A Poem and Reflection for VI Easter St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Ahoskie, NC
May 22, 2022 Thomas E. Wilson, Guest Celebrant
Through John 5:1-9
Today's Gospel story is about a man who has tried for years to be healed. He gives a litany of reasons why he has never been healed and they are all the same, “I am a failure and it is someone else's fault because they get in my way.”
Every time he tries to get up and move to the pool of be healed, he not only tries to carry himself but he carries all the other times he failed; he carries the fear of failure. He does not pick up his bed because he is riddled, not only with disease, but with fear; he knows he will fail. The bed stays where it is because it is always comforting to have the same place to return and never leave.
Karl Jung, the great 20th Century psychologist, received a letter from someone who was stuck in a dilemma. Jung answered: “The question is, of course, what do you feel to be your task? Where the fear; there is the task?”
We humans have a tendency to be lazy because we like to keep things predictable and to stay the way they are because we are afraid it could get worse. Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet's “To be or not to be” speech.
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
The man's fear keeps him where he is. Where is he? In his fear, he is alone, even in the midst of others. Possible allies or enemies surround him. but he is alone with his fear. All of his energy goes into keeping the fear at bay. He is suffering. Suffering is not bad in and of itself indeed it is part of life. Joanna Siebert, a Deacon in the Episcopal Church in Memphis, in a blog a couple weeks ago reflected on suffering and borrowed from Sue Monk Kidd who:
. . . reminds us of Marion Woodman’s writings about creative suffering in the dark. Creative suffering burns clean, as opposed to neurotic suffering, which creates more soot. Creative suffering “easters” us or transforms us, chooses a new way, owns our shadow, heals our wounds—as opposed to neurotic or self-pitying suffering, which is untransforming and leads to despair. Kidd continues to tell us that pain may not kill us but running from it might.
St. Benedict had a phrase; “Let us begin again.” To begin again is not to revisit the place in which we are stuck, but to go back to the beginning and start over. It is an experience to be done when we begin a new day, without becoming mired in the wreckage of the past attempts, but to begin with a new beginning. What happens is what Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist calls prayer: “the conversion of your fretful anxiety into promising hope.”
Jesus comes to the man and invites him to begin again. “Pick up your bed and walk!” Jesus claims the space as Holy Space and the man leaves the past behind and walks into a new future with a strength greater than himself walking with him. It is, at its heart, an “Eastering”, a foretaste of a Resurrection story.
T S Elliot in Four Quartets, East Coker reflects:
There
is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost
again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.
But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the
trying. The rest is not our business.
In your bulletin, you may notice a poem I wrote that is titled “Steve Hammond through John 5:1-9” and you may ask yourself, “Who the heck is Steve Hammond?”
Steve is a friend of mine for the last 17 years. He is the Principal of St. Patrick's Catholic School in Norfolk, VA. That it what the title is about. He was about to retire, and a mutual friend asked if I would write a poem for the occasion of his retirement party. I agreed; but when I started to write, I still was knee deep in the lessons for today. I realized that the Gospel lesson fit perfectly what I wanted to say. I first met Steve when he was hired to build a whole new school. He was coming from Nashville to a community unknown to him.There was nothing to tear down, but only to build on a whole new foundation, physical and relational, heavily influenced by William Glasser's Choice Theory. The past could be left behind and a whole new philosophy of relationship between the students, teachers, administrators, staff, the community and a religious corporation had to be nurtured.
Each year before the school year would begin, Steve would visit the church in which I was serving in Southern Shores, and have a prayer and joy filled retreat with all the staff and teachers to revisit the ministry of education they shared. It was one of my favorite times of the year. What they did on their retreat is to go back to the fundamentals of their faith and their educational philosophy and “begin again.” When they left to return to begin the new school year,, they left the past behind and walked into a new future. After they left, I would walk through the now empty rooms they used and I could feel the remnants of the faith filled love they shared, which seemed to have seeped into the walls and the air was rearranging itself to be ready for our worship service the next Sunday. It was Holy Space ready to welcome people who were coming to leave the past behind and walk into a new future.
What does this have to do with St. Thomas, Ahoskie? Your Rector has retired, and you have choices. You can either enter into fretful anxiety about the past or the future, or enter into a conversion into promising hope to leave the past behind and walk into a new future holding on to the promise that there is a strength greater than ourselves walking with us. You are invited into an “Eastering time”. To re-quote T.S. Eliot's faith filled line: “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
Steve Hammond through John 5:1-9
Jung said: “Where the fear, there is your task!”
Steve sat down with the guitar to sing; singing
not acting even a bit afraid, he'd be bringing
shame to himself; letting slip a confident mask.
So: he sang, a song about children all learning,
in an environment of challenging them to grow,
not just up but deeper, with joyful faces aglow,
shinning their path to a God seeking yearning.
It was a new school, fresh from opening dreams
of new relationships, growing between them all,
creating something alive, a color for every wall
instead of uniformity but honoring those seams
binding all them together; student and teacher,
into fearful places where courage's the feature.
