job of Job

22^nd Sunday after Pentecost: a Reflection                   St. Luke's and St Luke's Roper, Grace Plymouth

October 6, 2024                                                         Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Job 1:1; 2:1-10              Psalm 26    Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12                    Mark 10:2-16

“The Job Of Job”

From the Book of Job in today's Hebrew Testament lesson: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”

One of these days when I get rich and famous being a Priest, I am going to really retire and I am going to put on and act in a play called J.B.by Archibald MacLeish. Usually I write a poem first to try to make sense of the lessons for that Sunday, but if you have a world class poet like MacLeish, lets use him. The play is in verse and begins:

“If God is God He is not good,

If God is good He is not God;

Take the even, take the odd,

I would not sleep here if I could.

Except for the little green leaves in the wood.

And the wind on the water."

Louis Kronenberger wrote a summary of the play:

J.B. was Archibald MacLeish's re-enactment, in a contemporary setting, of the Book of Job. It was also,  in a double sense, a theatre piece: the action took place inside a night-lit circus tent where a sideshow Job had been performing. Two out-of-work actors, Zuss and Nickels, toying with the Biblical masks of God and Satan they find lying around, are suddenly aware of a Voice from outside them and are caught up in a story near at hand. In the story, J.B. is a rich, admired American industrialist with a devoted wife and five children. Then disaster looms and mounts: his children are senselessly killed or brutally murdered; his possessions are lost, his house is destroyed, his wife goes away, his body festers. All this happens against a crossfire, Biblical and profane, between Zuss and Nickels; then J.B. wrestles with his soul, with his comforters, with his God, till at the end his health is restored and his wife returns

How does God allow evil to happen? Most people think that any first class God worth its salt could be counted on to fix things, like our mistakes or hurricanes, before they happen. Even if the power of hurricanes are increased by our disregard of global warming and our refusal to change the way we pollute; we want God to be like a genie in the bottle and fix things.

The ancient Greeks used to do plays, called Comedies, because they end up well, which would be finished with a “Deus ex Machina”, a God in a Machine, where an actor dressed up as a God would be lowered in a basket from a high pillar, hanging over the scene like a God in the palace of the Gods, and explain how the problem is being fixed by heavenly power. Except if God is not fiction, we need to come to grips with a God that does come down in a machine to fix things. The crowds at the feet of the cross taunted Jesus that if his God loved him, that God could fix things to turn it into a comedy.

The play was MacLeish's attempt to come to find meaning in the events of his life living through (1) his serving in France in World War 1, (2) going through the post war economic depressions and hatreds, (3) the slaughter of World War 2, and (4) the insanity of Cold War. Poetry Foundation wrote of the poetry:

Like Job, J.B. is not answered, yet his love for Sarah affirms, in the playwrights phrase, “the worth of life in spite of life.” That worth is found in a love that paradoxically answers nothing but “becomes the ultimate human answer to the ultimate human question.”

In the Gospel lesson for today There are two different strands of the teachings of Jesus. On the one hand, he is asked about divorce and he answers that divorce is a sin. Every three years I have to hear that; it is not what I want to hear. The day after I graduated for college, I was anxious about living an adult life, so I married my girl friend who was a divorced woman. Jesus is reported to say that was adultery. We lived together for 19 years until our daughter went off to college; then we got divorced. Count 2 for my adultery. Later, I married another woman who was divorced. In baseball that is strike 3. Pat and I were wonderfully blessed and married for 36 years until she died 15 months ago. We learned how to love and forgive each other, every day of that marriage. Instead of being satisfied with a legal agreement, instead of moaning about the past, in spite of being failures in marriage; we learned how to give blessings to each other. We shared what MacLeish called the “worth of life in spite of life”.

In the play and in the Book Job has "comforters" come to him, but they want to get God off the hook and want Job to admit that God must be punishing Job for a sin he must have committed. But Job was blameless. - the word “comfort” does not mean providing soft things but it comes from two Latin words “com”- which means “with”, and “fort” which means “strength”. When my wife died, I had comforters that were true to the meaning of the term; I was the recipient of lots of moments when I was prayed for, hugged, fed, helped by the sitting with, in loving silence by, friends, family, neighbors and former parishioners. It was the worth of life in spite of life. They did the job of Job.

In the second part of the Gospel passage for today, Jesus, in the viewpoint of his disciples, is interpreting the serious work of Jesus' teachings. The disciples are centered on getting the important tasks done, but some pesky children are in the way. But Jesus rebukes his disciples saying:”Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The author continues “And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” He loves them and he is teaching his disciples and us that love is a gift; it is never earned or to be earned – only given freely. It was the worth of life in spite of life. It is a job of Job.

In this country we have an economic system that says you get what you earn. Except I do not work for a living; I am retired and I get pensions for (1) the work I did as a priest, and (2) the work I did as an Assistant Professor in a college in which I taught before I went to seminary and (3) social security for all the jobs before then since I was 16, 61 years ago. One of the things I do two to three times a month is to get in my car and drive here, charging you with my mileage and doing holy work around an altar and make with a message, for which I pay taxes. You are paying me to to keep my mind and soul alive. So I thank you for helping me, your neighbor, The job of Job is to give thanks to God for whatever you have received, both good and bad. It was the worth of life in spite of life.

I am especially proud of these two congregations. When the storms hit Western North Carolina, a couple of hundred miles away, not your next door neighbors, you dug down deeply into your hearts and pocketbooks to comfort and renew, You received the bad news of what was happening to your neighbors far away, and you heard in your hearts God's good news about being comforters, “strength givers”, to those neighbors. You opened your mind to pray for all those facing difficult days ahead. It was the worth of life in spite of life. You were living into the job of Job.

As I was writing this reflection I got word that another hurricane called “Kirk” was east of Bermuda and was expected to keep heading toward Ireland. The weather warning says: “Impacts with the highest likelihood are an increased Rip Current Threat and rough surf. Ocean-side coastal flooding impacts are also possible with the increased wave action bringing potential for ocean overwash and beach erosion, greatest chance for eastward facing coastal areas.”

Life happens and this hurricane will probably only cause me minor inconvenience, but I need to pay attention to my neighbors. I live on the Outer Banks, facing east and like you, “live in the worth of life in spite of life” and am “living into the job of Job”.

Living With Esther

A Reflection and Poem for Proper 21 in Trinity Season                        September 29, 2024

Christ Church/ Plymouth and St. Luke/St Anne, Roper     Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22           Psalm 124       James 5:13-20                    Mark 9:38-50

Living With Esther

This is the 5^th Sunday of the month, when the Episcopal churches in Roper and Plymouth come together to have a joint service and a covered dish luncheon. These churches have a history together as they celebrate the present and look forward into a future..

The Hebrew Testament lesson is from the Book of Esther, and if Martin Luther had had his way, the book would not be part of the Christian Bible. Esther began as a short novel about a young Jewish woman who intermarried into the Persian Ruler's household, standing up for her Jewish people. In the original Hebrew version, the word God is never mentioned and there are no scenes of Esther, or anyone, praying for divine help.

In the Bible, the Book of the Song of Songs and the Book of Esther were used to underline ceremonies and parties. The Song of Songs was used for Passover where God's love is present for the people, even in in bondage of Egypt and wherever faithful Jews find themselves. The Book of Esther was of God being present for the people in Exile in Persia. They became excuses to have yearly parties commemorating the power of the Jewish people to counteract the usual stigma of being Jewish in a gentile country.

For the Book of Esther, the celebration is called the “Feast of Purim” and it is a yearly celebration of being proudly Jewish. There are overflowing plates of delicious courses of so many Jewish foods giving energy to a loud and raucous celebration of the story. Not only is food over the top but the noise of booing, hissing and using loud noise makers at the mention of the villains and cheering the heroes. With centuries of having to secretly hide their religion; Purim is the place to loudly proclaim their pride in their faith and in their heritage. My wife and I were lucky enough to have good friends in Temples and Synagogues in some of the communities in which we lived, and we were invited to participate in feast and joy at Purim celebrations. They were usually in the beginnings of Spring when we Christians decide to go overboard in being somber in Lent.

Despite all of the loud noise, Purim is an exercise in memory. The story of Esther was a at first a novel, a made up story with no historical evidence. But the story was told so often that it became a part of how the people talked about their ancestors. They told the story over and over again to each generation and the fiction was gradually accepted as fact.

I remember the stories that my Grandparents on my father's side, who we knew as “Daddy Wilson” and “Nana”, my Grandparents, on my Mother's side, who we would call “Madegar” and “Mamita” and along with our Great-Aunt Ora, the oldest of my mother's Aunts, would tell my brothers, sister and I about the families experiences of centuries before. The stories were full of heroes and villains. I think every generation had put an extra layer of spin. We were told these stories to show how we had the right kind of heritage to live into. We were to see ourselves not as a haphazard collection of DNA, but a a group of people from whom much was expected. My father would tell “Daddy Wilson as a young man” stories when he would tuck my brother and I into bed at night when we were young. How much of the memories was really an attempt at nostalgia to control the future? It depends on when you ask? I know that I have passed on stories to my daughter, and much later my grandsons, when I would tuck them into bed at night.

I remember one of my favorite songs “Try To Remember” from the off-broadway play The Fantasticks, about memory based on nostalgia to control the future, to which I was introduced in the mid 1960's:; The lyrics were engraved in my heart

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.
Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

As the Jews became more and more dispersed, they tended to speak in the language of the ruling classes in the places they lived, often which was Greek. The Jews started to translate their literature into Greek, called the Septuagint, meaning the “70 books”. These translators of the Bible did not do a mere translation of the novel of Esther;; rather they re-wrote the book to include the elements of faith, prayer and divine intervention. The Septuagint were the documents used as the Roman Church translated it into Latin for their Bible.

In the Reformation, the Bible started to get translated into the languages of the people. Martin Luther had problems with the Roman Bible and started to cut away books he though as less than helpful. Luther had started his ministry with a friendship toward the Jewish people, but when they did not convert to Christianity, he became more and more an antisemitist, and he debated including Esther into the Apocrypha. The book of Easter barely made it into his Bible. The English Bible translators did not share Luther's hesitations. The monarch, King James, in whose rule the King James version of the Bible was compiled, especially liked the idea how people who disturbed the peace of the realm were punished by death as God's will..

The Book of Esther is about standing up to power. When it is so easy to just hide and avoid noting injustice, the heroine of the Book of Esther by her example calls people to strive for justice. Since we have included the Book of Esther in our lectionary; we are called by that book, not to keep silent, but to denounce any time a person is taken advantage of. We are called to risk our safety of silence and speak out.

When I was a teenager, we attended the small Episcopal church in our suburb. I was confirmed by our Bishop Peabody. It was not a magic moment of transformation for me, but it was the growth of an awareness that as an adult I was called to do something more with my faith than just sit in Church pews. Later, in my Senior year of High School, as I struggled to live in a way to being a confirmed Christian, my Bishop's wife showed a side I had not usually seen in my Episcopal Church. She was Mary Peabody, the 75 year old wife of that then retired Bishop and the mother of the then Governor of Massachusetts. She with a group of people, went down to St. Augustine, Florida to join with some black people to desegregate the Episcopal church in that town. She was hustled out of the church and arrested later for disturbing the peace, by moving their protest to a restaurant.. For me, she was the embodiment of Esther, who stepped away from her position of privilege, to stand up for what was right and just.

A couple years later, when I was in college, I was a drama major and I accepted a part in the Outdoor Drama in Saint Augustine. I had been offered parts in other Outdoor Dramas,that summer, but I took the St. Augustine position because it paid twenty dollars a week more. That summer, on a day off from laying on the beach with my girl friend, I walked into the church where Mrs. Peabody had been evicted and arrested. I was 19 years old and my life seemed so unimportant. Yet, in that empty church building, I now agreed with the physicists who were telling us that the universe was expanding; because my universe was expanding and it told me to make a decision to change my major at Carolina from Drama to Education, and then to History and to be more involved in social justice. Mary Peabody was my Queen Esther, being a model to urge me to go deeper to do good and make the world a better place. It was the beginning of what Mark in his Gospel for today calls being “salted with fire”, a beginning of burning for justice. Also I saw as what I had been doing earlier was what James in his Letter for today called “wandering from the truth”. For the first 13 years after graduation. I worked as a Social Worker, got my Master's and later taught Social Work at a Undergraduate College while working with counseling people. In 1981, I left that, in my mid-life crisis, to go to seminary. In 1984, a little over 40 years ago, I was ordained .

Today, you former members of divided churches come together; once formally divided by race, you come together to share a service and a meal; knowing the God who passes all understanding, whose love of us all, brings us together. We challenge each other to find ways that we can unite deeper to help our communities celebrate tough women, and men, who challenge the tired status quo. We are not prisoners of the past, but we are free for a future that is beyond our imagination.

I was blessed this Friday as I was writing my draft of the reflection and I came across , and stole, a part of a reflection that morning by Br. Curtis Almquist, a member of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist about generosity:

There is something about participating in life as a gift, not clinging to it, not hoarding it, but cherishing it, then sharing it with a kind of reckless abandon that is the real deal, because that's like God. We are invited to be generous with the things in life to which we have been entrusted, as well as with our kindness, attentiveness, gratitude, gentleness, and interest for others.

My brothers and sisters, you have been entrusted with your life to make the world a better place. Thank you for taking on that calling.

Living With Esther

There are times, Esther's in our hearts,

When they open to hear her standing,

Away from privilege, and demanding,

That we listen to voices of many parts.

We aren't all of the same persuasions.

Not holding all of the same memories,

But we're passing hopes into treasuries,

Filled to the rim for the new situations,

'cause we're opening into a new future,

Untinged by all the whiffs of nostalgia,

Unburdened by a remembered myalgia,

Freed from the old past without a suture.

All those good old days are now past.

It's a time to give blessings that'll last.

Attention, Attention Musr Be Paid

 

A Reflection/Poem for XVII Sunday after Pentecost                         September 15, 2024

St Luke's & St. Anne's, Roper and Grace Plymouth, NC                   Thomas E Wilson Guest Preacher

Proverbs 1:20-33                         Psalm 19    James 3:1-12                   Mark 8:27-38

Attention, Attention Must be Paid

Last Sunday I went to attend the Second Sunday of the new Priest at the church in Hertford. I had done some fill-ins, a couple times a month, for that church for a year until they called a new Rector. I called the new Rector and welcomed him and then asked permission to visit the church and him on his 2^nd Sunday, and take him out to lunch after the service.

He is different than I am, but I was not there to grade his performance, I was there to welcome him as the new minister to some people that I had grown fond of. I was there to share support and wisdom; wisdom without support is meaningless. It was his church and not mine. He was their Pastor now and I wasn't. So, part of why I was there was to trust their choice and to be able to leave; to leave the church alone so the new relationship could grow. Part of me did not want to go since I had accepted the invitation to fill in a couple days after my wife's funeral and I needed to do something to help fill the emptiness I had inside my heart. I was reminded of a quote from Therapist Marion Woodman whose books we had read when my wife and I had been doing dream work, She wrote: “It takes great courage to break with one's past history and stand alone”. Woodward also wrote “How we see ourselves determines what happens to us in our lives. If we do not respect and love ourselves that will carry over into our relationships and others will not respect us.”

I was reflecting on what a ministry of any church is, and I was also reading about Edith Hamilton, a scholar who translated and re-introduced ancient Greek and Roman Stories and myths into the last century and into common understandings of ourselves.I spend a lot of my life looking at ancient texts of my faith and try to translate them into 21^st Century American mindset. Robert Kennedy trying to make sense of his brothers deaths, was so enamored by Hamilton's books that he carried a copy of one of her books wherever he went. In a speech he gave, he said: “"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago––to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." In one speech he quoted Aeschylus from memory: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran Pastor in Colorado wrote about her wisdom about how to leave: “The truth is that we can only hold handfuls of life at a time and room must be made for what enters next. Maybe to live a human life is to lose everything while also gaining everything.”

In the Hebrew Testament lesson for today, the Spirit of Wisdom is like a mother who comes to the market place to warn her children of the need to hold onto the Divine Wisdom. “ For waywardness kills the simple,/and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure/
and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.”

I am reminded of when I went off to college and my parents individually would set me down from time to time as the day to leave for college was drawing near, and they passed on their wisdom about how it was to leave what you knew and enter into an unknown future. Wisdom comes at the time of need when our old homes and our lives are changing.

In Mark's Gospel for today, Jesus is letting his disciples know that he will be leaving them, so that they will be able to live deeply into a new future with the Holy Spirit. Peter wants to hold tightly on to the present and desperately on to the past. Peter is rebuked because Jesus is speaking that the deepest wisdom is that he (and we) are called to give your (and our) life away in love.

This last week ,we remembered the events of terrorist attacks on 9/11; the death of so may innocent people. We keep trying to make sense in days after the 9/11 attacks in New York City. Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a speech honoring British victims that he ended with the final lines of The Bridge of San Luis Rey:, a novel written by Thornton Wilder in 1927 about the collapse of a bridge where five characters fell to their death. In the novel, the bridge is a metaphor for the path each of us take between life and death.

But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love. The only survival, the only meaning.

This week, Deacon Joanna Seibert wrote about reflecting on Thornton Wilder's The Bridge Of San Luis Re. “Love is all we have to contribute to this life that will be lasting. Love is all we will carry with us into the life of the resurrection. Love is the bridge between these two territories.”

Decades ago, when I was so much younger I was acted in a play, “Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller and I played the character of Willy Loman. In his introduction to the play, Christopher Bigsby wrote

Death of a Salesman had its origins in a short story Miller wrote at the age of seventeen (approximately the age of the young Biff Loman), when he worked, briefly, for his father’s

company. It told of an aging salesman who sells nothing, is abused by the buyers, and borrows his subway fare from the young narrator. In a note scrawled on the manuscript Miller

records that the real salesman had thrown himself under a subway train. Years later, at the time of the play’s Broadway opening, Miller’s mother found the story abandoned in a drawer.

But, as Miller has noted, Death of a Salesman also traced its roots closer to home. Willy Loman was kin to Miller’s salesman uncle, Manny Newman, a man who was ‘‘a competitor, at all times, in all things, and at every moment. My brother and I,’’ Miller explains in his autobiography, ‘‘he saw running neck and neck with his two sons in some race that never stopped in his mind.’’ The Newman household was one in which you ‘‘dared not lose hope, and I would later think of it as a perfection of America for that reason. . . . It was a house . . .

trembling with resolutions and shouts of victories that had not yet taken place but surely would tomorrow.’’

The part in the play; it was haunting because I was in my own life almost running in a race that never stopped in my mind. The play ends with a warning about such people running those kinds of races :

"I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person."

In your life, in your family, in your neighborhood; is there someone for whom “Attention must be paid.”?

Today, my hope is that each of us will remember the wisdom that was shared in our lives and how we are able to hear that love that comes with the wisdom.

Attention, Attention Must be Paid

Decades ago, I played the character, Willy Loman;

a week on a stage, and for some years in my life,

I'd often find myself in his shoes and in his strife;

of course long before becoming a small theologian.

Today, usually I can try to find paying attention

to a wisdom, a power, much greater than myself,

speaking to me to pick up some books on a shelf.

to use as a path of prayer to a deeper dimension.

Or, to turn to friends in whom I'd have some trust,

to listen with the ear of a loving heart, and to speak

after thinking deeply, maybe from translated Greek,

a small peace might come from what we discussed.

It is what happens. when some attention is paid

and I am not alone while the fear begins to fade

Faith: Disciplinarian or Lover?

A Reflection and Poem for September 1, 2024                St. Luke's, Roper and Grace Church, Plymouth

15^th Sunday after Pentecost                                             Thomas E Wilson Guest Celebrant

Song of Solomon 2:8-13        Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10             James 1:17-27          Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Faith: Disciplinarian or Lover?

On May the 26^th, Jim, my sister Anne's husband, died after he had a hard illness, During his illness I had prayed for both Jim and my sister using standard ChristianTheological language and understanding of prayer. He grew up a Presbyterian, he married an Episcopalian, His sister and I were both Episcopal Priests. However, organized religion had lost meaning for him and he did not want a religious funeral and we respected his wishes. However, Irene, one of his daughters, who is a Buddhist, thought we should do a Buddhist ceremony of Thanksgiving for his life and for strength for his family in living the days ahead.

Fourteen months before, my own wife, Pat, died and the family had come to give me strength and to share their love. Eight days ago, I joined the family for Jim's service. One of the things I found out was, if you are an old man like me and when you attend a service at a temple and a very kind person, like the Rev. Shaun Song, rushes up and offers you a chair out of care for a visitor; take the chair.

While I hate to admit that I am really an old man, I went into denial and I made the excuse to myself that I wanted to show that I honored their traditions and so I proudly sat on cross legged on a pillow on the floor. So far so good. It is a quiet service with some chanting, and meditation. There is a moment when we are invited to come up, face Jim's picture and say a blessing or thanksgiving to him. You know the old proverb, “Pride goeth before a fall”? I was invited to come up and when I got up, I realized that my legs didn't feel any substance below my knee caps because of my attempt to deny reality, and I staggered backwards and fell down on the floor. It was not the most graceful way of my coming forward to thank Jim for loving my sister. My advice holds; if they offer you a chair; take the chair!

The Rev. WonGong So, the Buddhist Priest and dharma teacher, leading the service tried to help me in my humiliation. She was kind and loving to me and the family. She is the kind of person I would look for as a Priest for me. Her gentle and wise manner reminds me of a saying of the Buddha:‘Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.’

Let us start off at the beginning. Christianity and Buddhism are different, in that in Buddhism there is no God. No supreme being in charge of the Universe. Christianity believes in a Supreme Being which created the universe, and we believe in a Christ event that redefined our understanding of God, and in a Holy Spirit which guides our lives surrounding us with Grace. But, as a Hindu believer, Mahatma Gandhi warned us western Christians about our faith: “To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” Frederick W. Schmidt, an Episcopal Priest writes about the need for faith growing out of belief : “I am not talking about some kind of soft social consciousness, never mind a body of political beliefs. Instead, I am referring to the capacity to look at the world around us through the eyes of God.”

As Grant Ethan writes:

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy that originated in India and spread throughout Asia. Unlike other major world religions, Buddhism does not have just one god, but rather includes a wide array of divine beings that are venerated in various ritual and popular contexts.

These beings are known as devas, asuras, yakshas, and nats.

According to Buddhist teachings, gods are not considered to be eternal and all-powerful beings. They are believed to be subject to the same laws of impermanence and suffering as all other beings.

In fact, the Buddha himself discouraged his followers from becoming too attached to the gods or seeking their help in achieving enlightenment.

The concept of God as the one and only supreme being, and not just one god among many, was just coming into acceptance among Jewish scholars about the time the Buddha was born. This God concept may not have ever reached him.”

Buddhism and Christianity are similar in that both urge us not to be concerned with our own ego. Both are about forming a relationship with a deeper dimension. Both are about loving yourself and others; about forgiving self and others, about caring for one's neighbor, about not being seduced with the outward temptations of prestige, wealth and social standing, about serving others and not ruling others. Both Buddhists and Christians hold onto the deeper truth in the verses in today's Psalm 15:

Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, *
who speaks the truth from his heart.

There is no guile upon his tongue;
he does no evil to his friend; *
he does not heap contempt upon his neighbor.

Buddhists and Christians would understand the verses of the Song of Solomon for today:

"Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;

for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away."

The Buddhist and the Christian can claim common ground on the message from the Epistle of James for today;

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-they will be blessed in their doing.

If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. (Faith) . . . is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

No Buddhist would object to the lines from the Gospel for today:

For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

I see the Gospel message lived out in my niece Irene that she put into deeper practice when she became involved in the Buddhist temple. She gave a talk there about how she was learning how to stop her inner chatter of what she “should do” and live into her name ,“Irene” which means peace. I envied her not wasting more years of her life. I was older than her when I learned to stop 'Should-ing all over myself.”

One of things I learned many years before is help people grow deeper into faith and not necessarily into being Episcopalians. I used to do volunteer work in Alcohol and Drag Abuse Treatment programs. Step 2 in the 12 step treatment programs is “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Step 11 is “Sought through meditation and prayer to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

I can say of the Rev. WonGong, she did not try to convert me; she ministered to me with her wisdom. She and I have started an exchange of notes as I was writing this reflection and poem. She always ends with the wish “Palms Together” letting me know she is praying for wisdom and peace for me. Her wish in one message was of encouragement: “I am sure there will be lots of joy in uncovering the wisdom within and all around you in the spirit of God.”

I would like to pass on her wisdom and Peace to you Episcopalians. While I would like you to go out in your neighborhoods and bring in new people into the congregations; your more important job, like the Good Samaritan, is to minister to your neighbor. You are not on this earth to approve of people; you are here, like she is, to honor others with your care, to help them into a deeper life. A Spiritual life is not nourished by looking into a mirror, but by seeing oneself reflected in a neighbor's eyes.

Faith: Disciplinarian or Lover

Walking in the door, seeing that they are different:

we'll focus on points in which we are not the same,

reassured our faith has a different shape and name

from each other, and we'll agree to be considerate.

Honoring one another's view of the same mystery,

which can't be reduced to the level of many phrases

strung together. Rather we sing each other's praises,

for attempting to live into a different loving history.

We struggle for centuries of living purposeful faith,

hoping for insight for one meaningful day at a time,

as we faithfully on this mountain of meaning climb,

for to hear what old ancestors said prophets “sayeth”.

It's a different day, when we'll not say we're right,

but we'll stop to see a fellow traveler in our sight.

Not Walking Alone

 

A Reflection and Poem for Pentecost Proper 16 B                            St. Luke's, Roper and Grace, Plymouth

August 25, 2024                                                                                Thomas E. Wilson, Guest Preacher

1 Kings 8:[1, 6, 10-11], 22-30, 41-43      Psalm 84       Ephesians 6:10-20      John 6:56-69

Not Walking Alone

From John's Gospel for today: “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

The disciples are of two camps; those who can live with mystery that they cannot fully understand and those who decide they cannot live comfortably mystery; that which is beyond their control or understanding. Poet Mary Oliver wrote a poem of living with mystery:

Mysteries, Yes
Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
   to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
   mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
   in allegiance with gravity
      while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
   never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
   scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
   who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
   “Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
   and bow their heads.

The disciples who left Jesus did not understand who Jesus was. They had thought he was a religious man who had the opportunity to become a political leader and could be a leader to changing the government and the corrupt religious establishment. That was their hope, but he was not there to fulfill their hopes for a return to the past; he wanted them to change. He wanted them to look to the unknown future and know that the Spirit of the Risen Christ would be walking with them each step of their lives, even if Jesus would not be there in bodily form; they would never have to face the future alone

Gothic Horror author H.P Lovecraft observed, "The oldest and strongest emotion of (hu)mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." The disciples who left were afraid of the unknown future and so they walked away alone.

This last week I went to a series of concerts, these were the 10^th Anniversary of the Annual Surf and Sounds Chamber Music Series, sponsored by the Don and Catherine Bryan Cultural Series. I had done Hospice Ministry with Don and Catherine as they died, and since Don was an artist, he wanted to set up an endowment to keep the arts alive. It has been my pleasure to attend the annual series and in the beginning they were held at the church in which I was the Rector. My wife, Pat, and I got to know members of the Quartets and Quintets and one of the high points of our year was to attend and have a meal with them. Pat loved to attend and catch up with the artists. This was to be the first time I would attend without Pat and I felt so incredibly alone.

This year was also different because a young man, Tshombe Selby, who grew up in the Outer Banks was to be a special guest to sing with the quintet.. Tshombe performs with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, but he brought in a whole range of types of music. The artistic highpoint was Ralph Vaughan Williams' settings for parts of A.E. Houseman's A Shropshire Lad. Breathtaking! Then I was caught with him singing:

XVIII
        
Oh, when I was in love with you,
         Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
         How well did I behave.
        
And now the fancy passes by,
         And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
         Am quite myself again.

The theme of that poem is that his beloved has passed him by. I thought of how Pat was not with me anymore and I was far from being myself again. I longed for the past; when I needed to live fully in the present and move into a new future. Much later Tshombe sang two popular songs which really caught me, for they caught me where I was, off-balance, and they were about going deeper into the present moment to gather strength in having to face the future alone.

One of the songs he sang that night, accompanied by the Quintet, was, “You' ll Never Walk Alone”, a Rogers and Hammerstein's song from the Broadway Musical, Carousel, based on the play Liliom , of a carnival roustabout who dies and is allowed to come back in spirit to provide comfort to his widow and his daughter. The musical opened in New York City in 1945 during the last months of war on the German battlefields. Lots of brave men were dying and their wives and families were needing hope as they feared the telegram which might come from the War Department. This song was for those who faced an unknown future where they may have to walk on alone after they had known of what Mary Oliver was to write decades later, “How two hands touch and the bonds will/ never be broken.”

I have heard that song dozens of times sung by different people from Claramae Turner in the movie version and Shirley Jones and others singing it at the end of the movie. Outside the movie, there were so many others from Elvis Presley to Judy Garland , opera to country, rock to ballad, and so many people in between. You don't need to be a great singer to do justice to that song, but you have to have hope and love in your heart. The Liverpool England Football club's fans sing it before each match to pledge their loyalty with the team.

That evening I needed to hear that song. It was a gift to be reminded that while we cannot control the future, we are surrounded by God's love and we will never walk alone.

The other song that spoke to me about facing a future alone is the song “The Wind Beneath My Wings”, a song dealing about loss of a loved one and thankfulness about being able to go on alone by giving thanks for for the continued strength that was still available in the deepness of the relationship. I am one of those people who always aware that in the Christian tradition that the “Spirit of God”, the “Holy Spirit” is usually manifested in the “wind”, the breath from God. The last lines of the song are:“Thank you, thank you,/Thank God for you, the wind beneath my wings.”

The next night I went back to the concert which was held in the church I once served as an interim, partly because I still had work to do with the music that had given my soul light. I had to go back and find more grace to live with hope. Oh, and how we all responded. Time after time we jumped to our feet in admiration and applauded with our hands, throats and hearts. We were living in the last line of Mary Oliver's poem :

Let me keep company always with those who say
   “Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
   and bow their heads.

In the Episcopal Church service, we are called to leave our pews and exchange the Peace of God with each other as a preparation for being fed by the body and blood of our savior; later leaving the church building and doing the same with our neighbors. Hopefully doing it in the style as suggested by Mary Oliver: Let me keep company always with those who say
   “Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
    and bow their heads.

I am pretty sure that all members of this congregation has lived with loss in the present or the past, where the future looked daunting. Don't be afraid, for when we place our trust, one step at a time, one day at a time, in God's Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Christ he breathed on his disciples with God's spirit we will never walk alone and we will know the wind beneath our wings; as “How two hands touch and the bonds will/ never be broken.”

Not Walking Alone

Pat'll say; “You know, I love who you are!”

Lovers often say things to remind all of us,

we, as people of faith, we aren't hopeless,

for some strong family ties guide our star.

Now, I'm the oldest one who is still left,

who each day, has to wrap memories,

songs or any inspirational accessories,

together, tied up to give hope some heft.

Today my hope; I'll not be walking alone,

but surrounded by examples and stories

of those with faith of yesterday's glories,

so tomorrow, of acts I'll not need to atone.

Today, give me the strength to remember

your strength from January to December.

Often Visitor

A Reflection for August 18, 2024                   Grace Church, Plymouth, NC and St. Luke's, Roper, NC

15^th Sunday after Pentecost                           Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher and Celebrant

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14 Psalm 111 Ephesians 5:15-20 John 6:51-58

Often Visitor

Thank you for allowing me to be a visitor here again. I have come to you, time and time again – and I come as a person who does not have all the answers. I come as a person who is badgered by questions instead of answers. Last week, six days ago, was my wife's birthday; she was present in my heart, but fourteen months ago, she died. I was both thankful she had been so present in my life and at the same time, I was so empty because she was not with me to build new memories. I had to be content with glimpses of her spirit in my dreams and memories. I wrote a birthday poem about my love for her.

But, in dynamic tension, I had to pay attention to her absence. It reminded me of the Robert Frost poem “Acceptance” when he concludes by accepting;

Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be be.”

In the Hebrew Testament lesson for today, Solomon, King David's son grieving his father, the light of his life, has to come to grips that since his father died, the one from whom he expected all answers to come, was no longer available to provide the answers. God comes to him in a dream, and he talks with God. In his dream, God tells him that God will be with Solomon one day at a time. There is no 5 year plan, no Outline for the future, no perfect answers from the past; only the promise to walk with him one day at a time. It means that Solomon, like every King, or commoner, among us, with have to be listening each and every day to God's questions each and every new day.

If we read the paper, or watch the news, or live life more than half-aware; we see there are obscenities in life that we cannot come to grips with easily. We have so many questions, but we must listen to the deeper questions and provide tentative answers on day at a time. We understand there are so many things that are just outside our ability to fully understand. Victor Frankl, a Jewish Doctor and Psychotherapist posited that “meaning was the central motivational force in human beings.” He and his family were caught up in the obscenity of Hitler's Germany. He and his family were thrown into the insanity of the Concentration camps in 1942. He spent the next three years in four different concentration camps. His father died of starvation and pneumonia in the first, his mother and brother perished in the gas chambers, his wife died of Typhus in a third. He spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of living through that insanity. He wrote:

It is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us—we are the ones who are questioned! We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential “life questions.” Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to—of being responsible toward—life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us. Now everything depends on what is expected of us. As to what awaits us in the future, we don’t need to know that any more than we are able to know it. (Victor Frankl, Yes To Life: In Spite of Everything, 33-34)

I visit with you but I do not know all the answers, I can only share with you the living one day at a time and having to depend on a power greater than our individual selves. Jesus said in today's Gospel lesson, the way forward is to each day eat of him, each day take the Spirit of the Living God into ourselves, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time, one millisecond at a time. We do not have all the answers, but we walk by faith, hopefully nourishing, one step at a time with God.

Carl Jung defined God, the daily bread we are offered every day, in this way:

"To this day, God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions then change the course of my life for better or worse.

"Without knowing it," he added. " man is always concerned with God. What some people call instinct or intuition is nothing other than God. God is the voice in side us which tells us what to do and what not lo do-in other words, our conscience."

Tom Ehrich, a retired Episcopal Priest, Writer and Consultant, who we used in one of the churches I served, writes a daily reflection to which I subscribe, read faithfully, and steal from shamelessly. His insights I have plundered, for I guess, more than three decades. Wednesday this week he wrote about being in Prayer with God:

Prayer doesn’t requite six hymns and every verse of every hymn in a relentless display of curated sound. Prayer can be sitting at the breakfast table and letting your head drop, your shoulders relax, your fists unclench, and let your mind be drawn to something outside yourself.   I think we tend to get in our own way, when all that God wants is to sit with us, weep with us, see the light shining through a drop of dew on a branch and not worry about figuring it out. (Tom Ehrich's Daily Meditation, August 14, 2024, Still, Small Voice)

I am your guest preacher today and when you leave this church building, I urge each of us, as Frankl mentioned, “we are the ones who are questioned by life”, to unclench your fists, go deeper than my words and take the spiritual body of Christ into each moment of your lives.

Often Visitor

Every church I enter is so full of fakes,

They're here for all the wrong reasons:

Like only coming if it's in good seasons,

Or sermons won't be about budget makes.

I know, because now I am one of those,

Who only want to come to again hear

Such things like I'm seen as one so dear,

Broken as I am, that I'm one God chose.

Chosen not because I am one really good,

Rather in spite of all my so many failings,

And numbers of times, bitterly in railings

Wanting to taste more sin as my daily food.

I show up because I am one of those fakes,

Who shows up often, praying love takes.

Pat Wilson's Birthday 2024

 

Pat Wilson's Birthday's 2024

Remembering you in the year you never knew.

Memories of those so many of the gifts I miss:

when I'd climb into bed, you'd give me a kiss,

wishing me good dreams to see with God's view.

Or, when I'd get up to make your coffee beverage

next morning, and you'd wake up to that smell

with a new day's joy of wonderful dreams to tell

each other, our dreams being a new day's leverage.

Or, when we would stand together at the door,

wishing each other the best of this gifted day,

knowing whatever morn held, we'd still pray

that all would be redeemed, blessing us more.

Or, when I would come home and we'd snuggle,

knowing our love would overcome any struggle.