pacific building and I thought about Georgia and I thought about what it would be like to visit Atlanta.
Many years later, I had the opportunity to visit the Five Points area and the Carter Center and the King Memorial and I thought this is very OK. About a year later, I visited Atlanta for a conference and I stayed overnight at Fort McPherson, and I remember standing outside the house of then Lieutenant General Russell Honore (of Katrina fame) and thinking again that this would be a interesting place to explore.
So when I arrived in Atlanta last year to work for the Army Reserve Warrior And Family Assistance Center, I was really looking forward to being here. The words of Jane Butler were still in my ears: “Go to St. Dunstan’s, it’s a good place."
Boy, she was certainly right. I was hooked the first Sunday when I saw the beautiful grounds, the soothing interior of the church, and heard the wonderful teaching of Joe Monti, the welcoming smile and pastoral hospitality of Maggie Harvey, the warm, quirky wit of Tim Black and the absolutely wonderful sermons of Patricia Templeton. Indeed, St. Dunstan’s has been a powerful, enriching place to be for this United Church Of Christ minister and Army/ VA Social Worker.
Atlanta has been like a big Portland for me. Lots of trees, which I really appreciate, and ;iberal politics-which I also appreciate. But more importantly there has been a real sense of kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion and concern which has repeatedly touched me this past year. There has also been the art, the symphony, all of the organizations like Veterans Heart Georgia and Care for the Troops that I have been involved with and the training on Spirituality and Combat Warfare that I have facilitated at Candler School of Theology and Clayton State University that have really enriched my life.
In I Kings 19, the angel comes to Elijah twice and says “get up and eat. You need this because without it you will not be sustained for the long journey ahead
I am very thankful for the nourishment that I have sustained this year. St. Dunstan’s and Atlanta are now a part of my “sacred ground," as sacred to me as Portland or Princeton, N.J. or Bulverde, TX. I now return to the Lone Star state for my new adventure as the Chief of the Marriage And Family Therapy Program, Department Of Social Work, Carl Darnell Army Medical Center Fort Hood, TX. I will be back to practicing psychotherapy and I anticipate listening to a lot of further psychological turmoil and fall out from the terrible shootings that occurred there last November.
Lent is about pilgrimage; it is about journey. In Jesus’ case, the journey is to Jerusalem, to that sacred place, where his death will occur at the hands of the Romans. But even more profoundly, it is the new life that will emerge as a result of the Resurrection of Jesus that will transform everything.
I feel blessed that I have been transformed by you. I am counting on coming back to visit to Atlanta and St. Dunstan’s and will welcome your presence as well in Central Texas. Remember, Fort Hood is only an hour and a half from Austin.
May our journeys to our own Jerusalems (those sacred places wherever they may be) be a blessing and a source of great transformation for all of us.
Blessing and Joyous Easter and New Life To All!

Good and Evil in Haiti

By Rev. Maggie Harney

The recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and Turkey have given rise, once again, to the question of God’s responsibility for these kinds of tragedies. Theologians tell us that evil can be thought of as three types—natural evil, systemic and personal evil. Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis are all examples of natural evil. These things happen, and we human beings feel helpless before them. And there are those who, like Pat Robertson, say that God sends these natural disasters to punish sinful people.

Christians profess belief in God, the creator of heaven and earth. Science tells us that Earth came into being 4.5 billion years ago. It seems to me that the recent earthquakes have been 4.5 billion years in the making. When tectonic plates shift, volcanoes erupt, hurricanes blow in from the ocean and meteors fall from the sky, Earth is simply behaving like a planet. Earth also rolls on year after year in its course though the cosmos. We humans have nothing to do with this miracle that supports our lives. It’s beyond my ability to imagine that God has been constantly monitoring every earthquake or orbit around the sun for 4.5 billion years. (I also can’t believe that God is so spiteful that God would send an earthquake to destroy 250,000 men, women and children.)

Perhaps the evil that has brought about such suffering in Haiti is not located in the earthquake. Perhaps we need to look at personal evil and systemic evil. Systemic evil has brought about the crushing poverty that the majority of Haitians live in. Systemic evil was in the slave trade 300 years ago that brought Africans to Haiti. Systemic evil was in the French colonial system that kept Haitians at near starvation and used them like animals. When the slaves revolted and declared their independence from France in 1801, the French, English and Americans placed embargoes on the country to isolate it and that, too, was systemic evil. In 1956, the personal evil of Papa Doc Duvalier and his thugs, the Tonton Macoute, created a system of terror and suffering for ordinary Haitians. At Papa Doc’s death, his 19 year-old-son, Baby Doc, carried forward the greed and lawlessness of his father. Personal evil and systemic evil have plagued Haiti for centuries.

If you want to see the presence of God in Haiti, don’t look at the earthquake or hurricanes. The presence of God is in the hearts of the Haitians who moved rubble with their hands to save those buried beneath their own homes. God is present in the medical first responders and the U.S. soldiers who give out food, water and tents. God is present in the clergy and parishioners who dig mass graves, say prayers and mourn over the bodies of their families and friends. God is present in people world-wide who write checks and provide aid for Haiti.

God is not in the business of monitoring earthquakes and sending them to punish people. God is in the business of redeeming us when disaster strikes. God’s love bubbles up inside our hearts and moves us to compassion and action. If you are looking for God, look into the eyes of those who are loving their neighbors.

Entering God’s Special Room

I was sitting in the church library, just settling down with a book I found on the shelves—“Abraham” by Bruce Feiler. I had just opened it when I overheard the voice of an anxious mother “Remember this is God’s special room,” she said. “And you’re going to be nice and quiet and respectful right?”

“We’re going in now?” replied a small child. I thought I heard a sense of awe, that this small person had been prepped for the moment that he or she would be entering “God’s special room.”

I don’t know who the voice of the mother belonged to but I do know she was teaching a lesson—when we go into God’s special room, we are nice and quiet and respectful.

Just as this little person was learning how to enter God’s special room, we adults had spent the previous hour in Sunday School studying the Stations of the Cross. We were doing the station where Jesus is stripped naked of his clothes by the Roman soldiers. In prayer, in contemplation, in meaning, in application to real life, it is like humiliating another human being. We went through the station where Jesus is nailed to the cross and the one where he dies on the cross.

We discussed the correct meaning of His death: a) Jesus died for our sins b) Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many—to deliver many? c) Jesus’ death is a perfect example of humility. d) Jesus died because of our sins. e) All of the above. We talked about how the cross didn’t show up as the dominant symbol of Christianity for like 450 years. We talked about the logistics, how Jesus—and others of his day—were actually nailed to a cross, how they suffered and died.

In any case, the death of Christ has lots of meanings and I suspect through just living life and study and prayer the subtler points emerge. I was thinking about this after the 10:45 service, as a group of us had gathered at the first Station of the Cross, with the intent of praying all 14. The crosses, made by different parishioners, are placed along a path through the woods behind the church, up the hill and back down again.

I’ve never walked the stations so I approached the exercise with great expectation for some sort of spiritual epiphany, emotional tug, a welling up of compassion, perhaps. But until The fourth Station—Jesus meets his mother--all I felt was a comfortable closeness as the 10 of us took turns reading, as we prayed together. As the dead leaves crunched beneath our feet, surrounded by the bare trees, as we exchanged a glance or smile and recited words and stopped before each station.

Since I had signed up to lead the group, I asked Elizabeth Wong Mark to read at this fourth station, which was made by her husband and son—Steve and Connor. The cross is draped in the fabric of the clothes that Elizabeth’s mother was wearing when she died in December. I do not remember a single word Elizabeth read but I remember vividly the very tangible relic of her mother’s death, the physical reminder of grief, of love and remembrance. Her mother was not present, yet this symbol of her death—and therefore her life—was very present.

So I’m probably wrong but I can’t help but think the only good reason to study the death of Christ, to try to connect with it on some personal level, is because to do that, requires understanding what it meant that he lived.

To get at that meaning, to understand the complexity, the nuances, I think requires questioning and immersion at some level and learning from those who are more spiritually, intellectually and theologically mature than you are (meaning me).

And of course there’s plenty of opportunity for growth. I particularly look forward to our Lenten Lecture series this coming Friday night and Saturday morning. The title is “God on Trial: The Earthquake in Haiti and the Indictment of God.” The speaker/teacher/lecturer is Joe Monti. And because it’s Joe, I know that not only will questions arise, but they will be blurted out and bump up against each other like Sunday School on steroids. And because Joe is patient and like a walking seminary, I’m pretty certain he won’t mind one bit.