"The people who challenged my atheism most were drug addicts and prostitutes"

From Chris Arnade, at theguardian.com:

Photograph: Chris Arnade

They prayed whenever they could find 15 minutes. "Preacher Man", as we called him, would read from the Bible with his tiny round glasses. It was the only book he had ever read. A dozen or so others would listen, silently praying while stroking rosaries, sitting on bare mattresses, crammed into a half-painted dorm room.

I was the outsider, a 16-year-old working on a summer custodial crew for a local college, saving money to pay for my escape from my hometown. The other employees, close to three dozen, were working to feed themselves, to feed their kids, to pay child support, to pay for the basics of life. I was the only white, everyone else was African-American.

Preacher Man tried to get me to join the prayer meetings, asking me almost daily. I declined, preferring to spend those small work breaks with some of the other guys on the crew. We would use the time to snatch a quick drink or maybe smoke a joint.

Preacher Man would question me, "What do you believe in?" I would decline to engage, out of politeness. He pressed me. Finally I broke,

I am an atheist. I don't believe in a God. I don't think the world is only 5,000 years old, I don't think Cain and Abel married their sisters!

Preacher Man's eyes narrowed. He pointed at me, "You are an APE-IEST. An APE-IEST. You going to lead a life of sin and end in hell."

Three years later I did escape my town, eventually receiving a PhD in physics, and then working on Wall Street for 20 years. A life devoted to rational thought, a life devoted to numbers and clever arguments.

During that time I counted myself an atheist and nodded in agreement as a wave of atheistic fervor swept out of the scientific community and into the media, led by Richard Dawkins.

I saw some of myself in him: quick with arguments, uneasy with emotions, comfortable with logic, able to look at any ideology or any thought process and expose the inconsistencies. We all picked on the Bible, a tome cobbled together over hundreds of years that provides so many inconsistencies. It is the skinny 85lb (35.6kg) weakling for anyone looking to flex their scientific muscles.

I eventually left my Wall Street job and started working with and photographing homeless addicts in the South Bronx. When I first walked into the Bronx I assumed I would find the same cynicism I had towards faith. If anyone seemed the perfect candidate for atheism it was the addicts who see daily how unfair, unjust, and evil the world can be.

None of them are. Rather they are some of the strongest believers I have met, steeped in a combination of Bible, superstition, and folklore.

The first addict I met was Takeesha. She was standing near the high wall of the Corpus Christi Monastery. We talked for close to an hour before I took her picture. When we finished, I asked her how she wanted to be described. She said without any pause, "As who I am. A prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God."

Takeesha was raped by a relative when she was 11. Her mother, herself a prostitute, put Takeesha out on the streets at 13, where she has been for the last 30 years,

It's sad when it's your mother, who you trust, and she was out there with me, but you know what kept me through all that? God. Whenever I got into the car, God got into the car with me.

A picture of the Last Supper hanging in a crack house
in New York. Photograph: Chris Arnade

Sonya and Eric, heroin addicts who are homeless, have a picture of the Last Supper that moves with them. It has hung in an abandoned building, it has hung in a sewage-filled basement, and now it leans against the pole in the small space under the interstate where they live.

Sarah, 15 years on the streets, wears a cross around her neck. Always. Michael, 30 years on the streets, carries a rosary in his pocket. Always. In any crack house, in the darkest buildings empty of all other furnishings, a worn Bible can be found laying flat amongst needles, caps, lighters, and crack pipes.

Takeesha and the other homeless addicts are brutalized by a system driven by a predatory economic rationalism (a term used recently by J. M. Coetzee in his essay: On Nelson Mandela). They are viewed by the public and seen by almost everyone else as losers. Just "junkie prostitutes" who live in abandoned buildings.

They have their faith because what they believe in doesn't judge them. Who am I to tell them that what they believe is irrational? Who am I to tell them the one thing that gives them hope and allows them to find some beauty in an awful world is inconsistent? I cannot tell them that there is nothing beyond this physical life. It would be cruel and pointless.

In these last three years, out from behind my computers, I have been reminded that life is not rational and that everyone makes mistakes. Or, in Biblical terms, we are all sinners.

We are all sinners. On the streets the addicts, with their daily battles and proximity to death, have come to understand this viscerally. Many successful people don't. Their sense of entitlement and emotional distance has numbed their understanding of our fallibility.

Sonya with her cross and rosary.
Photograph: Chris Arnade

I saw my atheism for what it is: an intellectual belief most accessible to those who have done well.

I look back at my 16-year-old self and see Preacher Man and his listeners differently. I look at the fragile women praying and see a mother working a minimum wage custodial job, trying to raise three children alone. Her children's father off drunk somewhere. I look at the teenager fingering a small cross and see a young woman, abused by a father addicted to whatever, trying to find some moments of peace. I see Preacher Man himself, living in a beat up shack without electricity, desperate to stay clean, desperate to make sense of a world that has given him little.

They found hope where they could.

I want to go back to that 16-year-old self and tell him to shut up with the "see how clever I am attitude". I want to tell him to appreciate how easy he had it, with a path out. A path to riches.

I also see Richard Dawkins differently. I see him as a grown up version of that 16-year-old kid, proud of being smart, unable to understand why anyone would believe or think differently from himself. I see a person so removed from humanity and so removed from the ambiguity of life that he finds himself judging those who think differently.

I see someone doing what he claims to hate in others.

Preaching from a selfish vantage point.

'"By this means he moves them": on parables and the retrieval of reserve'

Here's some support for my thesis about koans, stories, puzzles, and allusion in general, in an interesting post from catholicity and covenant:

Today's Gospel reading at Mass - Mark 4:26-34 - could lead us to reflect on Isaac Williams' Tract 80, On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge.   Specifically discussing the parables, Williams quotes Chrysostom:

"Had He not wished them to hear and to be saved, He would have been silent, and not have spoken in Parables. But by this means He moveth them, by speaking things overshadowed and darkened." (Homil. on St. Matt. xiii.)

 It's a beautiful approach to the parables - "this view of a parable as a veil of the truth", discourse couched in metaphors and imagery, purposefully without explicit interpretation, to challenge, engage and entice the imagination to a deeper, meaningful reflection on the Kingdom.  And, as Williams notes, it has considerably more credence than the lazy assumption (quite contradictory of Synoptic accounts) that the parables were 'difficult-teaching-made-easy-for-plebs':

It has been said indeed that they render moral truths more plain and easy, as well as more engaging; and that this was their purpose. But is this the case?

What is more, Williams emphasises, the 'parables as veil' coheres with the mode of revelation in the Incarnation:

The circumstances attending our Lord's  birth, and the important transactions at the early period of His life, we might have expected beforehand would have been more known to the Jewish nation, instead of being concealed, like the actions of apparently obscure persons ... There is something in the thought of our Saviour's being for thirty years among men, not known and not believed on, even by those about Him, and the witnesses of His early life, very remarkable and awful. And the great pledge and seal of the truth of the Gospel, the Resurrection itself, seems in such a striking manner to have been kept back, if I may so speak, from the gaze of the multitude, from the broad light of the common day. Its great manifestations break forth, as if indistinctly, and according to the great need of certain persons, the watchful and weeping Mary, then the penitent Peter, then (the perhaps aged) Cleopas ... Surely, in all this there is something of mysterious wisdom, which it is good for us humbly to consider.

The purpose of Tract 80, of course, was to lead mid-19th century Anglicans to ask what this meant for evangelisation, catechetics, pedagogy and formation - the need to recover reserve.  Reserve is a means of orienting our imagination towards, attuning our hearts and minds to, moving us to be open to the Mystery, the Way, the strangeness of that Water, that Bread and Wine.

 In an era when much Anglican reflection on evangelisation and catechetics has been determined by Mission-Shaped Church and accessibility, by HTB and Alpha, can catholic Anglicans aid in a retrieval of reserve which might allow the Crucified and Risen One to "occupy the imagination and affections" (a phrase from Williams' penultimate paragraph) of the citizens and consumers of postmodernity?

In the "Spiritual But Not Religious" vein....

A friend asked me what I thought about the whole "Spiritual But Not Religious" thing, and how the Church might deal with it - which set me to thinking.

Most A.A. members would, I think, classify themselves this way.   Some of us add "religious" to our résumés after awhile - but almost everybody, at least in my experience, starts out as a SBNR.  And in fact, A.A. is a fantastic SBNR path; it borrows just about all of its practices from religion - but it's not a religion itself.  Or perhaps it is, in some way - but it's an experiential one, without Creed. 

And, starting off as a SBNR in A.A., I found that what interested and attracted me were things like Zen koans, and the sort of "spiritual aphorisms" we heard in meetings.  One such saying was "When the student is ready the teacher appears"; while this may appear to be facile, it's actually simply true.  It's a commentary on the learning process - and on the experiential acquiring of "new ears" with which to hear and understand.   It's saying:  yesterday I couldn't hear or understand this, because I didn't know enough, but somehow, today I can; time and experience have broken the barrier.  The "teacher" is the event or person responsible for bringing about this epiphany.  (The idea is actually quite close to "Knock, and it shall be opened to you; seek, and you shall find.")  It all sounds quite mysterious - but that's just the way it's wrapped; it's a simple truism about learning.  The wrapping, though, is actually quite important!

Later on, I fell for Rumi.  There's nothing better than this, if you're an SBNR:

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving, it doesn't matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come even if you have broken your vow a thousand times,
Come, yet again, come, come.

What's interesting there is that there's talk of "vows"; a little bit of straight-ahead religious talk right in the middle of Sufi ecstasy.  Genius!  Rumi is, in fact, fantastic at stuff like this; here's another example:

One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.
A voice asked, "Who is there?"
He answered, "It is I."
The voice said, "There is no room for Me and Thee."
The door was shut.

After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned
and knocked.
A voice from within asked, "Who is there?"
The man responded, "It is Thee."
The door was opened for him.

Very A.A., that: "the Beloved" is never strictly defined - yet clearly he's speaking directly of "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" - i.e., of God.  He's speaking directly to the "spiritual sense."   And he's speaking a deep truth:  there really isn't room for "Me and Thee" in the spiritual life - and again, this is a bit of deliberate opacity.  It's meant to tickle ears and souls, and lead people to wonder what it can actually mean - which is rather refreshing in a climate (even in the church) in which everything must be defined.  It's nice to be left hanging a little bit.  And again:  it's straightforwardly about the inner life, and about learning and experience.  (Another beautiful aspect is the totally unexpected exchange of "Me" for "Thee"!  How strange, and how wonderful - and how true, in a dozen ways.  It hands back to God what was God's to begin with - all while expressing the need for "self-emptying."  I find this little poem miraculous in so many ways.)

I realized that what attracted me to things like this was the sense that there was a path one could follow - a path that others had followed, and who were now looking back and describing their experiences.   At the time, I took this to be the "Zen path," and it to me involved movement.   And I think that a sense of "journeying" - this kind of inward journeying, through the highways of the soul and human emotion and experience - is something we're sort of missing in the church.   We have no particular sense of, or way of talking about, the fact we are all on a journey of discovery, and that there are real and describable signposts along the way that we can talk about.

And I think the SBNR resonate with things like this; I sure did.  Fortunately, these things do exist, in every tradition.   All mystics talk about this sort of journeying, sometimes in puzzles and riddles (AKA, "koans"); all of them try to point to the process of the "spiritual paths" they have undertaken, and to document these journeys - often in allusive, rather than analytical, ways.

One reason people resonate with this stuff - especially now, I think - is because there is very little of it around these days.  There is more media than ever before - but very little of it has to do with the spiritual, inward life - and very little of it offers much of value that can help with explaining human experience, and how we understand the world and ourselves in it.  But it's always been a deep interest, I think; people want to know what being alive is for, and how human beings are made.  Especially, I think, they want to know that they themselves are on a path that goes someplace real and true - someplace people have looked for many times before, and will continually and always be looking for.

In A.A. we have stories, and aphorisms, and koans, and mysteries, all in the service of teaching and learning - and we have practices (prayer, meditation, self-examination, confession) taken directly from the religions of the world.    And I have noticed lately that people really resonate with mystical and experiential stuff these days.  A couple of days ago, on a blog post that asked the question "Is religious experience like falling in love?," I talked about William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience) and pointed to St. John of the Cross' "Stanzas of the Soul":

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings—oh, happy chance!—
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised—oh, happy chance!—
In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me— A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

The response?  "Awesome, awesome."

On another occasion, talking about some faith topic - and again with a SBNR type - I quoted from Meister Eckhart :

God is nameless, for no man can either say or understand aught about Him. If I say, God is good, it is not true; nay more; I am good, God is not good. I may even say, I am better than God; for whatever is good, may become better, and whatever may become better, may become best. Now God is not good, for He cannot become better. And if He cannot become better, He cannot become best, for these three things, good, better, and best, are far from God, since He is above all. If I also say, God is wise, it is not true; I am wiser than He. If I also say, God is a Being, it is not true; He is transcendent Being and superessential Nothingness. Concerning this St Augustine says: the best thing that man can say about God is to be able to be silent about Him, from the wisdom of his inner judgement. Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about God, thou liest, and committest sin. If thou wilt be without sin, prate not about God. Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had a God whom I could understand, I would never hold Him to be God.

Again, this was received with enthusiasm and in fact delight.  Truth, wrapped in an entirely enchanting package.

I think the reason this stuff seems "awesome" to people today is because they are not used to hearing things that touch on subjective human experience, truth, and the spiritual life; everything today is about objective "data."  So all that other stuff sounds mysterious and beautiful to them - which, of course, it is.  And it affirms them in their longings to be more than just data points that can be objectively measured.

"The Tunnel" is a wonderful Zen story about love, experience, and the long road to redemption - something that would fit very well into the Christian worldview, in fact: 

Zenkai, the son of a samurai, journeyed to Edo and there became the retainer of a high official. He fell in love with the official's wife and was discovered. In self-defence, he slew the official. Then he ran away with the wife.

Both of them later became thieves. But the woman was so greedy that Zenkai grew disgusted. Finally, leaving her, he journeyed far away to the province of Buzen, where he became a wandering mendicant.

To atone for his past, Zenkai resolved to accomplish some good deed in his lifetime. Knowing of a dangerous road over a cliff that had caused death and injury to many persons, he resolved to cut a tunnel through the mountain there.

Begging food in the daytime, Zenkai worked at night digging his tunnel. When thirty years had gone by, the tunnel was 2,280 feet long, 20 feet high, and 30 feet wide.

Two years before the work was completed, the son of the official he had slain, who was a skillful swordsman, found Zenkai out and came to kill him in revenge.

"I will give you my life willingly," said Zenkai. "Only let me finish this work. On the day it is completed, then you may kill me."

So the son awaited the day. Several months passed and Zenkai kept digging. The son grew tired of doing nothing and began to help with the digging. After he had helped for more than a year, he came to admire Zenkai's strong will and character.

At last the tunnel was completed and the people could use it and travel safely.

"Now cut off my head," said Zenkai. "My work is done."

"How can I cut off my own teacher's head?" asked the younger man with tears in his eyes.

The mystical traditions all contain such ideas, aphorisms, poems, stories, events, etc.   And they have always enchanted me; people want to know, I think, that there is something splendid and fascinating and mysterious about living - and they want to hear what that consists of.  They want to hear about what human experience is like when looked at from this angle - and they want very much to know about the parts of themselves that are going unused.

I also came to think that articulating the Anglo-Catholic worldview - leaving out the fact that it's both Anglican and Catholic - might be a really interesting thought process.    I believe it to be a philosophy that stands perfectly well on its own, even if it does come to us via Revelation; why not just use the Christian axioms for a base, without necessarily noting that that's where you're getting them?

Work it through systematically - and describe it as one philosophy of living among others; why not?  Give people the guts of the thing - and you have the added benefit of being able to drop all the accumulated baggage.   Just use the ideas.  I think I'd have been interested in something like that, as an SBNR; I just didn't know such a thing existed in those days.

Well, thinking all this through has been an interesting process, I have to say - and it's exactly the same kind of "process" I've been talking about here, in fact:  looking back and describing what I've found along the way.  There's more to this, too, having to do with "recovery"; probably I'll put up a post about that at some point as well.

So, many thanks to my friend for asking the question.....



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Heard today at Divine Service online: "They cast their nets in Galilee"

They sang a fantastic hymn (#661 in the 1982 Hymnal) as the Sequence today at St. Thomas:  "They cast their nets in Galilee."  It's one I'd never heard before (probably the Marketing people discourage its use); the tune is "Georgetown," and the words are by William Alexander Percy:

They cast their nets in Galilee
Just off the hills of brown
Such happy simple fisherfolk
Before the Lord came down

Contented peaceful fishermen
Before they ever knew
The peace of God That fill'd their hearts
Brimful and broke them too.

Young John who trimmed the flapping sail,
Homeless, in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
Head-down was crucified.

The peace of God, it is no peace,
But strife closed in the sod,
Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing -
The marvelous peace of God.

No audio or video of this hymn online, unfortunately - not even of the tune; it's still under copyright, as are the words above.

That hymn, of course, matches up with the Gospel reading that followed:

Matthew 4:12-23

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

"Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles--
the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned."

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

The mass - the Missa Rigensis ("the Riga Mass") by Uģis Prauliņš - is one I've never heard before.  Here's the Kyrie:



Finally, in an amazing instance of cognitive-dissonance hymnody (considering "They cast their nets in Galilee" above), they sang "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" for the last hymn.   Hymn tune by CHH Parry ("Repton"); text by the Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!

Drop thy still dews of quietness
Till all our strivings cease:
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

Amen.

Here's that one, sung by the Choir of King's College Cambridge:

"Bible-Mindedness and Episcopalians"

Caelius has some really great things to say here.  I'm going to try to convince him to get this posted at one of the major Episcopal Church media outlets - but meantime, will you read it and link to it, if you read my blog?  It's very important.

If TEC can't make faith about "faith in daily life," it's all over, folks.  It takes some work and practice to be able to get grooved in and to articulate some of this stuff - but Caelius has helpfully offered some ideas for practices that people can engage in meanwhile; that should help a lot.

Here's the crucial stuff:

 Why Episcopalians Should Read and Discuss the Bible More

1. Your children have no idea what you believe.

Children, by necessity, have living memories similar in magnitude to one liturgical cycle. And chances are, they're hearing the readings only on Sunday. In the same way you discuss confidently what your children are learning in school, you need to be able to discuss confidently what they are learning in Sunday School and what is being said in church. My father discussed the sermon with me every Sunday when I was growing up. A solid grounding in the Bible (and how living, breathing Episcopalians read it) will give children a foundation for committing to Christ and practicing Christianity in the future and resist the attractions of more authoritarian approaches to following Christ. And if they don't come to believe, they will have a new appreciation for history, culture, and literary analysis.

2. We need a credible word spoken into our lives

In Paul Zahl's Grace in Practice , he writes about a ritual he suggests for every married couple. The first thing they should do in the morning, before they listen to the radio, check their e-mail etc. is: (1) read a short portion from the Bible together; (2) exchange prayer requests with one another; and (3) pray spontaneously. How very Evangelical. Anglo-Catholics may prefer an abbreviated Morning Prayer.

The reading of Scripture first thing in the morning is the important part. Zahl talks about the importance of a word being spoken into the marriage outside of it. Human communication inevitably is a place of struggle, as our incurvatus in se selves seek to be known and heard more than to know and listen. And indeed, the Bible (as long as the passage is from the Lectionary or chosen by a good random number generator with a key (there are 31,102 verses in the King James Version…) is ideally such a word. All the other words in our lives have an uncertain agenda. The ones we speak are ultimately self-promoting, and so also are the ones we hear from those like ourselves. We believe that the source of Scripture has an agenda that is to our benefit and speaks credibly, even if we do not hear Scripture credibly. Scripture is the foreign word we need to hear.

3. We need to discuss what he have in common beyond the institution

The fastest-growing churches are the ones to which people want to belong. That point may sound trivial, but it's not. The fastest-growing churches are the ones that find people who bring together those who belong together. One parish to which I belonged realized that there were a whole group of people interested in political Progressivism and liturgical worship. People drove there from fifty miles away. Their Christian Education hour was typically focused on politics, social ills, and culture. The most Bible was discussed might have been in the 20s and 30s group, which was mostly composed of Evangelicals who wanted to be Progressives and/or had been alienated by Evangelicalism.

If we want to create vital churches that are genuinely inclusive, we need to find affinity groups beyond politics, race, and class. And if we are Christians, the affinity group we need to seek is those who love and follow Jesus Christ. And the Holy Scriptures ultimately point to him.

Too many times when I am with church people, I find myself discussing politics, either that of the civil authorities or that of the Church (at the parochial through international levels). And when I bring the Bible into these discussions, I often hear, "I disagree with that." I don't hear, "I do not interpret that verse, passage, entire book in that way and here's why." So we devolve into the mere exchange of opinions and very little insight into Jesus.

I think Episcopal churches would be stronger (growth is another issue) if we could discuss the Bible with another in a way the demonstrated mutual engagement with the text. The Bible and the Sacraments are the most obvious foci of our unity, and they are the healthiest ones to discuss as well. Grounding ourselves in Scripture will make it easier to have conversations about the difficult institutional issues we often face.


4. We need to be able to talk with Barna's "Bible-minded" Christians as fellow disciples, not as the Other


This past Sunday, I was at an ecumenical service. The hosting pastor said on a couple occasions that he thanked us, "that we thought it not robbery" to attend. I guessed that it was a Biblical allusion, but I had no idea the reference. Google told me that it is the King James rendering of the phrase from the kenotic hymn of Philippians 2, "who being in the form of God, did not think equality with God something to be snatched at." (I admit that my memory of rendering this verse comes from translating it from the Vulgate.) I am still not sure how I feel about this allusion, but I recognize it as an incisive comment on ecumenism. To participate in a service like that does require that we humble ourselves. In the future, I will have something to discuss with the pastor in the future that does not dwell on the competition for souls or service opportunities that otherwise engages the visibly disunited Body of Christ.

"When Shall We Celebrate the Epiphany?" - and other tales from TEC

This post - an "interesting glimpse into our attitudes about the discipline of the church and our expectations of church members" - made me think again about the really formative nature of the Great Church Year.

The fact that almost every clergyperson on the mailing list Scott Gunn refers to said they were celebrating Epiphany on a Sunday, rather than as its own (very important) feast really does say something important, I think.    This is now a standard thing, and I suppose it would be easy to brush off concern about this as "liturgical fundamentalism" - except that we are a liturgical church that celebrates according to the Calendar of the Great Church Year.  When all the feasts are ignored - and the few that get celebrated get moved to Sunday - there really is no more Great Church Year.    And that means that there's little reason to belong to the Episcopal Church, in particular, at all anymore.

Anyway, here are the four major points Scott Gunn made in the post: 

First, the church will not grow by cheapening discipleship. One of the charisms of catholic Christianity is the discipline of following the liturgical year. It is not asking “too much” to expect people to walk and pray in the rhythms of the church year. To be sure, for all kinds of perfectly good reasons, not every person will be able to worship every Sunday and celebrate every Principal Feast. But we do people a disservice when we erase the expectation. We’ve seen the results of “I’m OK, you’re OK” Christianity, and it looks like steady, persistent decline in the church and in individual spiritual lives. The fruits of a serious commitment to discipleship are a growing church and a thriving spiritual life. We should mark the feasts of the universal church at the appointed time and invite people to celebrate.

Second, clergy leaders need to learn that their personal preferences must take a distant back seat to the common prayer — to the discipline — of our church. Whether or not I “like” a particular practice is almost irrelevant. It is the height of clerical hubris to deprive congregations of the richness of our liturgical heritage based on the preferences of the clergy leader. So what if I offer a mass and only a few people come? All who attend will be immeasurably enriched by the experience.

Third, congregations might discover that there is a substantial number of people who are actually eager to celebrate the feast days of the church in due course. In the parish I served, we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany on its day with a festive Holy Eucharist with all the trimmings: the Christmas/Epiphany pageant, the reading of the Epiphany proclamation, and the distribution blessed chalk for the blessing of homes in Epiphanytide. Our attendance was often comparable to our Sunday attendance, and many people expressed how delightful they found this occasion to be. It’s a fantastic way to cap off our celebration of the Christmas Season. Before concluding “no one will come,” maybe it’s worth trying. This won’t work in every setting, but I’d bet that it will work on many places.

Fourth, there’s no compelling reason to move the feast. If your congregation chooses not to celebrate all the Principal Feasts, so be it. Simply skip the Feast of the Epiphany and celebrate the Second Sunday of Christmas. One of the Gospel options is Matthew 2:1-12, so you can totally hear and preach about the journey of the magi and sing Epiphany hymns. You can mark this point in the salvation history without compromising the discipline of the church.

I'm totally on board with the point about clergy obedience; it's really not helpful to have a bunch of people in "leadership" (God, how I hate that word!) who do whatever they feel like doing.  We're Episcopalians by choice; we've joined this church for serious reasons - and believe it or not, one of the most important of the reasons is that the clergy are constrained by the Prayer Book.   The calendar and lectionary force priests to deal with the entire church year; this makes it less likely they'll subject their congregations to whatever hobby-horse they might happen to want to indulge.

That's what happens at the mega-church down the street - and we do know that address, if that were what we wanted.  The Great Church Year, by design, allows the faith of the Church to be the primary focus, rather than the whim of the rector.   If you don't want to follow the rules, then why would you want to be ordained in this church?   Those with authority issues should, truly, get some help for that (really:  it will make such a difference to your life!).  Episcopal priests are under authority, by definition - as is almost everybody else in the world, BTW.   None of us gets to do exactly what we feel like doing at work, either.

The thing this all makes clear, though, is this:   Christian faith is a habit.   It's a way of living - and "ways of living" are learned.   It takes time to acquire the habits that slowly form us; this is just a fact of life - a hard one, I guess, for a culture built on immediate gratification.

And the Great Church Year is, to my way of thinking, the primary habit of the Christian life.  It forms us in a very gentle, long-term-persistent way.   It does not insist; it graciously offers a way of life that changes us from the inside out.

At the post, I (once again!) recommended Full Homely Divinity, and its suggestions for following the Great Church Year at home, as a partial solution to this problem - and realized that actually it's a primary solution.   Because once this habit has become grooved - the habit of following the feasts and fasts, as the Church Year moves through its cycles - one's entire way of life is changed. 

And, BTW:  it makes weekly attendance at Divine Service completely natural and in fact a joy - something you don't want to miss.  Private and family devotions won't take away from communal worship; these things will increase attendance at communal worship.

In other words:  we need to stop worrying and talking about church services and start focusing on the Great Church Year and the Christian life itself.    We need to teach the feasts and fasts in-depth - and ways for parishioners to keep them in their own daily lives.  And this is what FHD does: it offers prayers and liturgies and funny little anecdotes and discussion of customs - including recipes for baked goods!  It helps people live the life of faith - and this is the only way, I do believe, that people will come to see how valuable faith is.  

Faith is different from no-faith - and this difference needs to be experienced.

This is not secondary; it's absolutely primary.    The Great Church Year is, perhaps, the Twelve Steps of the Church itself.  Since Anglicanism is minimalist in doctrine, it really needs to be maximalist on this account.  The GCY does offer real, productive practices for individuals throughout the year;  Advent is a time to explore the great themes of Salvation; Christmas is Joy; Epiphany lets us move into the mystical; Shrove Tuesday (if we encouraged the practice it's named for) and Ash Wednesday are days for Confession.  Lent offers the practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving; the long stretch of "Ordinary Time" is a time for considering the parables; etc.  The collects move through all these themes, and others, and describe the Christian life in all its facets, looking at it from hundreds of different directions.

None of this stuff will happen, though, if the Church Year is thought to be endlessly malleable and subject to whatever whim we happen to have at the moment.    It is being slowly and inexorably deformed by the choices we're making; we are all becoming C&E Christians.

Listen:  I stumbled upon the Great Church Year and its central, formative nature almost entirely by accident!  I started going to St. Mary's, and looking at the chant propers in the leaflet when I got home.  I started attending Lauds at the local convent, and writing Chantblog to talk about the things I was learning.  I started following the feasts and fasts and seasons in depth, in other words - and now I do it automatically.  If my parish closed - and we're getting warnings that lots of parishes will close - I will still do this, and still be able to worship, following along as the seasons pass.  If I move, and my local parish celebrates only U2Charists, I will still be able to celebrate according to the calendar.

But I simply wouldn't have found any of this without having stumbled into it - so to my way of thinking it needs to be engaged with and actively taught in the parishes now.

Derek's been talking about "prymers" and lay devotions for years now; to me, FHD is analogous in our contemporary context. 

This is where we need to put our emphasis, IMO; this is what "Episcopal evangelism" looks like.

Remember that Urban T. Holmes wrote, “....when Anglicanism is at its best its liturgy, its poetry, its music and its life can create a world of wonder in which it is very easy to fall in love with God.”  And isn't that what we're here for - for the sake of the love of God, that is?

Seen and heard today at Divine Service (11/10/13)

"....and His Kingdom shall have no end...."

"Letting go," three ways....

From A Member's-Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous; my bold.

Finally, there is the reversal of form which A.A.'s educational process takes.  The newcomer to A.A. is asked, not so much to learn new values, as to unlearn those he comes in with; not so much to adopt new goals, as to abandon old ones.  To my mind, one of the most significant sentences in the entire book Alcoholics Anonymous is this:  "Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely."  The rigidity with which even some nondrinking alcoholics will cling to the opinions, beliefs, and convictions they had upon entering A.A. is well-nigh incredible.  One of the major objectives of A.A. therapy is to help the alcoholic finally recognize these ideas and become willing to relinquish his death grip on them.

From Sr. Heléna Marie, CHS, in "What the Religious Life Is and Is Not"; my bold.

The religious life is the ultimate form of surrender. One brings all that one is and all that one has to God in a gesture of complete giving. It is a way of "coming to the desert". Like the desert mothers and fathers of the early Christian era, joining a religious community is a countercultural move away from mainstream culture and mores, to a radical lifestyle that flies in the face of societal values.

It is a way of saying that your life is now devoted to the One Thing (however you would define this; Jesus called it "the pearl of great price"). It is a life centered in prayer; this basic orientation is one of the ways in which we are countercultural.

It is community with all that means: difficult people, the "sandpaper effect" of challenging relationships, having to change when the impulse is not to change, and the joys of relationships and corporate life. It is a way of life designed to help one transcend the ego, which does not willingly go. This path involved intense struggle. The religious life is itself a vehicle of radical transformation.

From Matthew 18:2-4; my bold.

And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

"Letting go" is a freeing process; in A.A. we call it "becoming teachable."  It allows us to be open to new ideas - to grow and change and become more than we would otherwise be.   We can abandon old, false ideas and habits, and be renewed.

We can avoid, in other words, becoming sclerotic, rigid, tiresome bores; we can continually learn new things, and never have to be stuck in old patterns and belief systems.

"Self-emptying" is actually the most freeing (and interesting!) move we can ever make....

By the secret ladder, disguised....

In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised—oh, happy chance!—
In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

From St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul, the list of "spiritual imperfections" (AKA "character defects") as applied to "beginners" in the spiritual life continues; this chapter deals with issues that arise with respect to "avarice, in the spiritual sense."

Of some imperfections which some of these souls are apt to have, with respect to the second capital sin, which is avarice, in the spiritual sense.

Many of these beginners have also at times great spiritual avarice. They will be found to be discontented with the spirituality which God gives them; and they are very disconsolate and querulous because they find not in spiritual things the consolation that they would desire. Many can never have enough of listening to counsels and learning spiritual precepts, and of possessing and reading many books which treat of this matter, and they spend their time on all these things rather than on works of mortification and the perfecting of the inward poverty of spirit which should be theirs. Furthermore, they burden themselves with images and rosaries which are very curious; now they put down one, now take up another; now they change about, now change back again; now they want this kind of thing, now that, preferring one kind of cross to another, because it is more curious. And others you will see adorned with agnusdeis and relics and tokens, like children with trinkets. Here I condemn the attachment of the heart, and the affection which they have for the nature, multitude and curiosity of these things, inasmuch as it is quite contrary to poverty of spirit, which considers only the substance of devotion, makes use only of what suffices for that end and grows weary of this other kind of multiplicity and curiosity. For true devotion must issue from the heart, and consist in the truth and substance alone of what is represented by spiritual things; all the rest is affection and attachment proceeding from imperfection; and in order that one may pass to any kind of perfection it is necessary for such desires to be killed.

2. I knew a person who for more than ten years made use of a cross roughly formed from a branch that had been blessed, fastened with a pin twisted round it; he had never ceased using it, and he always carried it about with him until I took it from him; and this was a person of no small sense and understanding. And I saw another who said his prayers using beads that were made of bones from the spine of a fish; his devotion was certainly no less precious on that account in the sight of God, for it is clear that these things carried no devotion in their workmanship or value. Those, then, who start from these beginnings and make good progress attach themselves to no visible instruments, nor do they burden themselves with such, nor desire to know more than is necessary in order that they may act well; for they set their eyes only on being right with God and on pleasing Him, and therein consists their covetousness. And thus with great generosity they give away all that they have, and delight to know that they have it not, for God’s sake and for charity to their neighbour, no matter whether these be spiritual things or temporal. For, as I say, they set their eyes only upon the reality of interior perfection, which is to give pleasure to God and in naught to give pleasure to themselves.

3. But neither from these imperfections nor from those others can the soul be perfectly purified until God brings it into the passive purgation of that dark night whereof we shall speak presently. It befits the soul, however, to contrive to labour, in so far as it can, on its own account, to the end that it may purge and perfect itself, and thus may merit being taken by God into that Divine care wherein it becomes healed of all things that it was unable of itself to cure. Because, however greatly the soul itself labours, it cannot actively purify itself so as to be in the least degree prepared for the Divine union of perfection of love, if God takes not its hand and purges it not in that dark fire, in the way and manner that we have to describe.

"Darkness as my constant companion"

By Giles Fraser, at The Guardian.  In an online conversation with an atheist not long ago, I said that the spiritual life - worship, prayer, the way of thinking - was one of the primary things that helps me keep myself together enough to function.  (Said atheist proceeded to assure me that "You don't need God; you can stay sober on your own, using your inner strength and with help from good friends."  I told him how much that sounded like every conversation I'd ever had with religious fundamentalists; all fundamentalists, after all, know what's wrong with everybody else and feel sure they can prescribe the single correct answer - their own answer - to people they don't know or know anything at all about - no matter what any of us may have learned about ourselves from personal experience.)

Here's Fraser on the same topic:

There is a deafening voice in my head that keeps insisting I shouldn't write about this. Haven't we had enough of an overly confessional culture that encourages us to spill our emotional misery into the public realm, there to titillate or amuse or sell magazines? So it's with huge reluctance that I approach this subject. But more and more, I find I cannot write about faith without saying what faith struggles with. And why it matters, at least to me.

I try and put on a pretty good public face. And it's easy to become an expert at jokey, middle-distance relationships. But darkness, for a few years now, has been a constant companion. And I am ashamed to say that on a couple of occasions I have scared myself by peering a little too eagerly into the possibility of non-being.

Yes, the Romantic obsession with this sort of thing is total bollocks. But so, too, is the embarrassment that turns life into an endless game of let's pretend. The advantage with having gone down to the bottom of the pit is that the social niceties of pretending don't seem to matter any more. What's left to protect?

Three things help me: writing, psychotherapy and God. Actually, that should read four things. Other people can help, too. Or some of them, at least. And they are a godsend. But some also run away.  Perhaps my own brand of up-front unhappiness reminds them a little too closely of their own.

But it's the God bit I really want to talk about. The Bible is full of despair. Psalm 88 is a classic of the genre. It ends "darkness is my closest friend" – surely the inspiration behind the famous opening greeting of Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence. Despite this continual refrain from the scriptures – and Jesus's "My God, why hast thou forsaken me" deserves a special mention here, surely – the upbeat nature of so much modern Christianity tends to ignore such cries with an over-easy reference to being loved by God, or finding comfort or peace, or some such. I know nothing of easy Christianity. In fact, I rather despise it.

God, for me, is the name of the struggle not its simple elimination. It is the wound and not the bandage, the question not the answer.

And the crucial point about God is that he is other. Not me. Thus Christianity is a sort of training in dependency. An acceptance that this mortal coil does not supply its own justification. Thus suicide is not just the "only serious philosophical problem", as Camus maintained, it is the only serious theological one, too. To be or not to be is given existential torque by the sense that one's life is suspended from an invisible thread that is fastened to a point beyond one's comprehension or control. In other words, the centre of gravity in one's life is seen to be outside of oneself. Hence the extreme vulnerability.

I suspect the problem is not dissimilar for many atheists, too – it's just that, for them, the otherness is experienced as other people.

I decided to write about all this when I said to my therapist the other day that it really comes to something when it feels like my weekly therapy sessions are the only place and time where I can be open about all this. That even church cannot accommodate such dark thoughts, particularly in a priest. And yet, given the psalmist's cry, that has to be madness.

"We are only here for the medicine," said one of my lovely church wardens years ago.

But there is no medicine for the human condition. Simply mutual kindness, solidarity and humour, and a daily longing (called prayer) to be suspended from that invisible thread, held upright.

I plan to write more, later, about the general difficulty the church has in dealing with exceptions to the rule, as Fraser alludes to here at the end of this article.    In having what can be loosely defined as  "discussions" with people about Topic H over the course of the past 10 years or so, I've noticed that unless human beings fit into certain preferred classifications, they are generally ignored in its "pastoral theology."  This is especially noticeable in recent "conversations" about "same-sex marriage"; the usual reaction to the reality of gay persons is - if you're "defending traditional marriage" is now to move straight to the "Be fruitful and multiply" argument, AKA, the "married with kids" solution allegedly enjoined on everybody.

All that is quite interesting, I think - especially for a religion in which celibates and other non-procreatives have played such a major historical role.  The medieval church clearly had it far more together.

But this highlights a serious problem for religion, I believe; there are many people - perhaps like Fraser and me - who are really not cut out for family life.

This is only tangentially about Topic H, BTW; there are many, many people in this same situation - many who'd be greatly helped by having a faith life, I think.   The church generally doesn't know how to deal with us, though; it's been more interested in the rule at the expense of the exception.   That's because, I think, in its formative stage, it was trying to become stable and to "promote the general welfare."  Nothing at all wrong with either of those things, of course;  the recourse to proof-texting, though, as modern people are wont to do, seriously exacerbates a problem that - again, it appear to me - the medieval church had a far better handle on.

So, more on that later at some point.

"Mental illness and the loss of community"

From the Grand Haven Tribune:

One of the most significant contributions of Sigmund Freud to the psychology of religion was his understanding of the importance of a community for mental health.

Oct 23, 2013

In his book, "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego," he writes: "It appears that where a powerful impetus has been given to group formation, neuroses may diminish and, at all events temporarily, disappear." He goes on to point out how groups such as churches contribute greatly to a person's mental health: "Justifiable attempts have also been made to turn this antagonism between neuroses and group formation to therapeutic account."

The primary role of a church in pastoral care is providing a person with a loving, caring community. What has struck me about the biographies of the mass murderers in recent years is their lack of community — whether we are considering a church, a family, a romance, or even a strong group of friends. The picture that emerges is a lonely individual who spends much time in front of a computer screen or playing a violent video game.

There are many causes of mental illness: biological, cultural, developmental, abuse of drugs, lack of love and true intimacy. Often what is missing in this litany is the lack of community or its loss, which Freud pointed out does much psychic damage.

To get a glimpse of the power of such a loss, just recall your first feelings of being homesick. I first encountered that feeling when going off to summer camp at around 12, and sitting under a tree feeling all alone. But quickly the camp community made me feel at home away from home.

We can also understand the effects of a loss of community in families that suffer a divorce. Regardless of the reasons for a divorce, and there are some good ones (e.g., physical abuse, adultery, drug addiction), the psychic damage to all concerned can be horrific. The family unit is the building block of community life.

When families suffer from a divorce, if they were attending church, they often drop out. As a pastor, I used to hear constantly: "There is no place for me as a divorced person and now single in a church."

I know of churches which have fired staff members, including the chief pastor, because he or she went through a divorce, and most often it was not even initiated by this staff person. That is an example of churches not being Christian!

Freud pointed out that the rise of psychoanalysis was an effect of religious decline. People stopped going to their priests for confession, so they began seeing a psychotherapist. Psychotherapy through the power of a relationship can make great contributions to healing people who are isolated from family, church, and even the towns in which they live.

The rise of modern psychology is linked with the alienation that increased as people moved from family farms into large cities in the late 19th century and early 20th.

While living and working and studying at Boston State Hospital in 1976, I tried, along with my colleagues, to create community among the patients. Worship was one way we did this. Sadly, American prisons have replaced state mental hospitals as a place to warehouse the mentally ill (in New York City, the cost of one prisoner for one year is $167,731).

Due to overcrowding and the cost, the mentally ill are often rapidly let out of prisons without treatment. They then roam our streets and are called "the homeless." That is an apt metaphor for a person who has no community, no home, no family, no church.

The greatest challenge for the church today is being a warm community where everybody feels loved and cared for and nourished, and then reaching out to those who desperately need such love and care, especially the mentally ill wandering like ghosts among us.

Loneliness and isolation are perhaps the most painful of all the ills which plague us. Here the church has much to offer.

As Genesis 2:18 reads, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone.'" Adam needed community, a family and a home — and so do we.

— By the Rev. Henry Idema, Tribune community columnist

"Arvo Pärt in Conversation"

 From All Manner of Thing, a discussion of a new book about the composer.  Here's an interesting quote-within-a-quote, on the topic of spiritual struggle and metanoia:

[Pärt] makes it clear that the quest for a musical voice was not only a musical challenge: it was deeply personal and spiritual as well. He was dismayed by the manner in which musical composition in the mid-twentieth century was politicized: the use of western-style methods was considered “capitalist” by the Soviet authorities, and that same music was often considered “anti-capitalist” by western commentators. Part grew tired of this conflict, and his remarks are worth quoting at length:

“Do you want to know why I distanced myself from this music? It did it because for me by this time these conflicts had lost their power, and with it their meaning. One might say that I had come to terms with myself and with God — and in so doing, all personal demands on the world had receded into the background…

I have come to recognize that it is not my duty to struggle with the world, nor to condemn this or that, but first and foremost to know myself, since every conflict begins within ourselves. This does not mean that I am indifferent, but if someone wants to change the world then he must begin with himself. I am absolutely convinced of this. If one does not begin with oneself, every step towards the world will be nothing but a big lie and at the same time an attack, and this hidden aggressiveness tends to go on spreading. How to do this is quite a different story, but if one starts off with this idea, everything else appears in a new light.”

Talking to atheists online....

Question:  Why must all people consider the question of God?

I ask the atheist:  if God does not exist, then there is no reason to believe existence itself has any meaning at all - right?  If everything in the universe somehow simply began to exist, and operates  entirely by random chance (which is the current basic assumption about evolution, for instance), then clearly nothing has any inherent purpose.  This of course includes human beings; we are merely random collections of the various elementary particles, arranged in a particular physical form (in common with all other things that exist), apparently driven entirely by one primary motive force: doing whatever it takes to ensure the survival of our own genetic material.  (Well, look at that!  There is perhaps a "purpose" after all; now where did that come from, I wonder?  But never mind this for now.)

The atheist response:  What you say is true; there is no meaning at all inherent in the universe or in anything in it.  But we can create our own meaning.

I reply:   And what exactly is the difference between your desire to "create your own meaning" and mine, which is to find meaning in God?   Why is your "invented meaning" by definition superior to what you deride as my "invented meaning" (i.e., God)?  

And doesn't the whole idea of "creating meaning" violate your own assumptions anyway?  If the universe and everything in it is meaningless, as you claim, then aren't you by definition inventing something that you already know isn't there - which is the very thing you express scorn for in theists?   (The difference, actually, is that theists do believe in God, and so aren't implicated in the "invention of something they know isn't really there" problem, as you by definition are.)   Furthermore, at that point aren't you violating your own first principles, i.e., your assumption that there is nothing in the universe except what materially exists and can be empirically measured?   How does "meaning" fit into the materialist scheme at all?

And BTW:  isn't this actually a classic reductio ad absurdum result?

But....("The Secret")

Again from "A Hymn and a Secret," The Brothers Karamazov: 

"I will tell you all our secret," Mitya whispered hurriedly. "I  meant to tell you later, for how could I decide on anything without  you? You are everything to me. Though I say that Ivan is superior to  us, you are my angel. It's your decision will decide it. Perhaps  it's you that is superior and not Ivan. You see, it's a question of  conscience, question of the higher conscience- the secret is so  important that I can't settle it myself, and I've put it off till I  could speak to you. But anyway it's too early to decide now, for we  must wait for the verdict. As soon as the verdict is given, you  shall decide my fate. Don't decide it now. I'll tell you now. You  listen, but don't decide. Stand and keep quiet. I won't tell you  everything. I'll only tell you the idea, without details, and you keep  quiet. Not a question, not a movement. You agree? But, goodness,  what shall I do with your eyes? I'm afraid your eyes will tell me your  decision, even if you don't speak. Oo! I'm afraid! Alyosha, listen!  Ivan suggests my escaping. I won't tell you the details: it's all been  thought out: it can all be arranged. Hush, don't decide. I should go  to America with Grusha. You know I can't live without Grusha! What  if they won't let her follow me to Siberia? Do they let convicts get  married? Ivan thinks not. And without Grusha what should I do there  underground with a hammer? I should only smash my skull with the  hammer! But, on the other hand, my conscience? I should have run  away from suffering. A sign has come, I reject the sign. I have a  way of salvation and I turn my back on it. Ivan says that in  America, 'with the goodwill,' I can be of more use than underground.  But what becomes of our hymn from underground? What's America? America  is vanity again! And there's a lot of swindling in America, too, I  expect. I should have run away from crucifixion! I tell you, you know,  Alexey, because you are the only person who can understand this.  There's no one else. It's folly, madness to others, all I've told  you of the hymn. They'll say I'm out of my mind or a fool. I am not  out of my mind and I am not a fool. Ivan understands about the hymn,  too. He understands, only he doesn't answer- he doesn't speak. He  doesn't believe in the hymn. Don't speak, don't speak. I see how you  look! You have already decided. Don't decide, spare me! I can't live  without Grusha. Wait till after the trial!" 

  Mitya ended beside himself. He held Alyosha with both hands on his  shoulders, and his yearning, feverish eyes were fixed on his  brother's. 

  "They don't let convicts marry, do they?" he repeated for the  third time in a supplicating voice. 

  Alyosha listened with extreme surprise and was deeply moved. 

  "Tell me one thing," he said. "Is Ivan very keen on it, and  whose idea was it?" 

  "His, his, and he is very keen on it. He didn't come to see me  at first, then he suddenly came a week ago and he began about it  straight away. He is awfully keen on it. He doesn't ask me, but orders  me to escape. He doesn't doubt of my obeying him, though I showed  him all my heart as I have to you, and told him about the hymn, too.  He told me he'd arrange it; he's found out about everything. But of  that later. He's simply set on it. It's all a matter of money: he'll  pay ten thousand for escape and give me twenty thousand for America.  And he says we can arrange a magnificent escape for ten thousand." 

  "And he told you on no account to tell me?" Alyosha asked again. 

  "To tell no one, and especially not you; on no account to tell  you. He is afraid, no doubt, that you'll stand before me as my  conscience. Don't tell him I told you. Don't tell him, for anything." 

  "You are right," Alyosha pronounced; "it's impossible to decide  anything before the trial is over. After the trial you'll decide of  yourself. Then you'll find that new man in yourself and he will  decide." 

  "A new man, or a Bernard who'll decide a la Bernard, for I believe  I'm a contemptible Bernard myself," said Mitya, with a bitter grin. 

  "But, brother, have you no hope then of being acquitted?" 

  Mitya shrugged his shoulders nervously and shook his head. 

  "Alyosha, darling, it's time you were going," he said, with a  sudden haste. "There's the superintendent shouting in the yard.  He'll be here directly. We are late; it's irregular. Embrace me  quickly. Kiss me! Sign me with the cross, darling, for the cross I  have to bear to-morrow." 

  They embraced and kissed. 

"A hymn underground...."

From "A Hymn and a Secret," The Brothers Karamazov; it's the night before Mitya's trial.  His brother, the onetime monk Alyosha has come to visit him in prison. 

[Mitya] went up to Alyosha excitedly and kissed him. His eyes glowed. 

 "Rakitin wouldn't understand it," he began in a sort of exaltation; "but you, you'll understand it all. That's why I was thirsting for you. You see, there's so much I've been wanting to tell you for ever so long, here, within these peeling walls, but I haven't said a word about what matters most; the moment never seems to have come. Now I can wait no longer. I must pour out my heart to you. Brother, these last two months I've found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn't been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that- it's something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. Why was it I dreamed of that 'babe' at such a moment? 'Why is the babe so poor?' That was a sign to me at that moment. It's for the babe I'm going. Because we are all responsible for all. For all the 'babes,' for there are big children as well as little children All are 'babes.' I go for all, because someone must go for all. I didn't kill father, but I've got to go. I accept it. It's all come to me here, here, within these peeling walls. There are numbers of them there, hundreds of them underground, with hammers in their hands. Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man cannot live nor God exist, for God gives joy: it's His privilege- a grand one. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer! What should I be underground there without God? Rakitin's laughing! If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. One cannot exist in prison without God; it's even more impossible than out of prison. And then we men underground will sing from the bowels of the earth a glorious hymn to God, with Whom is joy. Hail to God and His joy! I love Him!" 

 Mitya was almost gasping for breath as he uttered his wild speech. He turned pale, his lips quivered, and tears rolled down his cheeks. 

 "Yes, life is full, there is life even underground," he began again. "You wouldn't believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling walls. Rakitin doesn't understand that; all he cares about is building a house and letting flats. But I've been longing for you. And what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond reckoning. I am not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you know, perhaps I won't answer at the trial at all.... And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies- I exist. I'm tormented on the rack- but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them! Brother Ivan-" 

 "What of brother Ivan?" interrupted Alyosha, but Mitya did not hear. 

 "You see, I never had any of these doubts before, but it was all hidden away in me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were surging up in me, that I used to drink and fight and rage. It was to stifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them. Ivan is not Rakitin, there is an idea in him. Ivan is a sphinx and is silent; he is always silent. It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right- that it's an idea made up by men? Then if He doesn't exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that. For whom is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity without God. Well, only a snivelling idiot can maintain that. I can't understand it. Life's easy for Rakitin. 'You'd better think about the extension of civic rights, or even of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.' I answered him, 'Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat, if it suits you, and make a rouble on every copeck.' He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer me that, Alexey. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it's a relative thing. Or isn't it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won't laugh if I tell you it's kept me awake two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity! Ivan has no God. He has an idea. It's beyond me. But he is silent."

How it's done

Another of Caelius' posts made me think about what makes the difference between a thriving parish and the ones that are sick or dying out.   The parish I attend now is a thriving one; in fact, it's one of the few I'm aware of in my diocese that is healthy and growing.

Here are some of my thoughts about why that has happened:

• Worship and faith.  There are 4 masses on Sunday (3 in the summer) - one being a 6 p.m. "Last Chance" mass. There is at least one prayer service every day, and I think on two days of the week a mass, too. Not very many come to these, usually - but the services are offered nonetheless, every day. The rector is a woman, and Anglo-Catholic in approach; most of the parishioners are pretty middle-of-the-road, though. There's a crucifix on the wall, but no other obvious signs of Anglo-Catholicism; they use no incense (except perhaps on special occasions - but I've never seen it).   (Oh, wait:  they do ring bells during the Consecration.)  Feast days for the upcoming week are listed in the weekly announcements bulletin that comes with the service bulletin. 
  
  The music director offers a great variety of hymns from the 1982 Hymnal, and occasionally hymns from other sources.  Hymns are briskly paced; this, I think, is actually more important than anybody would think.   The litany is sung on Advent 1 and Lent 1, and the late service is Rite 1 on the first Sunday of each month.  The congregation sings all the ordinary parts of the mass except the Creed; we sing the Pascha Nostrum instead of the Gloria during Easter, to Anglican Chant, and other seasonal anthems and canticles at other times of the year; we sing the Psalm except in summer when it's said.  (There are only two readings and the Psalm each week; the third is printed in the bulletin.)    The choir sings a great variety of music of all kinds, from all over the world. 
  
  I look very much forward to going every week, because I can count on a respectfully done and intelligent liturgy that I know well and don't have to feel afraid of.  I can absolutely rely on its detoxifying effects - and I feel, when I don't go, that I've missed something important.
  
  
• Care for members and others:  Many families belong, and there are many kids;  many or most of the kids are part of the very strong choir program. The parish does a lot of service in the neighborhood and around the diocese and beyond; they give service a very important place in their hierarchy of values, and are involved in many long-term projects. 
  
  For instance, they are helping a parish destroyed by last year's hurricane with rebuilding, and donate Prayer Books, etc.  This parish gets prayed for every Sunday.  They also raise money for some of the poorer churches in the area. The kids of the parish worked to raise money to buy a service dog for a young boy, also a member, who had a degenerative disease; he died eventually, though, before they could give him the dog - and they mourned deeply for him.   That's probably one of the most important things they'll ever have done in their lives; this kind of direct, personal care is even more important, I think, than almost any other kind of service.   Prayers for special days in the lives of members always come  from the Prayer Book; we pray once a month for those celebrating wedding anniversaries - and I believe I saw the beautiful Prayer #45, "For Families," used on Mother's Day. 
  
  There's an independent nonprofit counseling center on the grounds, originally founded by members of the parish.  While it's independent, its presence produces a feeling of confidence that there are people close by you could go to for help if you needed it.   I used to go to this parish for the Office and for things like Stations of the Cross, and the clergy remembered and welcomed me warmly when I started coming on Sundays, too.
  
  
• Stability.  The rector has been there for almost 20 years; I think this makes a huge difference.  It might be the single most important factor, actually, given her un-selfconscious Anglo-Catholic approach; there are also strong lay leaders who do a great deal of service (and officiate at the Daily Offices).  All of this is a great example of consistency, constancy, grounding in prayer, and dedication.  Consistent, dependable worship services every day of each week, and leaders who continue to be willing to spend their energy on all this, every week, for two decades:  that's an impressive legacy these days.   I believe the average tenure of a priest now is less than 6 years, and continues to shrink.  
  
  The rector always seems to hire young curates, usually somebody recently ordained; this means that the rector must preside at every mass, for at least six months - but she continues this practice faithfully.  They get very good training.  The music director, too, has been there for a couple of decades; she has her own choral ensemble outside the parish which is well known and highly regarded in the local area.  
  
  What has made the difference here is that the rector - and I think the music director, too - have actually dedicated the greater part of their work lives (and thus their hearts) to this parish.  They have built up something meant to last; they are, unfortunately, a vanished breed - but they are the ones who've made this parish what it is.  It's this kind of long-term dedication and constancy that matters.
• Energy.  It may be quite difficult to combine this kind of long-view investment in stability with energy and freshness and openness to new ideas, but they are able to do it.  This seems to me the absolute best of Anglicanism, actually.
  
  
• Egos checked at the door.   Every service is done by the book (the 1979 BCP, that is); rubrics are followed.  This demonstrates that the rector is able to keep her own ego in check, and can obey rules.  It also helps the congregation to memorize the service so we can actually pray, and not have to be looking down at the bulletin all the time.  The music director uses settings everybody knows for the service music.  Nobody makes any attempt to be special, cute, or to put an individual spin on any part of the liturgy.    Nobody's there for the sake of attracting attention to themselves, or to power-drive their own agendas over everybody else.  (You might be surprised how hard this is to come by!)
  
  The fact that the rector is able to low-key her Anglo-Catholicism, for the sake of her parishioners' worship style, yet still live by, and teach and preach it - well, that's another example of the ability to "check one's ego at the door." And, BTW: it also demonstrates that Anglo-Catholicism is not actually mostly about birettas.
  
  
• Helping kids.   The choirs are very important to the kids and the parents, it's clear.  There are also scholarships for seniors going to college; choir trips to RSCM events during the summer; pilgrimages (they just went to a New Mexico monastery) and mission trips; summer Bible school; movie nights; Compline for Kids; pizza nights.  The music program is very central, though - and brings kids from other neighborhoods in, too, and other choirs, and other people who like to sing.  What's important about this is the same thing we always talk about:  healthy, grounded, dependable faith is a slow process.  People aren't going to get it immediately; after all, it took me 10 years to really feel at home with almost everything in the liturgy.  So have people sing, while they're waiting and learning!  Give them something valuable while you're teaching them something even more valuable.
  
  

I really don't think it's more complicated than that - but of course, that's a lot.  This church is growing and healthy; they are actually spending money building, rather than digging into their endowment.   All this, in a college town in the Northeast.

There is a lot going on, thanks to a dedicated, energetic, extremely hard-working, faithful rector who doesn't think it's all about her, and works at helping people find a stable, rich, beneficial  faith - something that's clearly at the very center of her own life.

The Episcopal Church really doesn't have to die, you know.

"We Believe In The God Who Arrives"

Caelius has a nice one up today at Monastery of the Remarkable English Martyrs. I especially like the thing about surprise:

I found this observation from Fr. Charles OFM Cap. to pair well with the passage from William James quoted by A Thinking Reed

A merely human religiosity can see prayer as an addressing of ourselves to a deity somewhere up in the sky, either literally or in some rarefied sky more palatable to persons imbued with modern science. [...] From the call of Abraham to the Resurrection appearances, Christian faith speaks of a God who arrives, who is adventitious. He is not a supreme being who must be pulled down from the sky or a cthonic power that must be conjured up from the netherworld. Rather, he is a Presence discovered, sometimes as a surprise, as with Abraham and the three men, or simply recognized precisely when he calls us by name, as with the Risen Lord and Mary Magdalene. Prayer and adoration, then, as the postures that make us disciples of Jesus Christ, are acts of hospitality, of graciously receiving the Presence of God as he arrives in the particular circumstances of our days.