Sal Esposito: Father and Husband

A Reflection on the Occasion of a Memorial Service for Sal Esposito

January 26, 2018 All Saints’, Southern Shores, Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

1^st Corinthians 13 John 14: 1-6

Sal Esposito, Father and Husband

Let me speak as the father of a grown daughter and a grandfather and husband; it is hard to know if we make right choices in our lives. There are days when I feel an absolute failure in any or all of those jobs, and other days when I look in wonder of how proud I am of the choices made by the people I love. I look back at my father and what a pain I was to him and how his love never died even when his body did. There was emptiness when I realized that I would never be able to talk with him about the choices that I would be making in the future. Would he be proud of me? Would he approve?

There were many things I did during his lifetime that I know he did not approve of, but I never felt a withdrawal of his love. He would say to my mother, his beloved wife, “Making mistakes, this is the way he will learn.” As with all parents, my father saw as his job getting me, my brothers, and sister to a point where we could live without our parents’ guidance. In a world that makes sense, parents will die before their children, and we will not be able to run the full marathon of life with our children.

I wanted to be perfect and never need to learn the hard way, but over the years I had many opportunities to learn that way. Over the years I kept hearing my father’s words come out of my mouth for he was still alive in my heart; my father had daily been preparing a place for me and my sense of character in this world that would be there long after he died.

My father loved his wife, and what we do in marriages is to love each other until death do us part. That last line is hard to hear, but the reality for many of us is that we will be left alone by a spouse. For almost 50 years after my father’s death, my mother still felt my father’s presence so much so that she had to stop herself before she said out loud, “I need to share that with Bill.” They shared all of the rest of her life and in my theology they are still sharing. Bodies die but love does not.

We chose the lessons for today from First Corinthians to remind us that we can accomplish all sorts of things, have all sorts of gifts, but if we do not love then it is all a waste of time. This reading is usually read at weddings to remind the couple that love has to be addressed every day of their marriage because that is what gets you through - getting through having fights with each other, getting through moving away from home, getting through having kids and that responsibility, getting through the demands of work on the family, getting through meeting all the financial needs of the family with never enough money, getting through meeting all the emotional needs of the family with never enough time, getting through losing friends, getting through moving, getting through your kids telling you what you did wrong, over and over again, getting through parents getting older and dying and getting through retiring. You name it, life is rough, and without love it is impossible. It is then that we find that love is never earned, only given as a gift.

When my daughter was born I held her in my arms and, for more than a few moments, I felt completely inadequate. I did what I could do and failed in what I could not do, but I did love her as a gift and she forgave my failures and loved me as a gift. She grew up to give love to another person as his wife, and their sons’ mother, but she has never stopped loving me, nor I her. When love is freely given the exponential growth is not an arithmetical series of 1+1 =2, 2+2=4 6 8 10 12 but a geometrical series 1x2=2 2x2=4 8 16 32 64 128 256..

In the lesson from the Gospel of John, Jesus is referring to his death and promises that he is preparing a place for them, for as he says “In my father’s house there are many rooms.” We tend to think that he is talking about heaven as a place up there somewhere. But as in so much of the Gospels, there are deeper levels. “My Father’s house” can mean right here and right now on this earth; God built this house, the blue marble on which we live as a gift for all of God’s children to share. The “preparing the room” in which we will dwell is to be built in love here, so that we might build other rooms of love for others. To follow Jesus on the road on which he is going is not just about getting to heaven, but to live as if heaven was on earth so that the words of the prayer, that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, will come true.

Sal’s daughters and grandchildren, I want to say you were loved and beloved by Sal. To Audrey, I want to say you were loved and beloved. To friends he welcomed in his house for martinis and food, you were loved and beloved. He prepared rooms for all of you out of love. I never met Sal in this life, but I have been welcomed into the rooms of love he prepared for others.

There is a poem which I did not write but I wish I did, by Raymond Carver called Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Today you have heard stories about Sal told by people who loved him. Sal Esposito was loved by others and beloved by God and others: everything else is just a footnote. Please join us at the club for lunch to tell stories about a man who was loved and was loved geometrically.

Sal Esposito, Father and Husband

Sal knew the pride a father grows

about seeing his children strong,

independent decisions made wrong

or right, claim the ones they chose.

We do not live by making excuses

and blaming others, but listening

and learning seeing truth glistening

for loving forgiveness to have its uses.

The days ahead will not have sounds

of words coming from his lips anew

but there will be a heart energy true;

for the love that cannot die abounds.

Roses are given as an outward visible

sign for a love that was never invisible.

Teaching As One With Authority

A Reflection for IV Epiphany                                                All Saints’ Episcopal, Southern Shores, NC January 28, 2018                                                    Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Deuteronomy 18:15-20            1 Corinthians 8:1-13     Mark 1:21-28

Teaching As One With Authority

The Vestry and I went on a retreat and I assigned them the same question that I assigned you for meditation before this service: “How do you “teach with Authority” in your life? Who did you know who did?”

To me teaching is not something that is limited to a classroom but it is the passing on of wisdom about how to live a life of integrity. There is a line from the Movie Mark Felt: The Man who Brought Down the White House where Felt, Deputy Director of the FBI, the one Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein named “Deep Throat”, broke the rules that the Nixon White House had imposed on Federal employees about leaking information to the Press. He became the main source for the exposure of a cesspool culture of corruption, deceit, and malfeasance. As he is trying to figure out how to decide between the competing legal and ethical authorities, Felt says: “My father taught us to make our lines vectors; lines with force and direction.” Felt played by actor Liam Neeson is shown not as a plaster Saint or paragon of virtue, but portrays Felt as a person who both fails and lives into that wish of his father. As Luther keeps reminding us, we are “Simul Justus et Peccator”, at the same time righteous and a sinner.

To live a life ethically as a vector, a line with force and direction, Felt defied the authority of the corrupt legally elected government in order to follow the authority of his conscience and the understood authority of the dictum that government needed to be a government of law rather than the whims of powerful people.

Power is the ability to force people to do one’s will.  Mao Zedong said: “Power comes from the barrel of a gun.” Authority, on the other hand, is deferred to influence one’s life’s choices. The people who attended the synagogue service in the Gospel lesson for today are used to seeing people all over the place who have power over them in their government and religious legal authorities. Legal so-called authorities are always backed up by power to control by force or by the dead hand of tradition, dictated by the ones in power. The people are used to having power over them, but they are unused to having people speak out of their own authority, people living lives as vectors, lines of force and direction.

Jesus challenges power and in the end that power will kill him; that is what power can do, it can kill the body but not the soul. The way we destroy the soul is to abdicate the responsibility to choose to live as citizens of a Deeper Kingdom and a Higher Authority. Sooner or later those in power will feel threatened if they are challenged long enough and they will crush whoever dares to stand against them. The resurrection of Jesus tells us, on the other hand, that Power does not have the last word in God’s Kingdom.

The Book of Deuteronomy was written centuries after Moses, and it is another look at Moses’ words of interpretation of God’s vision, hence the name - Deutero meaning second and Nomos meaning norms, another view of the law. When the Book of Deuteronomy was collated, there had been years of misrule by the legal authorities, the Kings and their sycophants, and the Priestly elite. Prophets arose to challenge the power structures and claimed an authority that came from their communication with God in dreams or visions. The prophets led lives as vectors, lines of force and direction

God keeps calling prophets throughout the Jewish History and Jesus is one of those. The tradition continues with those who follow Jesus who keep challenging the power structures. In the Corinthian passage for today Paul is challenging the dead hand of tradition because he claims the authority of love as opposed to law. Paul, in his conversion to Christ as his main source of authority, made the choice to stop living as if the law were the final arbitrator of authority and chose to follow Christ as the source of a new life, of being a vector, lines of force and direction.

In the Vestry retreat, we introduced ourselves to each other by relating when we had lived our lives in integrity and in a deeper authority than custom. This was necessary for we have to learn how to trust each other in the months ahead when the Priest leaves and the Vestry leads the search for a new Rector. You, the members of the church, are being asked to trust them as men and women of integrity and vision of something greater than their own agendas.

There are two outward and visible signs of this trust being well placed. The first is if they will continue to listen deeply to see the joys and pains of our parishioners and the larger community. I am an old man so I will repeat myself from yesterday’s reflection. This last week I was coming out of the Office area onto the gazebo to make a home visit, and there were some children from the All Saints School playing there. As I came out, I was greeted with calls of “Hey, Father Tom!” They came up to tell me about their joys, such as one little girl had painted fingernails, and their difficulties, as a series of kids pointed out their “boo boos.” That is what we do in church - we share the joys and enter into solidarity of the “boo boos” of all sizes and magnitudes in this life. It is why we pray for the strength to get through the challenges we have and for thanksgiving for all the blessings.

The second sign is to make the choice always to tell the truth as a default position. We are surrounded by many examples of so-called authorities having as a norm a default practice of deceit in order to further an agenda. I remember 20-some years ago at my previous church where I had a habit of sitting on the chancel steps with the children sitting around me, looking up at me as I told an interpretation of one of the lessons which would form the basis of the sermon I would preach later for the adults. Children keep interrupting and that day was no exception as little Hannah Ackerman piped up: “You know what? You know what?” I smiled and said, “No, Hannah what?” And she replied, “You got boogers up your nose.” I was embarrassed but she was talking about the reality of life, speaking truth. We do not pretend but we live into a deeper and at times painful reality. We expect that the church is to be a trustworthy place where people try to live into being an image of God and sibling of Christ, “where the Yes is Yes and the No is No, all else from the Evil One” as Jesus says after the Sermon on the Mount. Your leaders and congregants must have and expect the ability to speak truth openly. This is how we teach, not by what we say but how we live our lives.

These are high standards and we do not always live up to them. This last week was the 33^rd anniversary of my ordination to the Priesthood and over those years there have been times when I have lived up to those standards and times, too many times, when I have not. The reason I am still a Priest is that I believe in the forgiveness of sins of commission and omission. My prayer for the Vestry, for you, and for me in my path ahead is that all of us will be able to forgive one another so that we will be remembered as vectors, lines of force and direction, growing deeper in relationship with God and neighbor.

Teaching As One With Authority

Speaking at Lectern answering question

shifting between lines from self or Lord’s;

on who’s authority is coming the words

vectors filled with force and direction?

Hearers are waiting to discern targets,

hoping they are not caught in the sights

of prophets shining out with new lights

shooting praise or scorn at this market.

What are the real credentials presented;

"Go To Despair of Go Deeper"

A Reflection for III Epiphany                         All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC

January 21, 2018                                                                     Thomas E Wilson, Rector

Jonah 3:1-5, 10            1 Corinthians 7:29-31             Mark 1:14-20              Psalm 62:6-14

“Go To Despair or Go Deeper”

Question: How did you this week wait in silence for God?

  

You know, I have been looking over my work here as your Rector, and I realize that I have gotten you so busy and I wonder if that has been a good thing? One it can burn you out when you get so busy that you no longer have time to and you have no energy for growth of your faith, and, two we don’t spend enough time being still with our lover Jesus.

A friend of mine suggested I watch a webcast from the Center for Action and Contemplation with James Findley speaking on The Dark Night of the Soul, a poem by St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth century Spanish Poet, Monk, Mystic and Spiritual Director. The poem has eight stanzas of five lines apiece which is a description of what happens when the old Spiritual Practices of being in God's presence just don't seem to work anymore and as Findley says that it seems “like you have made an appointment with God and God doesn't show up”. It is as that point he says that we have a choice of “going into despair or going deeper.” He suggests that this point happens in all relationships facing the empty moment. If we want to go deeper, we need to begin to die to one's own ego of being in control in order to be fully in union with the Other: going deeper is the seeking of lovers one for another. The poem suggests God has done that for us in the person of Jesus, the loving emptying of Godself to be in full union with creation and we in faithful response empty ourselves.

Let me read you the first and last stanzas of the poem so you can see and get a taste of the journey.   (http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/2009/09/saint-john-of-cross-dark-night-of-soul.html )

Once in the dark of night, Inflamed with love and yearning, I arose (O coming of delight!) And went, as no one knows, When all my house lay long in deep repose

AND

I stayed there to forget.
There on my lover, face to face, I lay.
All ended, and I let
My cares all fall away Forgotten in the lilies on that day.

John of the Cross wrote 2500 poems and I am only about 2400 behind him because I get too busy doing my own agenda. This particular poem is shocking language for a Monk, but that is the point; for this deeply sensual man wants union with God, full and complete joining with God so that he becomes spiritually one with the Divine. It is in the same flavor as The Song of Songs in the Bible; on the surface it is like an erotic love poem and as such it is shocking to many people because we are more comfortable with having a distance from God. Many of us like God to stay in God's heaven and be available only when we really, really, need help. Some people tell me they come to church to “pay our respects to God”. Paying respect to the authority, the head of the organization, the impersonal ruler of the universe and to Mister Christ; no first names please that would be presumptuous.

John of the Cross, a Spiritual Director, has to write two books to explain what was behind this 40 line poem and how to live and move a prayer life toward that goal of intimate union with God. The poem is not about studying scripture or theology to find more about God in the third person, he, she or it, or of going to do more ritual to get the dance right practicing for the senior prom after we die, but of finding a way into silence WITH God.

The Psalmist for today sings: “For God alone, my soul in silence waits . . . as we pour out our hearts, for God is our refuge.” Thomas Merton wrote that in his silent prayer time he becomes a different person “Prayer becomes what it ought to be. Everything is quiet. . . . Plenty of time. No Manuscripts, no typewriters, no rushing back and forth to church, no Scriptorium, no breaking your neck to get things done before the next thing happens.”

But the silence can itself be fearful. Merton again writes:

God, my God, God whom I meet in darkness, with You it is always the same thing! Always the same question that nobody knows how to answer! I have prayed to You in the daytime with thoughts and reasons, and in the nighttime You

have confronted me, scattering thought and reason. I have come to You in the morning with light and with desire, and You have descended upon me, with great gentleness, with most forbearing silence, in this inexplicable night, dispersing

light, defeating all desire. . . . Is it true that all my motives have meant nothing? Is ittrue that all my desires were an illusion ? While I am asking questions which You do not answer, You ask me a question which is so simple that I cannot answer. I do not even understand the question.

It is the emptying out of oneself in yearning for the other and getting rid of all the things that get in our way and in that silence returning the love that we know we have received by being alone with your lover without an agenda or dealing with questions that we do not even understand. It is God's love for us and his union with us in human form in Jesus that’s the shocking thing for many people, what Paul would call a “scandal”.

The lessons for today are about the scandal of God. In the Hebrew Testament story the teller of this metaphorical story wants to give us a character named Jonah who is so scandalized by God asking him to go to Nineveh, that great city, the home of Jonah's enemies, to tell them, people he feared and hated with every fiber of his being, of God's love for them and asking that they repent of the evil they are practicing and accept God's love. Jonah is so scandalized; he enters into despair of this God’s promiscuous love that he runs away from as far as he can. Then he ends up going deeper into the belly of the fish. Now for desert people the belly of a fish is about as far away for the presence of God as you can get or imagine; it is the dark night, and there in the dark Jonah finds himself still sheltered by God. He finally agrees and does the job haphazardly but everybody repents. This makes Jonah even madder and he walks away in a sulk, but God keeps sheltering him. God, the lover keeps pouring out Godself on Jonah who doesn’t want to receive it and on the people of Nineveh who don’t deserve it.

Paul in his letter to the Corinthian’s excerpt for today he urges to be aware that everything we worry about is passing away but they need to empty themselves away for the things that define them and turn to their lover alone. They can despair, which some of them are doing in Corinth or they can go deeper in love, for without love everything they do is   . . . but that is in Chapter 13 of 1^st Corinthians and we are only in Chapter 7, so you know that is the point he will get to. For all the losses and successes in this world the responses remain the same; we have a choice; to go to despair or to go deeper into love.

In the Gospel Mark remembers Jesus coming to people who experience the despair that God seems so far away. Jesus gives them a choice “Go into despair or go deeper and follow me.” They fall in love with him and leave everything behind to go deeper. Mark was not interested in writing a factual biography of the life of Jesus; rather he was interested in showing people ways of responding to the spirit of this loving resurrected Lord operating in their midst.

Notice in this reading how the word “immediately” is used. Mark has a fondness for that word and will use it 39 times, but don’t confuse this with Jesus being in a hurry because at least 13 times in Mark’s Gospel, he takes the disciples, or he goes alone himself, into silence; “to come away with me by yourselves to a quiet place and I will give you rest.” Jesus keeps giving them a choice as their ministry has successes and failures and the choices are always the same: Go to despair or go deeper into love.”

“Go to Despair or Go Deeper”

I am not saying anything but am far from silence

as the monkeys in my mind do jumps off one tree

to another, dangling pretty things for me to see

and marvel and want to solve to find a balance.

I want to be in charge, be the master of my fate

and grant the divine an audience with my soul

to get marching orders on how to make whole

as breaking chaos seems to take my life of late.

But wait; I am not wanting God to open doors

to something unknown, rather to furnish an old

musty comfortable room where I once did hold

to bygone consolations now littering the floors.

The invitation comes to take the deeper road

ending when me in You make our full abode.