"Kindling: Charlie Heeley"

Charlie Heeley is the Student Leader Episcopal-Lutheran Ministries at the University of North Carolina-Pembroke.

"New Course: Lent for Families with Kim Baker"

I'm delighted to report that ChurchNext sent out this email this morning.   This, to me, is exactly the right path for the church to follow now:  an emphasis on the Great Church Year and on how individuals and especially families can observe it on a daily basis.  For me at least, "daily" is the whole point of the thing; "church services" once a week just won't do it.   (In A.A. terms:  people would never get sober if they attended only one meeting each week; transformation is a daily habit that includes reading, talking to others on the phone or in-person, working on the Steps - self-examination, confession, prayer, meditation, etc. - and in general learning an entirely new way to live life.)

I've been yammering about this for years, and pointing often to Full Homely Divinity for all its wonderful at-home (i.e. "homely") suggestions; this looks like another terrific step in just the right direction.  Here's the content of the email; my bolding:

Lent is a great opportunity not only for personal spiritual growth, but for the growth of the spirituality of families. This course is filled with practical tips from long-time educator and canon to the Washington National Cathedral Kim Baker who tells us how Lent offers an unparalleled opportunity for families to grow in Christ.

One blessing of the Church calendar is the cycle of life if mirrors in the lives of all Christians.


Lent is our wilderness because we all experience this time in our lives.  In this 45-minute course, Kim Baker shows us how Lent can be used to tap into these wilderness times as families.  Lessons include:

Why Lent Is for Families
Lenten Themes for Families
Lenten Activities for Families I
Lenten Activities for Families II

 This course is ideal for families and educators looking to make the most out of Lent for families.

Find out more about Lent for Families here.

The Rev. Canon Kim Baker is the canon pastor at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. She is a lifelong educator specializing in children and families.

Hurrah!

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.....



.

"Geel's ancient community cares for the mentally ill"

Really interesting article by Mike Jay in Aeon.   I knew, when I started reading, that the church was somehow involved in this; I knew, right away, that it could only have been the church, in fact.  Outcasts, the oppressed, the tormented and afflicted:  these are the constituents of the Crucified.

Some excerpts (my bolding):

Half an hour on the slow train from Antwerp, surrounded by flat, sparsely populated farmlands, Geel (pronounced, roughly, ‘Hyale’) strikes the visitor as a quiet, tidy but otherwise unremarkable Belgian market town. Yet its story is unique. For more than 700 years its inhabitants have taken the mentally ill and disabled into their homes as guests or ‘boarders’. At times, these guests have numbered in the thousands, and arrived from all over Europe. There are several hundred in residence today, sharing their lives with their host families for years, decades or even a lifetime. One boarder recently celebrated 50 years in the Flemish town, arranging a surprise party at the family home. Friends and neighbours were joined by the mayor and a full brass band.


Among the people of Geel, the term ‘mentally ill’ is never heard: even words such as ‘psychiatric’ and ‘patient’ are carefully hedged with finger-waggling and scare quotes. The family care system, as it’s known, is resolutely non-medical. When boarders meet their new families, they do so, as they always have, without a backstory or clinical diagnosis. If a word is needed to describe them, it’s often a positive one such as ‘special’, or at worst, ‘different’. This might in fact be more accurate than ‘mentally ill’, since the boarders have always included some who would today be diagnosed with learning difficulties or special needs. But the most common collective term is simply ‘boarders’, which defines them at the most pragmatic level by their social, not mental, condition. These are people who, whatever their diagnosis, have come here because they’re unable to cope on their own, and because they have no family or friends who can look after them.

The origins of the Geel story lie in the 13th century, in the martyrdom of Saint Dymphna, a legendary seventh-century Irish princess whose pagan father went mad with grief after the death of his Christian wife and demanded that Dymphna marry him. To escape the king’s incestuous passion, Dymphna fled to Europe and holed up in the marshy flatlands of Flanders. Her father finally tracked her down in Geel, and when she refused him once more, he beheaded her. Over time, she became revered as a saint with powers of intercession for the mentally afflicted, and her shrine attracted pilgrims and tales of miraculous cures.

In 1349, a church was built on the outskirts of the town around Saint Dymphna’s memorial, and in 1480 a dormitory annex was added to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims. When the stream of visitors overflowed the allotted space, townspeople started to house them in their homes, farms and stables. During the Renaissance, Geel became famous as a place of sanctuary for the mad, who arrived and stayed for reasons both spiritual and opportunistic. Some pilgrims came in hope of a cure. In other cases, it seems that families from local villages took the chance to abandon troublesome relatives whom they couldn’t afford to keep. The people of Geel absorbed them all as an act of charity and Christian piety, but also put them to work as free labour on their farms.

Today, the system continues along much the same lines. A boarder is treated as a member of the family: involved in everything, and particularly encouraged to form a strong bond with the children, a relationship that is seen as beneficial to both parties. The boarder’s conduct is expected to meet the same basic standards as everybody else’s, though it’s also understood that he or she might not have the same coping resources as others. Odd behaviour is ignored where possible, and when necessary dealt with discreetly. Those who meet these standards are ‘good’; others can be described as ‘difficult’, but never ‘bad’, ‘dumb’ or ‘crazy’. Boarders who are unable to cope on this basis will be readmitted to the hospital: this is inevitably seen as a punishment, and everyone hopes the stay ‘inside’ will be as brief as possible.

The people of Geel don’t regard any of this as therapy: it’s simply ‘family care’. But throughout the town’s long history, many both inside and outside the psychiatric profession have wondered whether this is not only a form of therapy in itself, but perhaps the best form there is.

However we might categorise or diagnose their conditions, and whatever we believe their cause to be — whether genetics or childhood trauma or brain chemistry or modern society — the ‘mentally ill’ are in practice those who have fallen through the net, who have broken the ties that bind the rest of us in our social contract, who are no longer able to connect. If these ties can be remade so that the individual is reintegrated with the collective, doesn’t ‘family care’ amount to therapy? Even, perhaps, the closest we can approach to an actual cure?

Modern psychiatry was born in the 19th century, and for the first generation of psychiatrists, ‘the Geel question’ was central to the revolution they were attempting to bring about. For many, the system was a dismal relic of the Middle Ages, where the mad were condemned to a life of drudgery and neglect under the lax oversight of the Church. Shut away from the modern world in quasi-feudal isolation, they were denied the benefits of new medical expertise, and with it, any chance of proper treatment.

For others, however, Geel was a beacon of the progressive ideas that came to be known as ‘moral management’. Freeing the insane from their chains and madhouses, providing them with fresh air, occupational therapies and the chance to patch themselves back into normal life — this was treatment in itself. Philippe Pinel, the founding father of French psychiatry who was legendary for ‘striking the chains off the mad’ at the Salpetrière asylum in Paris, declared that ‘the farmers of Geel are arguably the most competent doctors; they are an example of what may turn out to be the only reasonable treatment of insanity and what doctors from the outset should regard as ideal’. His student Jean-Étienne Esquirol, who became the next generation’s leading reformer of mental hospitals, visited Geel in 1821 and was astonished by the sight of hundreds of lunatics wandering freely and calmly around the town and countryside. He praised the tolerance of a system where ‘the mad are elevated to the dignity of the sick’.
....

Today, there are around 300 boarders in Geel: less than a tenth of its pre-war peak and falling fast. While many locals believe family care will endure, it has become a markedly smaller part of town life, and others suspect that this generation will be the last to maintain it. Why is this deeply rooted and universally praised system suddenly on the point of disappearing?

The limiting factor is not demand but supply. Few families are now able or willing to take on a boarder. Few now work the land or need help with manual labour; these days most are employed in the thriving business parks outside town, working for multinationals such as Estée Lauder and BP. Dual-income households and apartment-living mean that most families can no longer offer care in the old-fashioned way. People remain proud of the tradition, and credit it with giving Geel a broad-minded and tolerant ethos, one that has made it attractive to international businesses and visitors (these days it is probably best known for its annual reggae festival). But the town is no exception to the march of modernity and the irreversibly loosening social ties that come in its wake.

Modern aspirations — the increasing desire for mobility and privacy, timeshifted work schedules, and the freedom to travel — disrupt the patterns on which daily care depends. Increasing wealth is also a disincentive: most of the burden of care always fell on the poorer families, who counted on the supply of free labour and state payments to lift them above subsistence. The state now pays around €40 ($55) per day for boarders, of which only half is passed on to the families: hardly a financial incentive for most, these days.

.....

At the same time, Geel’s story does suggest that psychiatry’s role could be limited, perhaps dramatically so: not at the centre of mental healthcare but on its periphery, as a backstop to the community. In an ideal world, might not the modern psychiatric clinic shrink back towards the size of the 19th-century hospital: a discreet ‘inside’, as remote from the majority of patients’ lives as possible?Yet this would demand a reform not simply of medicine but of society itself. It’s ironic but probably not coincidental that the need for a community response to mental illness is becoming obvious just as the structures that might provide it are failing. The boarder who celebrated 50 years in residence is by no means exceptional: another, recently deceased at the age of 100, had spent 80 years with the same family, in the care of successive generations to whom she had been first like a daughter, then a sister and finally an aunt. Who would not wish to live in a community where such extraordinary resources of time, attention and love were available to those who needed them — but who these days can imagine being in a position to offer them?

This is, in yet another form, the tragedy of the commons: our liberation as individuals to create lives of our own choosing places unsustainable pressures on the type of society that most of us would choose to live in. We might define mental ill-health in medical terms, but this is not enough to confine its treatment within the medical frame. If it is in practice a condition that has exhausted the capacity of the individual and the social support available, it’s bound to manifest more intensely in an atomised society where insoluble problems devolve onto the sufferer alone. To take up these problems on behalf of others demands, all too often, more than their own loved ones can give or the state can provide. As mental illness proliferates and outpaces the psychiatric resources available to manage it, Geel’s story offers a vision, in equal parts sobering and inspiring, of what the alternative might look like.

Just a very interesting piece, I think, about some of what we've lost amid some of our gains.

More at the link

"'Catholic' confession is good for the soul - says Archbishop of Canterbury"

In the Telegraph.   Things are happening! 

The Most Rev Justin Welby advised churchgoers that it could be an “enormously
powerful” experience to unburden themselves to a confessor, even if it was
not always a “bunch of laughs”.

His comments came as he addressed the heads of other churches – including the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England Wales, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols – about divisions between Christians.

Although Archbishop Welby comes from the evangelical wing of Anglicanism, his personal spiritual director is a Swiss Roman Catholic priest, Fr Nicolas Buttet, and he is a strong advocate of Catholic worship styles.

He spoke of being part of a wider “catholic tradition”, adding: “I’ve learnt over the last 10 years about the great sacrament of reconciliation: confession.

“It is enormously powerful and hideously painful when it’s done properly … it’s really horrible when you go to see your confessor – I doubt you wake up in the morning and think, this is going to be a bunch of laughs.

“It’s really uncomfortable. But through it God releases forgiveness and absolution and a sense of cleansing.”

He acknowledged that he had his own personal struggles, remarking: “I’m an Archbishop; I know about the absence of humility. I struggle with it.”

Although more commonly associated with Catholicism, the Church of England has long offered a form of confession to worshippers, on request.

Anglican priests meet parishioners to hear confession face to face, often in their own home, without such trappings as confessional booths, and offer absolution for sins.

Speaking at a meeting at Lambeth Palace, organised by the group “Churches Together in England”, he also urged Christians to recognise the Church’s racist past.

“I often think about the fact that in the 1960s when Afro-Caribbean people first came to this country they were not made welcome in our churches,” he said.

“It’s the reality; it was a sin, a very bad sin.”

"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

Seen and heard yesterday at Divine Service

As I walked into the church, I realized it was a feast day of some sort; beautiful fresh white vestments were at the altar, and I saw the priest wearing the white chasuble.   I thought perhaps Holy Cross day was being commemorated at first - but it didn't seem likely, since this parish is pretty by-the-book, and it would be really very out of the ordinary for the rector to replace Sunday - a feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ - with a feast day that had occurred the day before, even a major one like Holy Cross.

It turned out to be a day for the Baptisms of two infant boys.  (Another baptism had taken place at the earlier service as well.)  So, the white - the traditional color of Baptism as well as for high feast days.

I actually really like Baptisms; I've always loved the opening verse-response since I first heard it:

Celebrant      There is one Body and one Spirit;
People          There is one hope in God's call to us;
Celebrant      One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism;
People          One God and Father of all. 

This comes directly from Ephesians 4; I first heard it at my first parish, where the rector was actually embarrassed by it.  I guess he found it "exclusionary."  That parish, in fact, constantly rewrote every part of whatever liturgy was in use, so I'm not sure how this sneaked through; perhaps the person being baptized requested the service as-is, from the Prayer Book.  I found it immensely beautiful - very like a chant:  One, one, one, one - that word repeated over and over again.  It said, all these things are unified.  It is a prayer for actual unity, as well as mystical invocation of the Unity of the One God and of our own unity in and with God - and then unity within ourselves, too, which for me is never nothing.

I love saying the Apostles' Creed.  I keep wondering, too, why we're continually bombarded by tales of the "sordid history" of the Nicene Creed, and of the horror of using it during worship - when it's really just a bit more in-depth than the Apostles' Creed, and contains mostly the same content.   The AC does go way, way back to the "early church" everybody's always raving in favor of and pretending hoping to emulate, so I really don't get the whole clutching-at-our-pearls reaction to the NC, frankly. 

On this day there were dozens of kids in the congregation; most of the people there were friends of the families whose babies were being baptized.  The font is off in a corner at the front, near the sanctuary itself; there's not much room there, but the priest invited all the kids up to sit around close so they could see - and nearly all did so.  That's a nice touch.

My favorite part of baptism is actually the chrismation, and the pronouncement that "You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ's own forever."  That's a beautiful idea.   I generally really like anything that has to do with Chrism, too!  For some reason, that particular ritual/gesture really appeals to me.

After the Chrismation, the priest held a candle up so the baby could see it, and pronounced:  "You are the light of the world."   (Along with something else I don't quite remember at the moment.)  Naturally, the baby is fascinated by the flame, and stares directly at it while this is going on; that's another really wonderful thing, since the congregation can see the baby's curiosity in his eyes and sweet young face.  (i.e., his "inquiring and discerning heart.")

I sort of smiled during the reading from Exodus, in which God was considering smiting the Israelites for their worship of the Golden Calf - but then changed his mind.  (Apparently "impassibility" and "unchangeability" both  took a back seat there for a minute.)   I wondered if there were many among the  families' friends who weren't used to hearing things like this, and how they'd respond.  (But I noticed later that most in attendance went up to receive Communion, and that there was lots of crossing going on among the older relatives - and realized there were a lot of Catholics - or perhaps ex-Catholics - in attendance.  One woman who received Communion in her seat didn't even look at the chalice when it was offered - another clear sign of a Catholic background.  Interesting, too, about the reception of Communion; when I first started coming to church, about 12 years ago, and got involved in online discussions about it, Catholics seemed to have been very opposed to the practice of reception of Communion outside the Catholic Church.  Now it seems far more common, even in that short period of time.)

The Gospel reading was the parable of the lost sheep: 

“What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?  When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’  I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

The preacher pointed out that in fact it was quite unlikely that a shepherd would leave that huge flock - 100 sheep all told - unguarded and unprotected, in order to find the lost one.  Interesting idea, given that Jesus uses the "What man among you would not...." opening.

The collect for today has always been interesting to me on account of its circularity!:

O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

None of the hymns or music particularly struck me on this day, except the newer hymn "Now the Silence Now the Peace," sung for Communion; again, this seemed like a meditative chant to me.    When I first came to the church, I really didn't like a lot of the hymns in the 1982 Hymnal; they seemed too old and slow and emotionless - and often the tunes were just plain unattractive.  For some reason, these always seem to be used during this long stretch of Ordinary Time.  I can grin and bear it, though, and sing along anyway.

"Are we still a Church capable of warming hearts?"

At "catholicity and covenant" today:

Considerable attention is being given to Francis' address to the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean, it being regarded as setting out the institutional agenda for his pontificate.  For catholicity and covenant, however, more striking was his address to the Brazilian RC episcopate.  What we see in this address is how Francis understands the missionary Church - of what it means to be a Church with the ability to warm hearts, to authentically bear to the world the grace and love of the Crucified and Risen One. Below are some extracts from the address.

The subtitles are based on the language Francis employed.  

The Grammar of Mystery  

A Church which makes room for God’s mystery; a Church which harbours that mystery in such a way that it can entice people, attract them. Only the beauty of God can attract. God’s way is through enticement, allure. God lets himself be brought home. He awakens in us a desire to keep him and his life in our homes, in our hearts. He reawakens in us a desire to call our neighbours in order to make known his beauty. Mission is born precisely from this divine allure, by this amazement born of encounter.

Icon of Emmaus  

We need a Church unafraid of going forth into their night. We need a Church capable of meeting them on their way. We need a Church capable of entering into their conversation. We need a Church able to dialogue with those disciples who, having left Jerusalem behind, are wandering aimlessly, alone, with their own disappointment, disillusioned by a Christianity now considered barren, fruitless soil, incapable of generating meaning ...

Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people’s side, of doing more than simply listening to them; a Church which accompanies them on their journey; a Church able to make sense of the “night” contained in the flight of so many of our brothers and sisters from Jerusalem; a Church which realizes that the reasons why people leave also contain reasons why they can eventually return. But we need to know how to interpret, with courage, the larger picture.

I would like all of us to ask ourselves today: are we still a Church capable of warming hearts? A Church capable of leading people back to Jerusalem? Of bringing them home? Jerusalem is where our roots are: Scripture, catechesis, sacraments, community, friendship with the Lord, Mary and the apostles… Are we still able to speak of these roots in a way that will revive a sense of wonder at their beauty?  

Slow Church

We see a desperate need for calmness, I would even say slowness. Is the Church still able to move slowly: to take the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and reassemble? Or is the Church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency? Dear brothers, let us recover the calm to be able to walk at the same pace as our pilgrims, keeping alongside them, remaining close to them, enabling them to speak of the disappointments present in their hearts and to let us address them.  

Church as womb of mercy  

Concerning pastoral conversion, I would like to recall that “pastoral care” is nothing other than the exercise of the Church’s motherhood. She gives birth, suckles, gives growth, corrects, nourishes and leads by the hand … So we need a Church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy. Without mercy we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of “wounded” persons in need of understanding, forgiveness, love.

(The painting is Daniel Bonnell's The Road to Emmaus #2, 2003.)

"Rebel pope urges Catholics to shake up dioceses"

From Huffington Post, HT Pray Tell.  My bold; I'm really liking this guy so far (although certainly the HP headline is a bit over the top).  To my mind, there's nothing more exciting than somebody who understands and believes that human beings have both physical needs and a "hunger for a happiness that only God can satisfy" - and who aims to seriously address both - while at the same time acting on the idea that the church itself has to be a place of repentance (AKA "perpetual change and growth").

When the church can consistently apply its own principles of metanoia to itself - well, at that point we'll really have something.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Pope Francis showed his rebel side Thursday, urging young Catholics to shake up the church and make a "mess" in their dioceses by going out into the streets to spread the faith. It's a message he put into practice by visiting one of Rio's most violent slums and opening the church's World Youth Day on a rain-soaked Copacabana Beach.

Francis was elected pope on a mandate to reform the church, and in four short months he has started doing just that: He has broken long-held Vatican rules on everything from where he lays his head at night to how saints are made. He has cast off his security detail to get close to his flock, and his first international foray as pope has shown the faithful appreciate the gesture.

Dubbed the "slum pope" for his work with the poor, Francis received a rapturous welcome in the Varginha shantytown, part of a slum area of northern Rio so violent it's known as the Gaza Strip. The 76-year-old Argentine seemed entirely at home, wading into cheering crowds, kissing people young and old and telling them the Catholic Church is on their side.

"No one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world!" Francis told a crowd of thousands who braved a cold rain and stood in a muddy soccer field to welcome him. "No amount of peace-building will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes a part of itself."

It was a message aimed at reversing the decline in the numbers of Catholics in most of Latin America, with many poor worshippers leaving the church for Pentecostal and evangelical congregations. Those churches have taken up a huge presence in favelas, or shantytowns such as Varginha, attracting souls with nuts-and-bolts advice on how to improve their lives.

The Varginha visit was one of the highlights of Francis' weeklong trip to Brazil, his first as pope and one seemingly tailor-made for the first pontiff from the Americas.

The surprise, though, came during his encounter with Argentine pilgrims, scheduled at the last minute in yet another sign of how this spontaneous pope is shaking up the Vatican's staid and often stuffy protocol.

He told the thousands of youngsters, with an estimated 30,000 Argentines registered, to get out into the streets and spread their faith and make a "mess," saying a church that doesn't go out and preach simply becomes a civic or humanitarian group.

"I want to tell you something. What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses!" he said, speaking off the cuff in his native Spanish. "I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!"

Apparently realizing the radicalness of his message, he apologized in advance to the bishops at home.

Later Thursday, he traveled in his open-sided car through a huge crowd in the pouring rain to a welcoming ceremony on Copacabana beach. It was his first official event with the hundreds of thousands of young people who have flocked to Rio for World Youth Day. Vatican officials estimated the crowd at 1 million.

Cheering pilgrims from 175 nations lined the beachfront drive to catch a glimpse of the pontiff, with many jogging along with the vehicle behind police barricades. The car stopped several times for Francis to kiss babies – and take a long sip of his beloved mate, the traditional Argentine tea served in a gourd with a straw, which was handed up to him by someone in the crowd.

After he arrived at the beach-front stage, though, the crowd along the streets melted away, driven home by the pouring rain that brought out vendors selling the plastic ponchos that have adorned cardinals and pilgrims alike during this unseasonably cold, wet week.

In an indication of the havoc wreaked by four days of steady showers, organizers made an almost unheard-of change in the festival's agenda, moving the Saturday vigil and climactic Sunday Mass to Copacabana Beach from a rural area 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the city center. The terrain of the area, Guaratiba, had turned into a vast field of mud, making the overnight camping plans of pilgrims untenable.

The news was welcome to John White, a 57-year-old chaperone from the Albany, New York, diocese who attended the past five World Youth Days and complained that organization in Rio was lacking.

"I'm super relieved. That place is a mud pit and I was concerned about the kid's health and that they might catch hypothermia," he said. "That's great news. I just wish the organizers would have told us."

Francis' visit to the Varginha slum followed in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, who visited two such favelas during a 1980 trip to Brazil, and Mother Teresa, who visited Varginha itself in 1972. Her Missionaries of Charity order has kept a presence in the shantytown ever since.

Like Mother Teresa, Francis brought his own personal history to the visit: As archbishop of Buenos Aires, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio frequently preached in the poverty-wracked slums of his native city, putting into action his belief that the Catholic Church must go to the farthest peripheries to preach and not sit back and wait for the most marginalized to come to Sunday Mass.

Francis' open-air car was mobbed on a few occasions as he headed into Varginha's heavily policed, shack-lined streets, but he never seemed in danger. He was showered with gifts as he walked down one of the slum's main drags without an umbrella to shield him from the rain. A well-wisher gave him a paper lei to hang around his neck and he held up another offering – a scarf from his favorite soccer team, Buenos Aires' San Lorenzo.

"Events like this, with the pope and all the local media, get everyone so excited," said Antonieta de Souza Costa, a 56-year-old vendor and resident of Varginha. "I think this visit is going to bring people back to the Catholic Church."

Addressing Varginha's residents, Francis acknowledged that young people in particular have a sensitivity toward injustice.

"You are often disappointed by facts that speak of corruption on the part of people who put their own interests before the common good," Francis told the crowd. "To you and all, I repeat: Never yield to discouragement, do not lose trust, do not allow your hope to be extinguished."

It was a clear reference to the violent protests that paralyzed parts of the country in recent weeks as Brazilians furious over rampant corruption and inefficiency within the country's political class took to the streets.

Francis blasted what he said was a "culture of selfishness and individualism" that permeates society today, demanding that those with money and power share their wealth and resources to fight hunger and poverty.

"It is certainly necessary to give bread to the hungry – this is an act of justice. But there is also a deeper hunger, the hunger for a happiness that only God can satisfy," he said.

 I'm very much hoping he won't deeply disappoint me by going anti-gay....

In the meantime.....

It seems the church no longer has faith in the long-term formative nature of the liturgy, but wishes to provide people some sort of "immediate" experience that will impress them and keep them interested. 

I don't deny those kinds of experiences can be very helpful; I had a powerful spiritual experience early on myself, and it absolutely kept me coming when probably nothing else would or could have.  It gave me a feeling of being "called."  Perhaps this was essential for me, because of the whole gay thing; I doubt I'd have had the patience or forbearance to put up with the church and all its nonsense otherwise.

Of course, that particular issue does not apply to most people.  But, it does demonstrate, I think, that the church needs to provide people with a reason to continue attending while the slow, methodical work of  "formation" goes on.

The word is that English Cathedrals are seeing a pronounced uptick in attendance these days.  This is probably happening for two reasons:  a) the great music and beautiful liturgy, and b) the anonymity they provide.  When I first came around, I preferred going to large churches so I could come and go as I wished, without getting involved in any way.  And of course I loved going to churches with good music; I'm lucky to live in an area where it's easy to find those.  This is a terrific entree to the life of faith - the best of the ways it can reach other people.

The Cathedral thing isn't going to happen in the U.S., though.   We don't have such embedded traditions - and unfortunately, in my experience American Cathedrals are worse than parish churches when it comes to hokey liturgical "innovation."   And Americans don't tend to go to church for the sake of  "the beauty of holiness" anyway; church is much more about "getting saved" in the Evangelical sense - or else a political and/or cultural affiliation or social obligation.  There are other reasons, too, of course - many people do come because they hold to the faith, even if they come for some of the other reasons as well! - but "beauty" isn't generally one of them.  In addition, Americans are impatient, and tend to key on the loudest and latest thing; there's not much appreciation for anything old or understated.

And the liturgy is archaic, let's face it; that's part of the attraction.   (And this, to me, is the amusing thing when churchpeople argue against, for instance, ad orientem.  As if "facing the people" during the consecration of the bread and wine were any less strange and archaic for those outside the church!)

In any case:  the stranger the better, I say.  Do something impressively odd and beautiful, and you'll get people's attention.  It happened for me, just this way, in fact; when I first saw a priest genuflect in front of the altar at the Consecration, I was deeply struck - and impressed - by the reverence of it.  When, at another parish, I first saw the Asperges (the sprinkling of the congregation with holy water at the start of the service), I was literally struck dumb!  I actually couldn't speak; I was choked up by the strange beauty of it all - and I've considered myself Anglo-Catholic ever since. When at a third parish, I saw the Easter Vigil procession - the deacon who processed with the Paschal candle and sang:  "The Light of Christ" (on Sunday morning, BTW, in broad daylight!) - I decided on the spot I would be confirmed in the Episcopal Church.

It pays to remember that people simply aren't used to seeing things like this - and they are striking.  Liturgical actions speak volumes, via often very simple gestures.  Think of military formality, for instance; the military has its own liturgical ceremonies which absolutely do communicate essential ideas.  Here's an example:



Somebody once argued that in fact liturgical churches were always going to have problems attracting at least some people outside the church, because the liturgy was not created for newcomers.   The argument was that evangelicals (generically-speaking) would attract new people, and liturgical churches would eventually get those new people once they'd been evangelical for awhile, but were looking for something deeper.  This makes sense to me.  It means that the full, formal liturgy is for the already-initiated; you don't mess with it because then it can't help these already-initiated people , and in the end nobody's gotten any benefit at all.

But American evangelicals are not convincing many people these days - they've ruined their own reputations with political affiliations and irrationality - which makes a problem down the line for us, if you hold to the above theory.

To me it seems clear to me that the Episcopal Church is going to have to stop perseverating on, and endlessly arguing about, the liturgy and ways to tinker with it - just do it, as they say - and start finding ways to talk about, and teach, the faith itself, and to show people what it's for.

My recommendation?  Use the Book of Common Prayer faithfully - and follow the rubrics - for Sunday services; use "Rite III" at other times, if that makes sense.   Have a dancing, jumping-around, rock mass at night, if that seems like a good thing in your neighborhood; I don't think it would be that difficult to do via the regular liturgy, even!    Or sing Compline on Sunday nights; they do it very successfully in Seattle, getting 500 people - mostly kids - every week.  Start discussion groups for people outside the faith, and teach the faith itself.   Not via the Creed as a standalone - but what the content of the Creed actually means for peoples' lives.  Talk about the human condition - use the world's literature as a text, as it can show us obvious things about ourselves we've simply decided not to see - and about our problems in living; and show how Christian faith responds to these problems.   (As an alternative, just use the world's newspapers - although the problem there is that most of us will not be able to see what they actually tell us about ourselves.)

The Bible is full of absolutely crazy stories; revel in them!  Talk about the nutty characters of the Old Testament, and discuss the almost completely alien-to-us society they lived in, and the wild ideas they had.   Take those stories and have people write midrash extensions of them; play with the literature, and don't be afraid of it.

It has taken me ten years to become liturgically literate, and to be able to derive its benefits on a regular basis.  And I'm very interested in, and dedicated to, the spiritual life - and I had that powerful spiritual experience that kept me coming.  You can try to induce something like that via cool things like chant and incense - not a bad idea at all, I say! - or you can try to talk to peoples' minds and hearts.  Different people are going to be interested in different things.  To me it seems Episcopalians don't really know how to talk about faith, or to convince people why it's a good thing.  Perhaps this is because they do focus so much on liturgy, and just aren't aware of or conversant about what it's meant to do and what it does.

I should also add:  my powerful spiritual experience happened completely outside church; it happened while I was reading and thinking about the faith itself, although with the help of some visual aids.  This tells me that the content of the faith is actually quite important, and that it will help Episcopalians if we can become very conversant in it.

But seriously:  don't continue to mess with the only means of long-term formation we have.  Keep to the liturgy faithfully for your already-initiated, and give other people something that will get and keep them interested in the meantime.   (Hint:  it's not simplistic moralism of any kind.)  Music, spiritual practices, activities and learning for kids (i.e. choir schools, which offer free training and education you can't find elsewhere), deep study of the Bible and other texts, other kinds of literature, art, movies, ideas, history, psychology, service to others, "practical mysticism" and pragmatic practices - use all of these other things to attract, intrigue, and delight people, and to explain how faith can actually work in their lives to help them and make life better for them and for their families.

Step Six: "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."

The first line of this Step is always a great favorite in meetings; there's something so really 1930s and hilarious about it (as there is about a lot of A.A.'s literature).

And I think this Step is where A.A. might actually go beyond what the church offers - although I admit I'm not sure what the function of "Hail Marys" and "Our Fathers" in the Catholic rite of Penance is.  It could be that they function as foci for achieving a state of mind something akin to "becoming entirely ready to have God remove" whatever defects they're dealing with in Confession.  I just don't know - nor do I know exactly what happens in Confession in Orthodox churches.

Notice, too, the word repeatedly.  Some people argue that the first 9 Steps are "do-'em-once" affairs; that these "clearing away the wreckage of the past" Steps are meant to deal with history only.  I'd say the content of this and the other Steps found in the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions goes to argue against that idea.    (The words "lifetime job" below might be another clue!)

Anyway, for now here's the whole Step from the book; my bolding:

"This is the Step that separates the men from the boys." So declares a well-loved clergyman who happens to be one of A.A.'s greatest friends. He goes on to explain that any person capable of enough willingness and honesty to try repeatedly Step Six on all his faults--without any reservations whatever--has indeed come a long way spiritually, and is therefore entitled to be called a man who is sincerely trying to grow in the image and likeness of his own Creator.

Of course, the often disputed question of whether God can--and will, under certain conditions--remove defects of character will be answered with a prompt affirmative by almost any A.A. member. To him, this proposition will be no theory at all; it will be just about the largest fact in his life. He will usually offer his proof in a statement like this:

"Sure, I was beaten, absolutely licked. My own willpower just wouldn't work on alcohol. Change of scene, the best efforts of family, friends, doctors, and clergymen got no place with my alcoholism. I simply couldn't stop drinking, and no human being could seem to do the job for me. But when I became willing to clean house and then asked a Higher Power, God as I understood Him, to give me release, my obsession to drink vanished. It was lifted right out of me."

In A.A. meetings all over the world, statements just like this are heard daily. It is plain for everybody to see that each sober A.A. member has been granted a release from this very obstinate and potentially fatal obsession. So in a very complete and literal way, all A.A.'s have "become entirely ready" to have God remove the mania for alcohol from their lives. And God has proceeded to do exactly that. Having been granted a perfect release from alcoholism, why then shouldn't we be able to achieve by the same means a perfect release from every other difficulty or defect? This is a riddle of our existence, the full answer to which may be only in the mind of God. Nevertheless, at least a part of the answer to it is apparent to us.

When men and women pour so much alcohol into themselves that they destroy their lives, they commit a most unnatural act. Defying their instinctive desire for self-preservation, they seem bent upon self-destruction. They work against their own deepest instinct. As they are humbled by the terrific beating administered by alcohol, the grace of God can enter them and expel their obsession. Here their powerful instinct to live can cooperate fully with their Creator's desire to give them new life. For nature and God alike abhor suicide.

But most of our other difficulties don't fall under such a category at all. Every normal person wants, for example, to eat, to reproduce, to be somebody in the society of his fellows. And he wishes to be reasonably safe and secure as he tries to attain these things. Indeed, God made him that way. He did not design man to destroy himself by alcohol, but He did give man instincts to help him to stay alive.

It is nowhere evident, at least in this life, that our Creator expects us fully to eliminate our instinctual drives. So far as we know, it is nowhere on the record that God has completely removed from any human being all his natural drives.

Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural desires, it isn't strange that we often let these far exceed their intended purpose. When they drive us blindly, or we willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions or pleasures than are possible or due us, that is the point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth. That is the measure of our character defects, or, if you wish, of our sins.

If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions. But in no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that way without our cooperation. That is something we are supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves. He asks only that we try as best we know how to make progress in the building of character.

So Step Six--"Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character"--is A.A.'s way of stating the best possible attitude one can take in order to make a beginning on this lifetime job. This does not mean that we expect all our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to drink was. A few of them may be, but with most of them we shall have to be content with patient improvement. The key words "entirely ready" underline the fact that we want to aim at the very best we know or can learn.

How many of us have this degree of readiness? In an absolute sense practically nobody has it. The best we can do, with all the honesty that we can summon, is to try to have it. Even then the best of us will discover to our dismay that there is always a sticking point, a point at which we say, "No, I can't give this up yet." And we shall often tread on even more dangerous ground when we cry, "This I will never give up!" Such is the power of our instincts to overreach themselves. No matter how far we have progressed, desires will always be found which oppose the grace of God.

Some who feel they have done well may dispute this, so let's try to think it through a little further. Practically everybody wishes to be rid of his most glaring and destructive handicaps. No one wants to be so proud that he is scorned as a braggart, nor so greedy that he is labeled a thief. No one wants to be angry enough to murder, lustful enough to rape, gluttonous enough to ruin his health. No one wants to be agonized by the chronic pain of envy or to be paralyzed by sloth. Of course, most human beings don't suffer these defects at these rock-bottom levels.

We who have escaped these extremes are apt to congratulate ourselves. Yet can we? After all, hasn't it been self-interest, pure and simple, that has enabled most of us to escape? Not much spiritual effort is involved in avoiding excesses which will bring us punishment anyway. But when we face up to the less violent aspects of these very same defects, then where do we stand?

What we must recognize now is that we exult in some of our defects. We really love them. Who, for example, doesn't like to feel just a little superior to the next fellow, or even quite a lot superior? Isn't it true that we like to let greed masquerade as ambition? To think of liking lust seems impossible. But how many men and women speak love with their lips, and believe what they say, so that they can hide lust in a dark corner of their minds? And even while staying within conventional bounds, many people have to admit that their imaginary sex excursions are apt to be all dressed up as dreams of romance.

Self-righteous anger also can be very enjoyable. In a perverse way we can actually take satisfaction from the fact that many people annoy us, for it brings a comfortable feeling of superiority. Gossip barbed with our anger, a polite form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfactions for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we criticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness.

When gluttony is less than ruinous, we have a milder word for that, too; we call it "taking our comfort." We live in a world riddled with envy. To a greater or less degree, everybody is infected with it. From this defect we must surely get a warped yet definite satisfaction. Else why would we consume such great amounts of time wishing for what we have not, rather than working for it, or angrily looking for attributes we shall never have, instead of adjusting to the fact, and accepting it? And how often we work hard with no better motive than to be secure and slothful later on-- only we call that "retiring." Consider, too, our talents for procrastination, which is really sloth in five syllables. Nearly anyone could submit a good list of such defects as these, and few of us would seriously think of giving them up, at least until they cause us excessive misery.

Some people, of course, may conclude that they are indeed ready to have all such defects taken from them. But even these people, if they construct a list of still milder defects, will be obliged to admit that they prefer to hang on to some of them. Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by. So the difference between "the boys and the men" is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God.

Many will at once ask, "How can we accept the entire implication of Step Six? Why--that is perfection!" This sounds like a hard question, but practically speaking, it isn't. Only Step One, where we made the 100 percent admission we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with absolute perfection. The remaining eleven Steps state perfect ideals. They are goals toward which we look, and the measuring sticks by which we estimate our progress. Seen in this light, Step Six is still difficult, but not at all impossible. The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, and keep trying.

If we would gain any real advantage in the use of this Step on problems other than alcohol, we shall need to make a brand new venture into open-mindedness. We shall need to raise our eyes toward perfection, and be ready to walk in that direction. It will seldom matter how haltingly we walk. The only question will be "Are we ready?"

Looking again at those defects we are still unwilling to give up, we ought to erase the hard-and-fast lines that we have drawn. Perhaps we shall be obliged in some cases still to say, "This I cannot give up yet...," but we should not say to ourselves, "This I will never give up!"

Let's dispose of what appears to be a hazardous open end we have left. It is suggested that we ought to become entirely willing to aim toward perfection. We note that some delay, however, might be pardoned. That word, in the mind of a rationalizing alcoholic, could certainly be given a long term meaning. He could say, "How very easy! Sure, I'll head toward perfection, but I'm certainly not going to hurry any. Maybe I can postpone dealing with some of my problems indefinitely." Of course, this won't do. Such a bluffing of oneself will have to go the way of many another pleasant rationalization. At the very least, we shall have to come to grips with some of our worst character defects and take action toward their removal as quickly as we can.

The moment we say, "No, never!" our minds close against the grace of God. Delay is dangerous, and rebellion may be fatal. This is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us.

(I don't particularly care for the use of the word "perfection" in this Step; I think thinking that way is actually another pitfall.)

But the interesting concept here, again, is willingness, as it relates to "letting go" - of the ego, that is, and of one's own self-understanding.   This idea also plays a starring role in the very first paragraph of Step 3: 

Practicing Step Three is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness. Once unlocked by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, and looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is an inscription. It reads: "This is the way to a faith that works."

And this, alongside the "separating the men from the boys" idea here, says that willingness - in the form of "becoming open to change" -  may be the whole key to the spiritual life.

I will be revisiting that thought at some point.

"Why have Catholics stopped confessing?"

As I suspected, Confession has fallen off drastically among Catholics; the PBS article linked below says it's gone from 38% monthly in 1965 to 8% today.  From Nov. 2005, in Slate; my bold:

A Catholic friend of mine recently went to confession at her parish church for the first time in years. She had personal reasons for wanting to seek absolution, but there was this, too: She said she'd long felt a little sorry for the priests sitting alone in their confessional boxes, waiting for sinners to arrive.

A generation ago, you'd see a lot of us lined up inside Catholic churches on Saturday afternoons, waiting to take our turn in one of the confessionals. We'd recite the familiar phrases ("Bless me Father, for I have sinned"), list our transgressions and the number of times we'd committed them, maybe endure a priestly lecture, and emerge to recite a few Hail Marys as an act of penance. In some parishes, the machinery of forgiveness was so well-oiled you could see the line move. Confession was essential to Catholic faith and a badge of Catholic identity. It also carried with it the promise of personal renewal. Yet in most parishes, the lines for the confessionals have pretty much disappeared. Confession—or the sacrament of reconciliation, as it's officially known—has become the one sacrament casual Catholics feel free to skip. We'll get married in church, we'll be buried from church, and we'll take Communion at Mass. But regularly confessing one's sins to God and the parish priest seems to be a part of fewer and fewer Catholic lives. Where have all the sinners gone?

On the surface, the drop-off in confessors might seem like no surprise.

To congregations scarred by the recent sex-abuse scandal, the thought of turning to a priest for forgiveness might not hold the attraction that it once did. And regular penance is not the only Catholic sacrament that has declined in practice recently: The scant number of young Catholic men training for the sacrament of holy orders, or ordination, for example, has left the church with a serious shortage of priests.

But it's strange that so many lay Catholics should have abandoned the confessional even while secular culture is increasingly awash in confession, apology, and acts of contrition of every sort. Parents own up to pedophilia on Jerry Springer. Authors reveal their fetishes and infidelities in self-lacerating memoirs. On Web sites like Daily Confession and Not Proud, the anonymous poster can unburden his conscience electronically. The confessions on these sites are displayed in categories borrowed from Sunday school lessons: the Ten Commandments or the seven deadly sins. At least one posting I read was framed in the language of the Catholic confessional. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," it began before going on to catalog a series of mostly mundane misdeeds. (Others are simply odd: "I eat ants but only the little red ones. They're sweet as hell and I just can't get enough.")

All this public confessing testifies to the impulse to share our deepest shame. So, why isn't that impulse manifesting itself in Catholics practicing the ritual that was created expressly for that purpose? Of course, Catholic penance—whether it's done in a confessional booth or in a face-to-face meeting with a priest, an innovation introduced in 1973—is supposed to be private and confidential. It may be that in an age of media-fueled exhibitionism, some people want more attention for our misdeeds than can be had from whispering a list of sins in a box in a church. But those Internet confessions won't count toward absolution in the eyes of the church any time soon. "There are no sacraments on the Internet," declared the Pontifical Council for Social Communication unequivocally in 2002.

The Catholic tradition of listing the number and kinds of one's sins in regular, private confessions became standard practice after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Penance took root in Catholic ritual and established itself as, in the words of religion writer Peter Steinfels, "the linchpin of the Catholic sacramental economy." The Eucharist and the other sacraments, Steinfels points out, provided access to God's grace. But expressing contrition in confession could mean the difference between going to heaven or hell: Dying with unconfessed mortal sin on your soul meant eternal torment. Early 20^th-century Catholics might have taken Communion only once a year—some referred to it as their Easter duty—but they generally confessed their sins far more regularly. As recently as 40 years ago, many Catholics would not have thought of accepting the Eucharist until after they'd cleansed their souls.

Today the situation is almost exactly the reverse: Entire congregations receive Communion, while the confessionals remain mostly empty. Between 1965 and 1975, according to the National Opinion Research Council, the proportion of Catholics who confessed monthly fell from 38 percent to 17 percent. A University of Notre Dame study in the 1980s showed the decline continuing. In a 1997 poll by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut, only 10 percent of Catholics surveyed said that they confessed at least once a month; another 10 percent said they never went to confession at all.

Like most of the recent changes in the church, the shift occurred in the wake of the Vatican II reforms. The program of renewal for the church that emerged from the Vatican II council said almost nothing about penance and reconciliation. The church's emphasis after Vatican II seemed to be less on guilt and damnation and more on love and forgiveness. The sacrament was given its current kinder, gentler name—reconciliation. Which seemed to reduce the stakes: If priests rarely talked about going to hell anymore, why bother confessing to them? To the extent that confession seemed necessary, the church's post-Vatican II efforts to empower the people in the pews left some Catholics figuring that they could confess their sins directly to God in prayer. At the same time, baby boomers who had been educated in the arcane legalisms of Catholic transgression—is eating meat on Friday a mortal or venial sin?—found themselves as adults thinking less about whether they were breaking the rules and more about their attitudes, intentions, and ideas about how to live a Christian life.

Last but surely not least, there was the growing gap between church teachings and the daily practices of American Catholics, especially when it came to sex and contraception. If you practiced birth control or had sex outside marriage, and you were scrupulous about confession, you might end up spending a lot of time in the confessional sharing every detail of your personal life with the (celibate and male) parish priest. That prospect is particularly bothersome to some Catholic women. I know one who says she'll go back to confession when she can confide in a female priest.

The biggest barrier between Catholics and the confessional, however, may be the real effort it requires. Unloading your transgressions on the Internet takes a few computer clicks—you can do it on your coffee break. But done right, Catholic confession demands a rigorous examination of conscience and real contrition, to say nothing of the prayers you may be assigned for penance and the thinking a priest may ask you to do about the ways you've let yourself and God down. No wonder we are more comfortable with the Eucharist service, which demands only that we line up like consumers and accept something for free. Dorothy Day wrote of having to "rack your brain for even the beginnings of sin." That's work.

A.A. (typically!) offers a good explanation for the "confessional culture" discussed in the article; see my bolded paragraphs below:

All of A.A.'s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires . . . they all deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five. But scarcely any Step is more necessary to longtime sobriety and peace of mind than this one.

A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alone with our pressing problems and the character defects which cause or aggravate them. If we have swept the searchlight of Step Four back and forth over our careers, and it has revealed in stark relief those experiences we'd rather not remember, if we have come to know how wrong thinking and action have hurt us and others, then the need to quit living by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yesterday gets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to somebody about them.

So intense, though, is our fear and reluctance to do this, that many A.A.'s at first try to bypass Step Five. We search for an easier way--which usually consists of the general and fairly painless admission that when drinking we were sometimes bad actors. Then, for good measure, we add dramatic descriptions of that part of our drinking behavior which our friends probably know about anyhow.

But of the things which really bother and burn us, we say nothing. Certain distressing or humiliating memories, we tell ourselves, ought not be shared with anyone. These will remain our secret. Not a soul must ever know. We hope they'll go to the grave with us.

In other words:  things that don't "bother and burn" are not really very hard to confess to!  If it's just attention-seeking behavior, it doesn't apply to the category.  Anyway, "confessional culture" is mostly vicarious; most people simply watch Jerry Springer - and laugh at it.  Right?

And you don't actually have to be worried about the state of your mortal soul.  "A broken and contrite heart God will not despise" says nothing at all about the afterlife - but it does have a great to say about one's relationship with the Holy One, and therefore about one's ability to live "in harmony with God and man."   That is to say:  with a peaceful heart and in good relationship with others.

The Church itself is, in fact, one of the angriest (and, often, craziest) organizations I've ever been a part of.   While the rest of the world has been prejudiced about homosexuality (for instance) too - the church, in my experience, has been astoundingly hard-hearted and nasty.  (Anglicans in particular have been shockingly vicious, which is why I think Confession - or, rather, the lack of it - might be a root problem.)

A.A. is also full of crazy people, of course - but at the very least, A.A. people know and admit they're crazy.  Alcoholics know something has gone very wrong, and know they need to address their problems if they hope to stay sober and "live to good purpose."  The church, by contrast, is a hospital for people who apparently think they're perfectly fine - and/or that everybody else is a mess.

Of course, some of the Orthodox I've come across - priests, in particular - can be completely nuts, too; obviously Confession itself is not a cure-all.   (Or, perhaps, the Orthodox have abandoned Confession as well; that could be true, too.)

The Church has - for a long time, it seems - used its own elevated self-regard and the buffer of its alleged "holiness" to hide from its own craziness.  But that's not working so well anymore, pretty obviously.

Well, it'll hit bottom eventually, as we all must when living delusionally....