Saturday, August 26, 2017

2017 Eclipse poem


Pat and I went to Columbia South Carolina to witness the totality of the eclipse on 21 August. As I wondered why God was taking the day off when clouds threatened to obscure our view I thought of the Greek Titan Gods of Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) and the mating in the heavens going on at that time.

2017 Eclipse

Clumsily looking up with special lens
with awe filled suspense beyond time
with half understood science as I'm
still prodding God's cloud to cleanse.
Divine Selene leaves shepherd's side
for a long delayed with Helios tryst,
thinking that she will not be missed,
as her chariot takes the heavenly ride
to where they will meet again and up
against each other at the golden door,
rubbing, oh so slowly, desire's shore,
her shadow covers him to drink cup
of union and diamonds sparkles fly
as we voyeurs heave collective sigh.

Friday, August 25, 2017

Transformation Stories Reflection and Poem for 27 August 2017


A Reflection for XII Pentecost (Proper 16 A)       All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. 
August 27, 2017        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector


Transformation Stories

There is a story that is told in the Wilson family about how we were once landed gentry in eastern North Carolina until the dark days of “THE WAHWR”, or the “Recent Unpleasantness’, or the “War Between the States”. In that story, the Wilson, the landed gentry of the Old Family Plantation, enlisted in the cause and, before he left for service under the glorious Stars and Bars and Confederate Battle Flag, buried the Wilson family treasure for safe keeping. He was captured by the Yankees and died in the prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York. The massive treasure was never found, and that is why we only looked like Rednecks. The children grew up out of poverty and, as a young boy, my grandfather, known to us as “Daddy Wilson”, hopped a troop ship to the Caribbean and found work there. After many adventures, he later went to Johns Hopkins, got an Engineering degree and restored the family fortunes, served in France in World War I, worked in projects all over the world, was a man bigger than life, and never went back to Goldsboro where the family treasure is probably buried under the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

That is a lovely story - except the Wilson, according to the census records, came down from Virginia to Goldsboro as a telegraph operator where he also had a small farm, a boring middle class life, but did die as a prisoner of war in Elmira, New York long before Daddy Wilson was born. I do not think there will ever be discovery of the Wilson family treasure in time for my retirement. Family stories are like that, based in some truth and surrounded with a floral blanket of decorative additions. There are some facts, there are some floral additions, it is highly edited, but the main truth that comes in this story and the reason it was told is that Wilsons are people who (1) fulfill their obligations and duties, (2) don’t have to be trapped in the past, (3) are expected to rise up from adversity and (4) do not go back only forward. That is the truth that each of us children passed on to our children.

Each generation passes on the story to the next and adds its own interpretations. Daddy Wilson passed it on to his son, my father, and to me and my brothers as he would tell the stories of who we were, with the emphasis on duty and ambition. My father died before his children were married and had children, but my brothers and I passed it on to our children. My generation passed on the duty and ambition and to our grandchildren, but we had learned to edit the story to have no reverence for the Confederate Battle Flag as a symbol of violence and racism and a shameful past, whose lies the Wilson believed leading to his death and the detriment of his children. In that, we teach them we learn from the past, we are not trapped in it.

The Hebrew Testament lesson for today from the Book of Exodus begins with a story set in the past: “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”

The Bible is not a history, science, chemistry, geography, psychology, or math text book, so if you are trying to base a definitive study of history, science, chemistry, geography, psychology, or math on the Bible, you will run into trouble. The Bible is single book but a diverse library of myths, folk stories, songs, poems, legends, polemics, editorials, letters, reminisces, novels - both historical and romance, slanted accounts, lists of people, descriptions of architecture, and more. 
 
While we have no independent historical or archeological evidence to back up the story of Joseph or the Exodus, we do have evidence that there was a movement of Western Asiatic people in the time of the Egyptian 2nd Intermediate Period, the time between the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, from about 1800 BC to 1500 BC. This Intermediate Period was a time when the Native Egyptian rulers were very disorganized, the Kingdom disintegrated, and many foreigners started to dominate the political and economic life. The Story of Joseph was probably an historical novel set during these times when the Hebrew people remembered being part of this movement of Semitic people into Egypt.

The “King that knew not Joseph” is a character in the story that seems to be set in the time of the New Kingdom, after the native Egyptians were able to reassert control over the Western Asiatic dominated areas and instituted an economic and political system that harshly exploited the outsiders. Some of the Western Asiatic people were able to migrate back to the places from which their ancestors centuries before had come. The Book of Exodus is the tribal family story passed on down through the years and became the basis of the Hebrew understanding of themselves and their God. They understood that while some of the characters may not have been historically factually accurate, the deeper truth is more important than the facts. 
 
Every year, for more than three millennia, the Hebrew people have had a ritual where they tell this story that we will tell over the coming weeks. They start the story by asking: “Why is this night different than any other night?” “Why are we different?” The answer is that we are people of God’s love and care. The truth of the story is that God hears the cries of the oppressed and calls upon us to band together to help the poor and marginalized. They are called to remember that they were once oppressed people, strangers in a strange land, they were once poor but with God’s help, they were able to make it through many hardships and they still have a hope for a future. The telling of the story was important as a warning not to conform to the practices of the larger society based on exploitation, but to become transformed into being the people of the long ago story as they live in the present day, so that it becomes their story. 
 
That is their truth which they have passed on to us because our brother Jesus gathered his friends together to tell the story, and he reinterprets the story for his followers. Each week as we eat the bread for the journey through the wilderness and drink the wine, the symbol of the blood of the sacrifice, the story is repeated for us to pass on to our children’s children so that it becomes our story..
We tell the stories so that we may remember that we are faithful to our heritage passed on to us as part of our transformation to follow God faithfully. Paul in his letter to the Romans told them – and us - to present ourselves as living sacrifices, not conforming ourselves to the outer society, but to be transformed so that story of God’s love lives in every moment of our lives.

Transformation Stories

Tell us the story again, one more time
to remind us of who we are and where
do we come from and of who is the heir
when we breathe deeply before bedtime.
Let our dreams be filled with heroic acts
of years gone, by people of same name
and how they grew from victim to fame
facing demons with walls against backs.
Let the stories weave us with the past
molding us to into more sterner sinews
necessary so our heritage continues
to the present day and beyond the last.
Oh, this is stuff of which we are made,
walking with spirits in whom we prayed.


Saturday, August 19, 2017

Two more poems

Interview
Writing list of questions down,
                hoping to get to deeper reason.
I smiled out an opened ended one,
               but truth isn’t scheduled this season.
Seeing opaque bricks slide into place
                on freshly troweled mortar –slip. Thunk!
Imagining protection wall between us growing
                to hide the pain from view – slip. Thunk!
I mean you no harm my eyes meant to say,
                but fear isn’t harm but shame - slip. Thunk!
The interview was telling me all I wanted
                except the hope for healing - slip. Thunk!
Asking the rest, ending this question list
Grieving all the true answers I missed.


Listening                                      
Eyes dart back and forth
          seeking, “Can I really trust you?
for news cannot get back
          and your promise must be true."
Confiding pain filled secret
          while looking deep for shock
to appear on my blank face
          as she continues taking stock.

It is her conflict, rich with pain,
          more than I can only imagine.
Now, past memories flood back
of experience of similar action.
It is not my place to tell my tale
          for this time is given just for her.
Situation’s different; but the pain,
          our pain, hits the same for sure.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Two "More Comfortable" Nights

The lesson for Sunday is about Jesus hesitating to respond in love to a Canaanite woman because of  his tribe's ethnic prejudice. He hears her speak with the voice of his own divine unconscious which brings them both healing. I was reminded of a time when I was trying to get a hotel room when I was 19 as I was passing through a town and was told I would "be more comfortable" at another hotel by the railroad tracks. The events in the last couple weeks remind me of the times I was told so many years ago that those people not like me would be more comfortable in their own schools, their own neighborhoods, their own churches as a way for us to no longer care about the racial and class hatred on which our society depends to enforce divisions so that  we might continue to be fuel for the engines of repression.

The question is the question for All Saints Parishioners to reflect upon before the service begins. I will not be there since Pat and I are going to watch the totality of the full eclipse on the 21st.

Question: “When was it hard for you to care?”

Two “More Comfortable” Nights
Walking into the hotel, bearded, jeaned and tired
The desk attendant sneering; “May I help you?”
I ask for a room. He really wanted me to shoo,
said I’d be “more comfortable” at place less desired.
The form was all on surface very polite but distain
was the menu that night for it was not my comfort
which called him to care, but his own discomfort
of having to place himself as a servant to deign.
Wrapped in tattered dignity I walk over to tracks
where the “more comfortable” place was found
spending the night with bitter thoughts abound
how I should’ve responded with a couple smacks.
Years later as a Chaplain, given a comatose thug
in the process of dying. He was rotten to the core,
his family could not stand to be on the same floor
but that night he’s one that Christ calls me to hug
as my brother. I clumsily welcome him with prayer
and bid him be “more comfortable” in my care.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Heroes" Descent



A Reflection for X Pentecost (proper 14)      All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC August 13, 2017                                                Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28    Psalm 105, 1-6, 16-22, 45b             Romans 10:5-15                Matthew 14:22-33
The Heroes’ Descent
This summer we have been taking a quick tour of the Book of Genesis. The Revised Common Lectionary has an option to open the Hebrew Bible in a more structured form from the seasons after Pentecost. In Year A, the current year, the lessons are chosen from the books of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, and Judges which highlight the promises of God to God’s people from the creation and their reactions to that promise. Year B, next year, will look at the Prophetic tradition of God calling the people back to the promise and their reactions to that call. Year C, in two years, will focus in on the Wisdom traditions. 

These short glimpses into each lesson remind me of when I lived by a river or pond, and there were always flat stones near the edge which we would pick up and skip across the surface of the body of water. I used to wonder what the rock was able to see each time it skimmed over the surface. If all we do is just focus on the short selection for the week, what is called a “pericope”, then it is like reviewing a movie based on the previews. When we do that, we do not really encounter the fullness of the saga, only the outline of the plot.

I would like to give you an assignment:  I’d ask that you read the Joseph saga beginning with today’s lesson and read the hero’s journey story. Like all hero’s journeys, it begins with a departure.  For Joseph, he is separated from his family by his brothers’ jealousy and their betrayal of him. The next stage of a hero’s journey is the descent, entering into loss.  For Joseph, it is a descent into the pit, the descent into slavery, the descent into the dungeons. But the descent is when the hero usually finds the depths of her or himself; it is a vision quest using dreams to find a deeper spiritual identity. The next step of the hero’s journey is the return, and for Joseph, it is the reconciliation with by his brothers, reunion with his father, and the giving of grace instead of revenge.

In Hero stories and myths, the Hero has encounters with spiritual forces of great power which he or she must face and grapple with as a way of finding the way home. In this story, Joseph is so self-absorbed that he does not understand how he is feeding the resentment of his brothers. Joseph does not understand that he comes from a long line of intense and sometimes murderous rivalry. It begins in the very nature of Paradise with the rivalry between the serpent, one of God’s own beloved creatures’ resentment, and the LORD. In that myth, Humans will descend as a result of that rivalry, but with God, it becomes an upward fall into a deeper relationship with God. 

But even in that deeper relationship, there are more failures due to resentments: Cain and Abel, Noah and his neighbors, Abraham and Lot, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah through to their children. That resentment grows into hatred and fantasies of murder. In today’s story, the brothers stop short of murder but send him into the living hell of slavery in a foreign land far from his home and the ones who love him. Joseph has already had some encounters with the divine spirit in his dreams, which he interprets for his own advantage. It is only when he enters the descent away from the center of his own ego that is he able to empty himself to encounter the divine spirit for the healing of himself and the world in which he lives. Joseph’s wounds will heal, and he himself and his dreams will be the instruments of the healing of his family.

The Gospel lesson for today from Matthew is part of the Hero’s journey, a story of descending into healing, not of an outsider but a member of the inner circle, Peter. Peter is in a ship in the middle of a storm. The ship is a numinous and archetypal symbol of the church, a vessel that takes one across to the other side, to the home from which they have originally come. It is no accident that the main body of the church is called the “nave”, the place where all the rowers worked together to help each other get to the other side, to home.  Peter has a vision and sees Jesus walking across the stormy waters and asks Jesus to call to him and join him. Peter’s unconscious wants to be in an impossible situation and triumph. His ego is screaming for him to prove himself, so he calls to Jesus to act as a prod to his ego. Jesus, echoing the words of the deeper unconscious, says, “Come”.  Peter comes and then is overwhelmed by the impossibility. Carl Jung in The Interpretation of Visions writes:
“For the unconscious always tries to produce an impossible situation in order to force the individual to bring out his very best. Otherwise one stops short of one’s best, one is not complete, one does not realize oneself. What is needed is an impossible situation where one has to renounce one’s own will and one’s own wit and do nothing but to wait and trust to the impersonal power of growth and development.”

Peter, in his descent into the water, finds that impersonal power of growth and development that is in the person of Jesus, which we can call all sorts of things like the spirit, the power greater than ourselves, God:  the one who was there for Joseph in his descent, the one who was with Peter in his descent, the one who is with us on each of our descents to bring about healing and growth.

To come home is to descend away from our ego and fall upward into the arms of God. The 13th Century Persian Sufi poet, Rumi, wrote: “Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of learning. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.”


The Hero’s journey is, in essence, the story of coming home for each of us. We are born, if we are lucky, into a home where we are seen as favored. If we are seen as favored, we tend to spend our time chasing success and focused on ourselves, where the world is as only as big as one’s own shadow. Then we leave the home where we were treasured, where the world we lived in was known and trusted, and we enter a world that is much bigger, where there is much to learn and new successes and many more losses, which make us who we are. Sometimes it feels like we are all alone and we have failed, but that is only a feeling, not a fact, for God is always with us. Then, if we are able to empty ourselves of our own self-centeredness, only then are we able to allow a deeper vision which allows us to accept healing for ourselves and others. Then we are able to return to the state of knowing that we are treasured and find ourselves wise enough to understand what to treasure. As T.S. Eliot writes in Little Giddings:  “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

The Heroes’ Descent
Wanting to prove self by jumping into the storm,
Then being overwhelmed, we descended to limits
Of what we could do and turned to deeper spirits
For that is the beginning for any life to transform.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Transfigurations



A Reflection for the Feast of Transfiguration                        All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC August 6, 2017                                                            Thomas E Wilson, Rector

Exodus 34:29-35          2 Peter 1:13-21      Luke 9:28-36      Psalm 99 or 99:5-9
Transfigurations

This is the fifteenth Feast of the Transfiguration I have spent with you in this church; only twice in these fifteen times has it fallen on a Sunday. I was hit by the vision of an image of Earth and Heaven being united. I thought about all the times that I saw the light of earth and heaven being united and I saw it every place I looked, I wrote the poem and decided I didn’t need to go to prose. Jesse Smith was a young gifted pianist who did a concert here when I was thinking about Heaven and earth uniting and it did in his talent. Judy is Judy Mumma our Administrative Assistant who keeps me straight and parishioners threw her a surprise birthday party to share their love. The Senator is John McCain who I watched give his speech coming back after he got the diagnosis. Stephen is the Seminary intern who finished up his summer time with us and returning back to finish his senior year. . It reminded me of Elizabeth Barrret Browning’s lines from Aurora Leigh: “Earth's crammed with heaven, /And every common bush afire with God, / But only he who sees takes off his shoes;/The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”



Transfigurations
Moses and Elijah appear around Jesus
now surrounded by a cloud of witness
disciples are gaping in wonderment at
what they thought they would not see.
Gushes: “Master it is good we are here,
let us build booths for our witness to
that which can not be seen every day.”
But witnesses come every day of week.

Jesus says “NO” to the ideas of staying to
build monuments on mountains to capture
moments in hallowed museums of memory
saying; “This alone was holy.” His earthly life
is too short to waste on that. He leads them
to bring the light into the valleys of daily life
where the centuries of grace surrounds us
with the clouds of witness encouraging the
doing the best we can with gifts God gives.

Jesse Smith settles down on the bench
Holding his hands above the keys and
concentrates to bring the piece together
Quietly a small audience waits with him.
Now, his hands come down and the light
shines between notes as Liszt’s hands
air pianos along above the old upright
as Brahms stands whispering “jawohl”!

In the Emergency room she pulls the
thread through the wound while she
murmurs soothing notes to a little child
in the mother’s arms as the light shines
even more as they are flanked by a Lady
with the Lamp and Clara Barton nodding
for life is too short not to give comfort.

In the office a score of All Saints crowd
in to thank Judy for the love she shares
doing the work that it is easy to take for
granted. But more than that they are also
thanking God for gifts God gives through
her. The light shines and on each side Kay
O’Brien and Tom Secules, who knew how
to treasure people, add their own applause
for life is too short not to give our thanks .

The senator comes up to the lectern to call
the senators to remember why they were
chosen; not to be right or left but models
for all citizens on how a democracy works
by granting respect to those we disagree:
light shimmers as Clay and Webster agree
life is too short to govern/live other ways.

The grandmother volunteers to answer the
office phones and brings her granddaughter
to learn how to help and when not helping
they draw and color together sharing stories
showing each other that time is too short to
waste not to enter into clouds of witness.

Granddaughter is lucky she sees into clouds.
Last Sunday we became God’s witness cloud
as we laid hands on Stephen’s next journey
using the Spirit’s doing cloud conversations
entering into and not being afraid of the light,
life is too short to not live into transfigurations.