All The World's A Stage

A Reflection and Poem for Pentecost 18                                     Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant October 1, 2023                                                                           Holy Trinity Church, Hertford, NC

Exodus 17:1-7     Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16       Philippians 2:1-13           Matthew 21:23-32

All The World's A Stage

From the Gospel of Matthew for today we are given a parable there are two sons who are asked by their father to work in the vineyard. The first one answers “no”, but then he captures a deeper vision that his father had of him, and in that vision he goes to work in the vineyard. The second son says “Yes”, and he gets his father off his back. But he does not go to work in the vineyard because he is sure his father will not look deeper than the surface. How deep do we go in finding a vision of ourselves or others?

Shakespeare in his comedy, “As You Like It” has his character Jacques lament:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,

A half century ago, I was very involved in acting in plays. Like the parable, there are two different ways actors approach their craft. One is to say “Yes” and then not looking deeper into themselves,just memorize the lines and stage directions when giving a shallow performance of those lines. Many times, if they are cute or have a pleasing voice, they see no reason to go deeper. They have their own life to live. The other way is to go deeper in the actor's own psyche to find traits they might share in the characters they play. That way was the path I chose to take with characters.

When I played Willy Loman in Arther Miller's Death of a Salesman, I could identify with that small fear in my life that everything was on the brink of falling apart. Was my life making sense? I thought about the High School dropouts I was working with during my day job and how difficult it was to hold on to hope. The lines from Willy Loman's wife, Linda, in the play resonated as a cry for all of us to hold on to honor.

"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 Miller's The Crucible, a story of easy duplicity by just going along, I could deeply identify with the character, John Proctor's, fear of losing his integrity at the same time covering up his own failings. In my day life, I was thinking about going to seminary and was more than aware of my moral failings. His line that cut to my heart was; “God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God knows how black my sins are!”

As Big Daddy, in Tennessee Williams', Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, reaching out to students at the local University up the street in a college production when I was a frustrated Rector of a Church in Georgia, I came to understand the having to let go of so much I wanted to control and the need to care about one another. It is Big Daddy who sneers: “The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he's dying don't give him pity for others.” or ““Think of all the lies I got to put up with! — Pretenses! Ain’t that mendacity? Having to pretend stuff you don’t think or feel or have any idea of?” I did not want that to be true of myself.

Playing those parts, brought me deeper to understand the shadows within myself that I was tempted to ignore. These acts of imagination were spiritual exercises wherein I attempted to channel the spirit of the character in the play and into my life as part of my being.

A couple weeks ago, I gave you an almost scene for scene of the 1942 Movie classic, Casablanca, and today I will introduce you to a 1947 movie, A Double Life, staring Ronald Colman, who won an Academy Award for the role he played as Tony, an actor. The actor is delightful when he does superficial comedies and is a success, but a producer offers him the lead in in a production of Shakespeare's Tragedy Othello where tragedy overcomes him as he becomes so enmeshed in the character who kills his wife in a jealous rage, that he ends up almost killing his own leading lady, who is also his own ex-wife, whom he still loves, and killing his girlfriend played by Shelley Winters and then finally killing himself as Othello does at the end of his play.

The movie, script writers Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, were also sending a message for actors not to take themselves too seriously. It was also a warning about Method Acting, which was gaining popularity at the time, where the actors brings their identifications with their own damaged psyches to the damaged psyches that infect the character.

When I came to the Outer Banks, I did not do a play for years but something came up and I had to do it. It was a production of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters, a two person presentation of these two persons, a man and a woman, sitting at a table five feet apart, not ever looking at each other, reading the love, and some not so love, letters and notes written to each other over the years. The other person in the cast was my wife Pat and we both learned how important it was to tell each other the truths in our feelings and to cherish the moments where we could freely and completely love each other. Doing that play with my wife was probably the best sermon I ever gave, or would ever give. Its message was important: that life is just too short to hold on to any grievances or to not tell someone that you love them.

When Jesus tells a parable, he is laying out a script for us to enter into a play, which can be either tragedy or comedy. We are urged to try out each part. What part of each character can we learn from? When have we promised that we would follow God's request but never seemed to get around to it because it would get in the way of life as usual? When have we said no to a request from our spiritual connection to our higher power, only to realize that our wholeness depended on doing the difficult deed? How has our habit of saying “Yes” or “No” been just a matter of habit? The parable of the Two Sons that Jesus tells is about how people, on hearing the invitation to join in helping the daily labor birth of the coming of the Kingdom of the Heaven each day. We make a decision either to just stay on the surface and go about their own self-absorbed activities and roles, or to make the decision to change our lives in loving our neighbors, extravagantly forgiving sins and sharing their lives with others to build a community of faith. Listening to any Parable becomes for the disciples, and for us who hear it 21 centuries later, an invitation to enter into a spiritual exercise of hearing the request to enter into a new life where our desires are not the center of our universes.

The Holocaust witness and writer Elie Wiesel reminded us :“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.”

For Parishes of churches, the message seems to be about spending less time arguing about theology and more about demonstrating what a life of loving God and neighbor looks like in real life. A life where Prayer is not a bunch of lines we drone on about, but a way of living each moment as if we are in loving dialog with Creation where we are so aware of the blessedness of each moment before we even start to speak.

All The World's A Stage

Willy Loman is my friend living within me;

it would have nice if he were Errol Flynn

swilling more than healthy jiggers of Gin,

who asks nothing of me but egos to agree.

But he is not, and Willy's many fears live

within me to help understand my friend

and brother and then fully comprehend

the spirit who asks us to freely forgive.

Big Daddy shows up from time to time,

wanting to grasp and hold on to things

and people as fate as daily life brings

instead of seeing them as gifts divine,

meant to be treasured and shared

as signs our all loving God cared.

"But I Want To be Right

Reflection and Poem for 16^th Sunday after Pentecost          Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Church of the Holy Trinity, Hertford, NC                           September 17, 2023

Exodus 14:19-31 Psalm 114 Romans 14:1-12 Matthew 18:21-35

But I Want To Be Right

When I went off to college my grandfather recited a poem which I think he learned when he went to college:

“You can tell a Freshman by his silly, eager look

You can tell a Sophomore ’cause he carries one less book

You can tell a Junior by his fancy airs and such

You can always tell a Senior, but you can’t tell him much.”

The lessons today have to do with being “right” at the cost of relationship. In the question of who is right, we can either end in blessings or curses. Frederick Buechner in his Magnificent Defeat wrote: “And here even for us something of this remains true: we also know that words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion within the human heart that can never be reversed.  

In Today's Hebrew Testament lesson from Exodus lesson there is no evidence that Pharaoh ever attended Egypt State U., much less a Senior, and he may have been home schooled, but you could not tell him very much. But here he is, at the head of his armies, chasing the Hebrew people who are trying to leave. In deep hate, he has told them to get out of his sight after he and his wizards lost the battles of the plagues. Then came the big game, the Passover of the Angel of Death, which Pharaoh loses, big time, and he says to the Hebrew's to get out of his sight.

They start to leave but Pharaoh changes his mind. You can always tell a Pharaoh, but you cannot tell him much. He has lost so much except his desire to be right, to be in charge. So he gathers all the Kings horses and all the Kings Chariots and all the Kings men and he leads them to slaughter the Hebrews. Except, he thought that his GPS or Google maps app must not have been working right since it was telling him that the dry land he was storming down was actually the Sea of Reeds. But he knew he was right, and just ask any woman, “Since when can you give a male driver directions!” To give him a break, he may have wondered how come there were waters rising up on either side of the road; but he knew he was right. He was right until all the Kings Chariots and all the Kings Horses and all the Kings men were drowned be, in Pharaoh's hate, and all paying the price of the King wanting to be right.

I did not wait for my senior year to not listen much. Because I wanted to be right. I got a lot of practice because I had an older brother, Paul, a year older than me, who was handsomer than me, cooler than me, more athletic than me and I spent a lot of time trying to prove I was right about something, heck anything, and He was wrong. Not just wrong, but “double dog dare you” wrong. I wanted to be right. Sometimes we would get into physical tussles about who was right. Our mother would separate us and sigh that she had been an only child and had longed to have a brother or sister to love, would urge us to tell each other we were sorry. We would shake hands, surreptitiously squeezing harder than we needed, and say the obligatory words

All the way through Elementary school, Junior high, Senior high, we argued about things like Elvis Presley versus Johnny Cash, Mickey Mantle versus Stan “the Man” Musial, Hockey Skates versus figure skates, the merits and defects of certain teenage girls. You name it - we fought about who was right. He and I graduated from High School the same year in 1964, I was 17 and he was 18 and he went into the Marine Corps while I went to college.

On Christmas Break in my Freshman year, when we were at home together, he on leave and I on break, I was turning 18 and my brother who was one year and 4 days older than me took me out for my first legal beer. That week I was set to go down to my draft board and I was in a struggle on what I should do with my draft status. I was not convinced it was right for me to kill even in the name of my country. Paul and I would argue about Vietnam. One night at dinner, we really got into throwing slogans at each other. My mother was close to tears and my father, who had been a Major in the Marine Corps in World War II, in combat action all across the Pacific theatre, called to an end of it, by putting his hand down on the dining room table and said: “Listen louts!” He turned to me and said, “You, you owe your country your life.” Turning to Paul he said, “You, but not your mind.” Three and a half years later, and a little more than a year and a half after our father died, I graduated from college and I was best man at Paul's wedding. By then, we both learned that being right was not a price that was worth being paid. Paul died about 30 years ago and every chance I get, I tell his grandchildren what a good man he was. And how much they would have loved him and he them. The unfortunate words we, my brother and I, had expressed to each other were spoken within the context of deep love.

Paul, the apostle not my brother, in his letter to the Romans for today speaks of the context of God's love that fills the space between all of God's children. You can disagree all you want, but you are not allowed to pass judgment on each other. We are all beloved children of the living God. Whatever your faith, or lack of it, may be.

In the Gospel story from Matthew, Jesus is asked by Peter, the one who has the patience of a two year old, and who was probably reaching the limits of being really ticked off with a whole bunch of someones, asks Jesus how often should he forgive lousy good for nothing people. I imagine he had probably snarled off a couple forgiveness that week. Peter asks if he had to forgive someone as many as seven times. He was thinking that was a complete number since there were seven days in a week. He then is gobsmacked when he is told that the figure is closer to seventy-seven times. Actually I think it should read seventy times seven, which would put the figure of the forgiveness number closer to 490 times . If the answer had been seven times, I could just imagine Peter would have found it easier to keep score and he might have been hurt and he would snarl; “Okay, that is one forgiveness, you got six more until I let you have it.”

In 1968 I graduated from College and I, 21 years old, got a job as a Social Worker and Counselor with School dropouts and many of them were full of resentments. Thirteen years later, I went to Seminary and worked in churches where there were parishioners full of resentments. I am 76 years old now and for 55 years, a lifetime of listening to people hold on to things that eat them alive. Can you imagine how much energy it takes to hold on to a slight or hurt or guilt? Now think how much of a life is taken up in resentment to hold on to seventy-seven hurts and slights. You would spent so much energy holding on to the past that you would not be able to enjoy any part of the present moment. You would not have energy left to love. If we held on to the eye for an eye mentality we would all be blind. Forgiveness is not just about helping the other person escape from hell, it is about you getting rid of the Hell you are living in with resentment.

Whenever I do pre-marital counseling with a couple; I give a series of assignments and one of them is to have a fight. They usually tell me that they don't fight because they love each other. So they usually just stuff down disappointments. The reality is that they are not perfect people and we will hurt one another and one needs to stop and say, “I realize that I feel hurt by what you have done, and in our love; please we need to work this out together, with the power greater than ourselves.” The hard reality is that we need to learn how to disagree in the middle of love so that we learn that remembering love is what is important rather than being “right”

In the 12 Step Recovery Programs; steps 8, 9 and 10 speak to healing by the person who has inflicted the hurts:

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

The truth is that we can hold on to an addiction of being right or we can love, but we can't do both.

But I Want To Be Right

“Love and Charity with your neighbor”

Was always listed as one prerequisite 

In words of warning from a Celebrant,

said swiftly if as not a point to belabor.

However, it's not just a point of warning

that I'd really tick the Big Almighty off.

But a hint to heed before a wine quaff,

About whose communion I'd be scorning.

God's always with me, even in sinner's pride,

Never looking away, even with tears in eyes,

Calling me to give up the practice of despise,

And contempt which I've barely try to hide.

The point is the other person doesn't know,

the pain which I hide to keep a status quo.

 

Taking Faith Down From Sunday's Shelf

A Poem/Reflection for 14^th Sunday after Pentecost      September 3, 2023

Holy Trinty Episcopal Church, Hertford, NC               Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Exodus 3:1-15      Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c     Romans 12:9-21     Matthew 16:21-28

Taking Faith Down From Sunday's Shelf.

Thank you for letting me come to you today. I need to tell you that in looking over the lessons for today, I have received a diagnosis, I have given my self, that I have a disease, which can be contagious,. The Disease in question is “Self Importance”. It is a chronic disease and one of the cures is when I walk down to the ocean a couple blocks from where I live and I see nothing but water between me and Casablanca in Africa. It will be about a 3,800 mile, ten hour flight and when I get rich and famous from being a retired Episcopal Priest I just might make that pilgrimage.

However, as a person who sees himself as the center of the universe, I made an assumption; and as they say an assumption is well named because it makes an ass out of both the speaker and listener. I assumed that everybody has memorized the 1942 movie “Casablanca” directed by Michael Curtiz and staring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as a pair of star crossed lovers finding themselves in the Vichy French colony under Nazi control. The movie is a classic drama as the characters try to make decisions between doing the faithful choice and doing the fear filled choice, Faith versus fear is the central core of all Drama and life itself. Being faithful means being formed in the image of people created in the image of God, living into loving thoughts and actions, and knowing that they have a spirit more powerful than themselves being breathed into themselves and others. Being fear filled means making actions that fall far short of love as if there is no higher power breathing into themselves or others Bogart's character, “Rick” is an American disillusioned with the world he tried to save and failed. He is drinking himself into oblivion so he won't try again to do a noble deed.

Ever since seeing the movie “Casablanca” I have wanted to get there. I wanted to be cool, like the Humphrey Bogart character “Rick”. I wanted to walk through “my”place and feel the envy of everyone looking at me. There is another actor, Claude Raines, the oh so smooth Vichy Police Captain Louis Renault, who lives in the tension of being a man who loves the France he grew up in and, out of convenience is trying to get along with the Nazis. When you see him, you are never sure to which side he gives true loyalty to. I want someone to ge through the lines of the movie with me:

Renault: What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?

Rick: My health, I came to Casablanca for the waters.

Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.

Rick: I was misinformed.

The reality is that I will never be as “cool” as Rick in my fantasy. I have a choice; I can choose to be ruled by fear about my limits and weaknesses, and in that fear, try to conquer it by relying on my own power and swagger in a fantasy, like Rick is doing at the beginning of the in movie. Or, I can choose to accept the limits of my own power and place my trust in a power greater than myself, who created me, not as a wannabe Rick, but to be the best Tom Wilson I can be.

When questioned by the Nazi Major Strasser, played by boo-hiss, Conrad Veidt, Rick is asked about his nationality. He answers that he is a Drunkard. To which Renault chimes in “ He is a citizen of the world.” Rick drinks in order to swallow down the fear of having hope. This is the beginning of his facing his addiction and hope for something larger than himself comes back into his life when Ilsa, the Bergman character, a former lover, whom he left before he got disillusioned, shows up in Casablanca. She has since married Victor, who she admired for his faithfulness to do loving and brave actions and shows a life of looking beyond oneself. Ilsa and Rick struggle with a decision to fearfully cling to each other in memory of the past in Paris or be faithful to the new reality. Close to the end of the movie Rick and Ilsa say good-bye without fear and Rick says, “We'll always have Paris”, a line I used to say to my wife often as we would face a situation calling for a less than favorite choice. Rick looks deep into her eyes with love, respect, honor and support and says, “Here's looking at you, kid.” It is my favorite line and I used to say it to my wife not long after I would say, “We'll always have Paris.”

In the movie, the embodiment of slimy evil is Signor Ferreri, played by Sidney Greenstreet, who gloats:“As the leader of all illegal activities in Casablanca, I am an influential and respected man.” Yet, he is filled with fear, because it may all crumble.

The early 20^th century author of supernatural horror fiction H. P. Lovecraft writing about characters he created, and indeed how he lived his life, wrote: “ I never ask a person what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about is his thoughts and dreams.” In his lifetime Lovecraft was never able to fully support himself with his writing. Yet he was faithful to his calling as a writer..Years after his death he was considered a master and much of his works are still in print. The strength of the movie Casablanca is that the good guy characters uncover their thoughts and dreams and bring their strengths to play. The villains cover up their thoughts and dreams by posturing business power to cover up their fears.

Let take a look at the people in the lessons for today, not just their business but about their thoughts and dreams.

In the Hebrew Testament Lesson from Exodus we have the Pharaoh who is so afraid that his power will be eroded by all those Hebrews in Egypt, that he works over time to make life miserable for them. He uses all of his power to make life difficult and to cover up his fears. He uses the Army, the pomp and ceremony, the splendor, the riches he has and it all crumbles into dust. Moses on the other hand, after a brief encounter with fear, had escaped from Egypt and found peace in herding sheep. However, in his peace he discovers a strength in the awareness of a power greater than himself. This Power, the “I AM”, the being of the Divine, fills him with confidence and he returns into danger with a confidence that there is a vision of wholeness to be achieved.

In the Epistle for today, Paul writes about the choice we make between our own power and the power of God's love. Paul suggests if we rely only on our own power, then we tend to destroy ourselves. But if we live into the power of God's love living in us, then we are set free when we follow Paul's admonition; “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Jesus in the Gospel lesson is challenged by Peter who wants a life where every need he has will be met. It is magical thinking that nothing bad will happen because he is surrounded by, as the old commercial used to say, an invisible protective shield. No, life of faith is to enter deeply into the brokenness of the fallen world. The promise is that all will be redeemed, not that all will be rosy. We are people of the resurrection not people of the easy chair.

Often we Christians live a divided life. We come to church on Sunday and take the religious stuff of prayer, confession, praise, community, communion and service, off the shelf during the time of the service. After the service we put all that stuff back on the religious shelf to be there when we get back. Prayer, the awareness of something, a power greater than oneself is something we are called to live into everyday life, not just visit on Sunday. Confession is the rigorous honesty with ourselves and our neighbors in everyday life , nor just visit on Sunday. Praise is the seeing the majesty of God in each moment of life; looking at the world and being amazed rather than terrified in everyday life, not just on Sunday. Community is the living into the Holy space between us and our neighbors in everyday life, not just on Sunday with fellow Episcopalians. Communion is the sharing the love that we have with others we know and with strangers in everyday life, not just on Sundays. Service begins when the religious meeting is over and serving God in our neighbor begins in everyday life.

To go back to Casablanca with Captain Renault's line, “What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?” Notice he uses “heaven's name” as a hint that he is able to see something greater than himself is operating there. It is that line that drops a hint that at the end of the movie Rick and Renault will walk side by side as Rick says the last line, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

So let me ask you: “What in Heaven's name brought you to Holy Trinity in Hertford?” My hope that it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship with the Risen Lord to bring love to your community in everyday life, and that you keep coming back because you need to be reminded that there is a power greater than yourselves, redeeming all things. Maybe you will hear that power say with love; “Here's looking at you, kid!”

Taking Faith Down From Sunday's Shelf.

He wants to swagger like Casablanca's “Rick”,

Leaving behind in his wake, rapt admirers;

In awe of his control of smoke and mirrors.

But his life's not a character in a 40's flick.

Hiding behind fantasies exists a real person,

Who has to live where he is called to be,

As an old man with more days behind he

Than ahead, keeping his world from worsen.

Each day, being aware of threatening fears,

Which he knows will challenge him to face,

Pridefully with only his own power to chase

With limited strength through these years.

Yet, there is a power greater than himself,

To be used instead of leaving it on a shelf.