"In the mid-17th century, Spanish seafarers sailed up the west coast of the Americas to what is now known as the Baja peninsula. The cartographers of the time simply drew a straight line up from the Strait of California to the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Vancouver Island and Washington state. Consequently, the maps that were published in 1635 show very clearly that California was an island. For 50 years, then, the years of the most constant, most crucial explorations of the California coastline, those maps went unchanged because someone continued to work with partial information, assumed that data from the past had the inerrancy of tradition and then used authority to prove it. Finally, after years and years of new reports, a few cartographers, the heretics, the radicals and the rebels, I presume, began to issue a new version, and in 1721, the last mapmaker holdout finally attached California to the mainland. But - and this is the real tragedy, perhaps - it took almost 100 years for the gap between experience and authority to close. It took almost 100 years for the new maps to be declared official despite the fact that the people who were there all the time knew differently from the very first day." - Sister Joan Chittester, O.S.B. (from On Being with Krista Tippett)
Where are the gaps in our lives between experience and authority? Where do our "maps" not match up with reality, with the reality both within and around us?
For the adventure that awaits, may God grant us both imagination and courage.
On the morning of September 11th 2001, I was traveling north toward Washington D.C. on I-395 from our apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. I wrote a poem in the weeks that followed as I sorted through the experience of watching American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon killing 64 people on the plane, 125 people in the Pentagon, and 5 hijackers.
I accelerate; move left, the fast lane, tune in my lifeline, NPR— Terrorists Attack New York City American Airlines Towers. What's this about?
I hear it, then see it play out before me— silver capsule red letters darting through the sky, too fast, too low, the wrong way, sharply veering.
Metal meets concrete, strikes without warning. The nightmare of a soldier- a burst of orange, cloud of black gray is swallowed. A mighty wound, gaping hollowness cannot be touched. Steel, rubber, metal, grind to a halt.
I'm not alone, they see it, too. Hands clutch shaking heads, people bewildered, stopped in a place we do not belong.
I stand in the roadway, reaching. My heart floods with tears, my eyes are dry. I shake with coldness, my stomach burns. I circle my car, there is no safety in this place.
You are with them, whoever they are, I cannot know them, they are gone. Nameless to me— mothers fathers children sisters brothers lovers.
You call them by name; call them by name! Have mercy, deliver them from evil. They are dust, to dust they return.
Give me a balm to heal my sinsick heart.
- The Rev. Gena D. Adams-Riley, Revised September 2011
Pictured: A steel bench from the Pentagon Memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina
Recently, while visiting at Trinity Church, Wall Street, in New York City, Bishop Michael Curry was asked, "What do you see as the state of the Episcopal Church today?" His answer is worth reading more than once:
"We live in a profoundly pluralistic culture and world. We live in a world where we are interconnected in ways that we never imagined before. We know more about each other; some folks might say we know too much about each other. And I think one of the great challenges for faith is to live in this multicultural, pluralistic world, being people of faith who reflect the love of God and not the tyranny of God. I think that's one of our greatest religious challenges, and it has impact for different ages and generations of people. This is an Episcopal moment, a moment that is crying out for a way of being faithful that doesn't have to deny somebody else's way of being faithful. This is our moment."
Amen, brother.
I am reminded of a bumper sticker that one of you (a member of St. Paul's) saw and told me about: ENTHUSIASTICALLY EPISCOPALIAN.
It is indeed "a moment that is crying out for a way of being faithful that doesn't have to deny somebody else's way of being faithful."
Dr. Remen remembers the medical staff's reaction, "Now, were we in awe? Certainly not. We were frustrated. Obviously, someone had misdiagnosed him."
An intensive study of the case ensued, with expert opinion solicited from around the country. The conclusion of that inquiry was that the chemotherapy that had been discontinued eleven months earlier had suddenly had a delayed effect.
"The embarrassing part of the story," recalls Dr. Remen, "is that I believed this for the next 15 years."
"What do you think now?," asked her interviewer.
"I think that that was one of the purest encounters with mystery that I have ever had in my life. It makes me wonder about who we are, what's possible for us, how this world really operates. I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions. And those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find."
Thursday's NYT obituary, and Sunday's column by Nicholas Kristof, reflecting on the life, ministry, and leadership of the Reverend John "Uncle John" Stott, are well worth reading. Kristof's piece is golden.
I had the opportunity to meet Stott, and hear him teach, several years ago in Birmingham, Alabama. Reading about him now makes me all the more grateful for that privilege.
May he rest in peace.
Pictured: Photo by Richard Perry, The New York Times. The Rev. John Stott at Trinity Church in Manhattan in 2006. Mr. Stott exerted influence largely through his many books.
"I can only say that segregation is wrong today, it was wrong yesterday. Segregation was never right. But it is one of the most lamentable frailties of mankind that when one's wrong is most grievous, his self-justification is most passionate, perhaps in the pitiful hope that the fervor of his self-defense will somehow prove him right. But this doesn't make it so. And he doesn't fool himself."
Richard Poff spoke these words, in the summer of 1971, as he looked back, with apparent regret, on his anti-civil-rights voting record in Congress, where he represented Virginia's Sixth District. Poff died last month and this passage appeared in his New York Times obituary of July 1.
Back in 1971, Poff was hoping for a U.S. Supreme Court nomination, thus the sincerity of his statement could be questioned. Regardless, there was and still is wisdom in his words, insight into the human heart, and the human condition, insight which, if indeed we are at all awake to our own frailties, we will recognize from our own lived experience.
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Yes, accountability is essential to any healthy human community, be it a nation, a congregation, or a family. Compassionate and mutual accountability. But, of course, for accountability to go anywhere, anywhere at all; for accountability to bear fruit, there must be a receptivity, an openness to receiving new and uncomfortable truth about ourselves.
May it be. May it be so, dear God, in our hearts, and in our own lives. For our own sake, and for the sake of those around us.
The other day I was handed a column by E.J. Dionne from back in December ("Don't spin the Civil War"). His wise and trenchant words are timely as we ease into the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War & Emancipation.
The more honest we are, the more free we are. And we should settle for nothing less.
We cannot quote him often enough, when Jesus said, "The truth will set you free."
And that truth is a truth, not about battles and leaders of yesteryear, but a truth about today, and a truth about us.
"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope...Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."
Yesterday morning, as I watched Speaker John Boehner on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, making remarks about the tragedy in Tuscon, I found myself thinking about the importance of tears.
Speaker Boehnor, as perhaps we all are aware, is known as someone "easily" brought to tears. And, surprise, surprise, he has taken some ribbing, mocking, etc., for it.
Well, not surprisingly, he had a hard time making it through his remarks on the House floor.
And, while I have little, if anything, in common with John Boehner politically, I found myself grateful to him at that moment.
And I was reminded of something the poet Wallace Stevens said, that sentimentality is a "failure of feeling."
The irony is that usually we think of sentimentality as an excess of feeling. Which perhaps it sometimes is.
On the other hand, I think too often we are so afraid of our feelings, especially feelings of grief and sadness, that we don't allow them to find their natural and healthy expression.
And thus we experience, in Stevens' words, a failure of feeling.
As I find myself saying to people, from time to time, when they apologize for their tears, "God gave us tears to use them."
And, of course, this Christmas, tonight, and tomorrow, new memories are being made; a Carol sung, pure and exquisite; an old friend; warm, endearing words exchanged; a first Christmas for a new grandbaby; a candle lit, a face aglow, eyes agleam.
More than fifty times, in his published writings, Barth refers to the Grunewald image; and, indeed, usually, it is precisely in reference to John, and John’s relation to the figure of Christ; as he points.
Barth (and Grunewald before him) understood John’s sole purpose to be to serve as a pointer to Christ, a reference to Christ, a witness to Christ.
On any given day, there are those things that would get our attention; those things that would bring fresh perspective; those things would remind us of what is most important, what is most true. If, that is, if we but notice. We never know when those things, those experiences, those people might come. And so it has always been, so it has always been.
The Rule of 72, they call it. It’s a rule of thumb to figure how long it’ll take to double your money. If you know you can get 5%, on your investment, then you divide 5 into 72 and that tells you: it’ll take roughly 14 and ½ years to double your money. That’s the Rule of 72. Now, sometimes an investor doesn’t want to wait 14 and a ½ years, or however long the Rule of 72 tells you that you have to wait and so increased risks are taken. And sometimes you win, and sometimes you loose.
We all want, in the words of St. Paul, to “lead a life worthy of God.” A life worthy of God. Un-like the lives of the false prophets, of Micah’s day, or the false teachers of Jesus’ day, the scribes and the Pharisees, teachers of the law. Their lives are un-worthy of God, we are told, in no uncertain terms. In their hypocrisy, they serve, not God, not God’s people, but themselves.
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Thursday's 
Yesterday morning, as I watched Speaker John Boehner on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, making remarks about the tragedy in Tuscon, I found myself thinking about the importance of tears.