Learning How To Pray

A Poem and Reflection for 7th Sunday after Pentecost         St. Mary's Episcopal, Gatesville, NC

Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant                                       July 24, 2022

Hosea 1:2-10         Psalm 85       Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)        Luke 11:1-13

Learning How To Pray

From the reading from the Gospel of Luke for today, the disciples want to learn how to pray. Which brings up a question of where did Jesus himself learn how to pray? Where did you learn how to pray?

 Jesus taught them a prayer, which we turned into ritual, often reciting without thinking. But lets look closer. The word “Hallowed” means that the “name” of God is sacred. In the Jewish tradition, and Jesus was a Jew, one of the most important of the Ten Commandments was about taking the “Name of God in vain.” The Hebrew in the Hebrew Testaments was written without consonants. Hebrew Scripture, like all of the Great Sagas throughout the ages, was never meant to read alone but meant to be memorized and spoken out loud in a community of worship.

But there was one word that was never spoken out loud, and that was the “Name of God”, with the consonants YHWH, yodh, hey, waw, and hey. Think of breathing in and out; when you breathe in, your lungs expand, filled with air you cannot produce, there is a sound like “Yah”. Then when you speak with air coming out of your lungs the sound is like “Wey”. In the creation story God breathed the breath of life into the Human being. So the sounds the lungs make reminds them of God's presence, since the name is so sacred, that is not a “name” to be ever said out loud. Whenever the tetragram was to be said out loud, the speaker would substitute something like “The Name”. YHWH was the word favored by the writers connected to the Temple in Jerusalem. It implies that you cannot approach God directly but must have an intercessor, like a Temple Priest or functionary, to speak to and with God, and follow certain prescribed rites and rituals. If your God is the King of the Heavens and Earth who cannot be approached directly, but through intercessors then the purpose of Prayer is to placate God so that you may live in peace and prosperity. Voltaire once said: “ In a word, we only pray to God because we have made him in our image. We treat him like a Pasha, like a Sultan whom one may provoke or appease”

There were at least 6 other Hebrew sacred names for God that Jews considered holy, not names per se, but derivations from earlier Canaanite functional descriptions about their own Gods, Their chief God and the Father of whole series of Canaanite related religious variants was “El”. Some writers of Hebrew scripture used the word “Elohim”, the plural form of EL, meaning that Elohim is the Supreme God, over all other lesser Gods. “Adonai” was from the word for Lord. Shaddai was the word for almighty. Sabaoth means Hosts like armies. Ehyeh is I am, Ehyeh asher ehyeh is I am who I am or will be. These names, descriptive terms of attributes, were used especially by the prophets outside the Temple structures. In Hebrew culture, when someone knew your name, they knew something about you; they had some understanding. However, with God, God the deep mystery, is beyond understanding. Only God understands God. The name of God is sacred, hallowed, because it is beyond our understanding. Even today, when many Rabbis write the name “God”, they will usually write it as “G_d” to avoid writing a name so holy it cannot be erased. They believe to erase God's name is to take God's name in vain

The prophets focus in on a metaphor for a relationship with God; of God as the parent, who created all life and whose spirit walked with the people of Israel. Their metaphor about the mystery which can be used, is “Father”. We see this in the passages from Hosea for today where people are being identified as the “Children of God”. The prophets suggest that one can have a relationship with God if you see yourself as a “child of God”.

Jesus, a prophet, tells his followers that they can use the metaphor of God as parent, the Sacred Father, and have the courage to speak to God, because God is speaking to them all the time, in every part of creation. God is speaking through the Lilies of the Field, the Birds of the air, the love exchanged in mercy to strangers. Jesus is living proof that the living Spirit of God does not stay up in heaven, but lives in the lives of people here and now. The kind of prayers that Jesus gives begins with the acknowledgement that God may have a better understanding of us than we do. As Anne Lamott reminds us, “The difference between you and God is that God never thinks he is you.”

When I was growing up, I respected my own father tremendously. My Father idolized his Father, who us Grandchildren would call “Daddy Wilson”. Daddy Wilson was an amazing force of nature, adventurer, worked all over the world and legend in the family; we were in awe of him. The model my father gave us of the relationship between father and son was of awe and respect. I would tell my Father of things that I had done right while he was at work. I would NOT tell him about the things that I had done wrong, for I did not want to disappoint him. It was the same pattern I used in my prayers with God; reminding God of what I did right and overlooking the things I had done wrong. Part of this behavior was based on the fact that I had 2 brothers and one sister and, in my mind, they were competitors for what I mistakenly thought was limited approval and love. It was only when I went off to college that I started to risk disapproval by disagreeing. My father died while I was still in college and I was devastated. I had no spiritual life, the only prayers I knew were memorized ritual without thought. There is a scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet where Hamlet has an occasion to get revenge on his step-father, but he sees him, kneeling in an act of prayer. Hamlet, afraid that Claudius is in a state of Grace while praying, leaves and postpones killing him. Later, Claudius gets up from his knees and sighs saying, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below, words without thought cannot to heaven go.”

After I graduated, I got married and then worked five days a week, eight hours a day, at a job as a counselor with young people who had made some pretty bad choices in their lives. When I found out that my child was to be born, I was scared. Knowing my own failures well, I thought that I could never be a good father. When the nurses wheeled out my daughter out of the delivery room, I was dumbfounded. How could I ever be a father to a girl? I barely understood boys, but girls were a deep mystery.

A college friend had come into town that morning and while we waited for my wife and child to be cleaned up and rested, we had breakfast and I shared my fears with him. Saying them out loud was helpful. One of the things I said, to my shame, was “What would it be if she grows to be the town slut?” To which Jim, who was homosexual said, “Probably, the same as having your son as the town queer.” Jim knew that his father and mother loved him, no matter what.

When the nurses cleaned her up, they let me hold my daughter for the first time, and I saw her through the eyes, not of my fears, but the eyes of my love. I knew that I would be able to love her no matter what she did or did not do? It occurred to me that my own father, had also loved me in a way that was not tied up with approval.

It was the beginning of my understanding of God. No longer was God “the old man above the sky” to be placated and flattered so as to avoid my just punishment. But God is the river of life flowing through me and all of creation, who knew me and loved me, no matter how far I was from being perfect. I was forgiven long, long before I begged for it; which gave me the courage to forgive as I was forgiven. I had always been amused by Heinrich Heine, 19^th Century Romantic Poem. who was asked on his deathbed if he wanted to pray for God's forgiveness: “God will forgive me; that's his job.” It was then I, made in the image of God, started to realize that forgiving is my job as well.

When I started to understand that I was forgiven, that started to change my life. Before then I carried wheelbarrows full of grudges and I did not want to forgive myself or others; I wanted revenge like Voltaire used to boast: “I have only made one prayer to God. A very short one, Here it is, “ O Lord: make our enemies quite ridiculous!” God granted it”. There is a song, which I did not hear until fifty years later, by Country Music Singer, Iris DeMent, which pretty much summed up my philosophy at that time about forgiveness. The chorus goes:

'cause God may forgive you, but I won't
Yes, Jesus loves you, but I don't
They don't have to live with you and neither do I
You say that you're born again, well so am I
God may forgive you, but I won't
and I won't even try

My baby is now 52 years old, and while there have been a few times over this last half century when we had occasion to disagree, there has never been a moment that I did not love her or cease praying for her in thanksgiving and intercession. The point of prayer is to find a way to live a life like Jesus, faithfully and humbly following the Divine Parent; as C. S. Lewis suggests, that we pray not to change God, but to change ourselves.

I have been learning how to pray for more than three quarters of a century and when I looked back, my memories led me into a poem:

Learning How To Pray

Lights lowered, the blankets pulled tight,

the story read, the day's memories shared,

the final songs sung, few regrets are bared.

Now for the recitation, trying to get it right;

“Our Father” replacing old “Now I lay me … ”,

later by “Don't know if anyone's out there … ”,

then trying out, “Give me strength to bear … ”,

arriving today, “My friend, help me to see … ”.

During the day, with our eyes open wider,

we find reminders of those who need aid,

from us and beyond for whom we prayed,

giving thanks to the strengthening provider.

Prayer is breathing in the air of sacred space,

and the breathing out to live the Holy place.

SINGING IN THE KITCHEN WITH MARTHA

 

A Reflection and Poem for 6^th Sunday after Pentecost      July 17, 2010

St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Ahoskie, NC                     Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Amos 8:1-12 Psalm 52 Colossians 1:15-28 Luke 10:38-42

Singing In The Kitchen With Martha

When I reflected on the Gospel lesson for today about the behavior of Martha and her sister Mary. I got into my mind's Time Machine and was wisked back in time to somewhere in 27 AD. I saw the place of women that Jesus knew in Judean society. My imagination saw the configuration of the house in the story, for the courage it took from Mary to sit with the men, to the bitterness of Martha harbored while working in the kitchen alone. Martha was doing all the right things; she was in charge of her kitchen, she was making a wonderful meal but she was filled with resentment because she thought it was all about her. She was, as the editor of Luke writes, “distracted”.

I wrote my poem, “Singing In The Kitchen With Martha” and suddenly I was put back in the Time Machine back to the spring of 1965 and I heard the word “adequate”. Oh, so many years ago, I was an 18 year old, second semester Freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was a Drama major and was cast in my first Carolina Playmakers play. It was not a major part, but I was filled with the desire to make my part stand out. When the newspaper review came out, I was mentioned, by name as playing that Character's name, and there was a one word discription of all my work; “adequate”.

I was devastated, while my friends tried to comfort me by telling me that at least I was not reviewed as “inadequate”. In my shame I went back over my work. I knew that I had done the part right. I had said the words clearly and distinctly, got the accent right, got the emotions right, made the right moves on the stage; but I missed the point. I was so busy trying to prove my competence, that I did not enter into the fullness of the play. All my hard and good work was all about me. I was filling myself up rather, than empting myself out. I was, as the editor of Luke writes, “distracted”. Only when an actor empties him or herself out, dies to one's own ego, entering fully into the new community, can the character, he or she plays, come to life.

Plays are not about talented single actors getting on a stage with other talented single actors, saying written lines and not bumping into the scenery. A play is about people joyfully coming to share their particular talents to work together to create a new reality. The play is not about the lines or action but about the creating a new space between the people in the cast and then sharing that space with an audience. At its best, it is the creation of a community which comes together to invite people to join them.

Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen the better part. The part is not the part/role you play; which was Mary as a “student” and Martha as a “hostess”, but about the joy from being the inside of a community instead of being “distracted” in the inside of your own ego. Jesus was in the process of creating a community of a new reality for the world and inviting people to join them in living a different kind of life. A different kind of life, where one dies to one's own ego in order to create a new community. Martha gets busy, which is not a bad thing to do; Work is not a bad thing. The problem is when the work is an excuse to build up one's ego; in order to earn praise, or a sense of worth. Then it is not a relationship, but only a commercial exchange; from where we never seem to break even. That is what Martha is complaining about when she accuses Jesus of not caring enough, paying her enough attention, giving Mary more.

In the Bible we have a theme that keeps coming back, over and over again. In the beginning in Genesis; it starts with God, the community within God's very self, makes a decision to enlarge the infinite love. The Divine community creates and molds forth a human, from the humus. God then says that “it is not good for a human to live without a community'. So a mate is created by losing a part of the human self in order to be in a community, a community united and living into the sacred space between them. So what do the these two humans do to live in a community with God? They become distracted and find a way to distance themselves from God, by not telling the whole truth, by blaming others and by hiding. The story goes on as the couple tries to continue community by having two children, Cain and Abel. Except, Cain gets distracted, kills Abel and then says, “Am I my brother's keeper?” The answer is, of course, “Yes, in God's community, you care for one another, for the sacred space between us is what community is all about.”

This is what Amos, thousands of years later, is thundering about. The people have gotten so distracted they have forgotten that the care for one another is the hallmark of community. The Psalmist for today decries our loving words that hurt, which undermines community. The writer of the Letter to the Colossians urges the people to remember that they are being brought together by a power greater than themselves into a community and not to be distracted from the love that binds them.:

And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him-- provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel.

The theme of scripture from, beginning to end, is that we are meant to live in a community where we take care of God's Garden, God's children, together. We are cast in God's play to care for each other and our neighbors.. But somehow, in our moments of distraction we create, and take parts in, other improvisations of comedies and tragedies to find so many ways to get distracted and to pick arguments with each other and our neighbors.

Imagine what life would look like if we began each day, not with a rehearsal of our disappointments of the previous day but with a Thanksgiving for the day to come, such as with the last verse of the Psalm for today:

I will give you thanks for what you have done *
and declare the goodness of your Name in the presence of the godly.

Or with the thought expressed by a Buddhist Monk,Thich Nhat Hanh;

“Waking up this morning, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” 
— The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (Broadway Books, 1998), p. 102.

You are members of St. Thomas Church, you live in Ahoskie and you are looking for a new Rector. One of the questions you will need to ask yourself is: “What is the community into which you are called to tend the garden of souls with and for each other together through eyes of compassion?” My hope is that whenever, you find yourself having cast yourself in one of those improvisations, “Singing In the Kitchen with Martha”, which in my experience seemingly only happens in days ending in the letter “y”. Which means every day! I pray you stop and listen to Jesus who is inviting each of you with a smile in his voice as he says your personal or corporate name: “ Oh, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. There is a better part, which need not be taken away from you."

Singing In The Kitchen With Martha

Over the stew, Martha continued stewing;

each paddle stroke thudded at the pot's edge,

spilling on fire sizzling! She made her pledge;

Mary'd be shamed at the dinner; have her ruing

how she had neglected to help out her good sister,

who was so faithful. She'd opt to stay in the kitchen,

muttering away quietly so they'd not hear bitchin,

then play a put upon martyr showing a big blister.

Martha longed to have Mary hear Jesus scold

Mary for her selfish pursuit of a soft life, lounging

with lazy disciples, while in hot kitchens scrounging,

Martha's earning her right to be in Jesus's fold.

How distracting it is to look down on others,

almost forgetting we are sisters and brothers.

Legion: All Sorts Of Demons

Poem and Reflection for 2nd Sunday After Pentecost               Thomas E Wilson. Guest Celebrant St Mary's Episcopal Church, Gatesville, NC                              June 19, 2022 

 LEGION: All Sorts of Demons 

 From the Gospel lesson for today: “Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.” 

Why did the people ask Jesus to leave? Their neighbor was a man possessed with demons; so many demons that they were called “Legion”. A Roman Legion at that time had 6000 soldiers. Jesus healed him; isn't that a good thing? Except the cost of the man's demons leaving is that a whole herd of swine was destroyed. Maybe the cost of getting rid of demons is too high a cost to pay for one healing. Where would they be without their swine, or without their demons?

 It is not that they don't believe that Jesus can cast out demons, but there is always a cost to pay for freedom. In a letter that C. S. Lewis wrote to a minister; “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” 

 Legion; there are all sorts of demons. Today is the Holiday of Juneteeth, a commemoration of the end of slavery in Texas, the last Confederate state holding on to slavery. Slavery was the demon, but the allied demons of racial segregation, inequality and prejudice were untouched; finding refuge in swine, who continue to work to enslave this country over the next 160 years. Legion; there are all sorts of demons. 

There are the Gross demons of fairy tales, books and movies. Books and movies with lots of gross images, which usually make a lot of money. So, maybe we hold on to a suspension of disbelief because it helps the Gross National Product. An interesting thing about the word “Gross”: a word that can mean either quality or quantity, “disgusting” or/ and “a whole bunch of” National Product. But my definition of a demon is that which makes it difficult to see God's love of, or work for the care of God's creation, God's people and our neighbor. 

 Legion; there are all sorts of demons. There is a story by English author Stella Gibbons in 1932 and later made into a couple movies called “Cold Comfort Farm”. It is a comedy, like all life really is. The rural farm is like a send up of English rural setting life stories by the Brontes or Thomas Hardy. The family farm is in the shadow of a hill which never gets sunshine. This farm is ruled by Aunt Ada Doom who gets her way by reminding every one that as a young child she “saw something nasty in the woodshed”, She manipulates them to live in fear and darkness because they were afraid to face her and live without their demons. In the story, they are only freed when they face the demon of Aunt Ada Doom's manipulation, and speak the truth to each other. The family is now allowed to live in the light, rather than cower in the dark. 

Legion; there are all sorts of demons. Shakespeare in last years of his life writes King Lear, a tragedy, like much of life is feared to seem to be, of manipulation and deceit where the characters try to control each other, while pretending their goal is to please the other. They have no joy in life, just the burden of trying to keep existing. The author Jack London said: “ At the end of my life I want to be ashes not dust . . . The proper function of a human is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” One of the last lines of King Lear contains the warning to step out of the demons of manipulation: 

The weight of this sad time we must obey; 

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. 

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young 

Shall never see so much, nor live so long. 

 

Legion; there are all sorts of demons. One is a demon who keeps chanting, “How much is enough?” Let me start off with myself first. I am one of those who lives as if he was in a trap when enough is not enough. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, went from preaching to meddling when he wrote a poem about eating too much, which I am reminded when I try to get into pants I can still wear. It is called Hymn To The Belly which ends: 

Hail, hail, plump paunch! O the founder of taste, 

For fresh meats or powdered, or pickle or paste! 

Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted or sod! 

And emptier of cups, be they even or odd! 

All which have now made thee so wide i' the waist, 

As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced; 

But eating and drinking until thou dost nod, 

Thou break'st all thy girdles and break'st forth a god. 

 

Legion; there are all sorts of demons that “break'st forth a god”. Not THE GOD, but gods we would't mind living with; the kind of demons that stays inside a person when an evil has been done to one of us, a spirit of resentment. The usual answer we clergy types say is that forgiveness is way to get rid of that demon. The usual answer I hear from parishioners a lot is that the perpetrator doesn't deserve forgiveness because it hurt the victim so much. So they hold on to the hurt, in the vain hope to teach the formerly trusted person, through the magical mechanism of resentment, a lesson. As the saying goes, “It is like taking poison in the hope the other person dies.” 

Legion, there are all sorts of demons, but one thing they have in common; Demons want to just exist while robbing us of full life. What is the price to pay to get rid of that demon who is taking the joy out of our life? The price is to stop exercising the demon but rather exorcise the demon of resentment. I know the other person doesn't deserve it, but Grace is given freely, not based on reward. The process of forgiveness is three fold: 

1) Hurt; either psychological, social or physical; it had to be real. If there is no hurt except your feelings - then get over it; the world does not revolve on your feeling. Was it was caused either through malice or inattention by the other party? If it was a true accident outside anyone's control, then get over it; accidents happen.

 2 ) Hate: What was done was unacceptable, inexcusable and important. You need to be honest with yourself that you hate what was done. If it is safe, you need to confront the other person and tell them you hate what was done. One way or another you need to deal with the hate. The refusal to deal with or acknowledge the hate means that you stuff things down, those unhealed hurts, those hate filled hurts, year after year, decade after decade, they are pushed deeper until we get a belly full of hurts. I am an old person and like all old people and I have had a lifetime of hurts and dealt with other I know that if they are not dealt with until they reach a point when hate, like the belly in Jonson's poem, “break'st forth a god” of the demons of hate. Four days ago, on Thursday night at a Potluck Supper for Boomers, people my age, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Birmingham Alabama; someone decided to bring a pot luck gun to the supper, killing three people. A man my age, old, was able to restrain the killer until the police arrived. 

3) Heal; you ask God to heal you of your hate. Again, the poison reminder. You ask God to lead you into what kind of relationship you may have together. This may take time. You may have to limit your connections to the other person, your relationship may have to change if trust is not available, but your healing comes first to get rid of any demons. Forgiveness is the price we pay to get rid of those demons.

 Legion; there are all sorts of demons. Right now our economic system is undergoing tremendous inflation, the highest inflation rate in 40 years. The fear that we will not have enough petroleum products is driven by the fear of changing the kind of life we have led where we are dependent on them because we have a fear of not having enough.. The petroleum products companies are posting windfall profits as prices go even higher. Corporate Profits are up 25% with the highest corporate profits in 50 years.The fear is further complicated by the fear a world leader had that he did not have enough control over his neighbors and wanted to go back in time, to a delusion that never was. So he invades his neighbor, which also begins a shortage of wheat to feed the hungry of the world, which drives up the cost of food. People are starving and yet the obesity level is also high as we throw away food. Even without a war, we want to keep buying as if we cannot get them soon enough, we are willing to spend more because there is a fear there will never be enough. With this understanding, the point of our existence is to have more than enough stuff. 

Legion; there are all sorts of demons. There is the fear of our neighbor with the understanding that we must defend ourselves from our neighbors who want what we want. There is a fear of letting go of ways of defending ourselves especially in the use of military grade weapons/guns/ammunition, weapons of slaughter. The 18th century writers of the US Constitution imagine the right to bear arms as the right to have a flintlock rifle for protection of the community. In their wildest imagination they could not envision the weapons of mass slaughter to tear little children to shreds on the market today as helping the Gross National Product in the 21st century. We have more mass shootings this year than we have had days. We fear people who might be isolated and angry, so in our fear, we isolate ourselves, we speak in echo chambers, only listening to those with whom we agree. Learning how to hate our neighbor more and holding on to the hate; again the poison metaphor. Apparently we are willing to lower our flags half mast for all those who died because we want to be safe to live in fear of not having what we want. 

Legion, there are many sorts of demons and we often want to keep them close to our hearts. Getting rid of those demons begins with asking a higher power to help us get rid of these demons in our hearts. Instead of asking Jesus to leave us alone; ask him to stay for awhile. If you keep him there, the demons will ask to be given a better host, some swine somewhere. It is the truth of God's love that sets us free. 

Legion; All Sorts of Demons  

How easy to have demons for us to cuddle up with, 

who'll teach us to really hate this person or that, 

because if we're fearful we won't risk time for a chat; 

time, that should be easier to cuddle up with a fifth. 

If we'd just numb ourselves with viewpoint echoes, 

of how we deserve this, or that we are denied else, 

so that opportunity to take on responsibility melts, 

into fetid puddles, where once love, to drown goes. 

Demons sing we should end our race with stuff, 

and convince ourselves we must avoid decisions, 

carefully fudging the call to take brave positions, 

not at all hindered by having spines of cream puff. 

Yet scripture reminds, if push come to shove, thine 

will; will demons reject in order to entertain swine.

Telling The Story

A Poem/Reflection for Trinity Sunday                                            St.Thomas Church, Ahoskie, NC Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant                                                 June 12, 2022 Telling The Story Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31       Romans 5:1-5        John 16:12-15

 In the Broadway show Hamilton, George Washington raps to Alexander Hamilton:                                             Let me tell you what I wished I known 

        When I was young and dreamed of Glory 

        You have no control Who lives Who dies 

        Who tells your story. 

 When I looked at the lessons for today I saw a theme of how the writers heard the story being told. In the Proverbs selection, God's Spirit of Wisdom is heard singing the story of God's continuing Creation. She sings of God's delight in all of creation as God is blessing all of creation. She is calling us, created in the image of God, to bless as God blesses. 

 In place of the Psalm for today, I substituted the Celtic Prayer Wednesday Morning by Phillip Newell who sings that the story of God's continuing blessing of all things, even you and me, is being told all around us, urging us to kindle our will to bless as God blesses. 

“There is no creature on the earth/ 

There is no life in the sea / 

But proclaims your goodness./ 

There is no bird on the wing / 

There is no star in the sky/ 

There is nothing beneath the sun/ 

But is full of your blessing./ 

Lighten my understanding/ 

Of your presence all around, O Christ/ 

Kindle my will. 

Phillip Newell, “Wednesday Morning” in Celtic Prayers from Iona: The Heart of Celtic Spirituality (Paulist Press, 1997) 

In the Epistle, Paul is writing to the Romans that he and his companions have had a rough time, but in how he tells the story he is telling is of the Holy Spirit of God's Grace in the middle of all those hardships allowing them to grow in faith. In the Gospel selection for the Gospel of John, the author remembers Jesus is telling his story to the disciples that he will be betrayed, and killed; yet in the middle of this deep trouble God will be redeeming all things. Jesus tells them that God's Spirit of Truth will come to them after his own death telling them the story to lead them into all truth. 

For the next couple of centuries, disciples became apostles and spread the Good News, telling the story of how God's spirit is alive and living in and through our lives. People lived and died by hearing the Story and telling it, not in words alone. but in deeds of love. They told the essence of the story wherever they went; using the understanding of the people to tell the story. 

The essence of the story was the same but there were different ways they told the story. The different sections of the known world would understand the story in different ways. The differences ranged on the question of Jesus. If there is only one God; if so who was in heaven while Jesus is on earth? Was Jesus a God, who visited the earth in human form, and when his human outer form was killed, returned to his God like form? Or, was Jesus a human whom God raised up and gave life after death, sitting next to the Father God as a secondary God? Or, was Jesus, what they called a “tertium quid”, a third thing, neither human or divine? And the answer of course in the public mind of most followers of Jesus was “Yes”. 

Then, in the 4th Century, the Roman Emperor Constantine grew up hearing the story from his mother, Helena. He was a soldier and he attributed his victory as a sign of God's desire to tell Christ's story unfettered. He decided that the Christian faith should be tolerated and later he put Christians in charge of some of the religious life of the Empire as paid bureaucrats of the state. There is some debate if he ever got baptized, because it was believed that if you were baptized you promised to no longer sin and to love your neighbor as yourself and to treat every human being with dignity and respect. All these were seen as barriers to a successful long career path as an Emperor to be feared. 

There is a painting in the Vatican of Constantine's baptism by one of Raphael's students, a thousand years after Constantine's rule, showing Constantine kneeling before the Pope. A lovely painting of a story, but more propaganda that fact during those times of political tension between the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors. Now Constantine was a soldier, and like a soldier he decided that the Christians should have uniformity. So, he called for a Council of the Church leaders. He invited them to straighten out the details of the story. 

 One of the problems was that the members of the church in the Empire spoke different languages. The official languages of the Empire were Greek and Latin. Constantine understood Latin and could read Greek out loud if it were sounded out to him by his scribes. Greek, with a long history of philosophy, had access to a greater subtlety of language than Latin. Constantine did not have a theological bone in his body but he noticed that the pride filled Christian leaders from different parts of the Empire would argue with each other with the subtlety of a Duke- Carolina basketball game; calling each other heretics and arguing that “heretics” should not be paid salaries as religious bureaucrats by the state. Constantine really could care less who was right as long as there was unity. Constantine wanted order and the Councils at Nicaea and other places came up with Creeds and created official doctrine for all the Empire. 

Faith has a tendency to evolve into doctrine rather than the way we live life. Telling the Story was often reduced to a series of recited formulas rather a way of life lived in Christian Grace. Over the centuries there has been a series of re-discovering the story and telling it in the way we live- in seeing it all around us. 

The Hymn we will sing at the end of the service goes back to the 8th century and it purports to be a way that the legendary St. Patrick in the 4th or 5th Century Christianized the ancient pre- Christian Irish spirituality; binding oneself up in the Spirit of the God. It is not about the creed but about how we faithfully live each day 

Another one of those re-discoveries was by the son of a cloth merchant in Assisi in the 13th Century, a failed soldier named Francis. A prayer attributed to him, telling the story, is what we will use as the post communion prayer. “Lord make us instruments of your peace . . .” 

 In every time and in every place, the story is being told and rediscovered in the lives of everyday people; saints and sinners touched by grace. The story is bigger than could be contained in any one creed. How are you telling the story in your life today? 

“Let me tell you what I wished I known When I was young and dreamed of Glory You have no control Who lives Who dies Who tells your story.” 

Telling The Story 

Did you ever wonder who'd tell your story? 

Would it be a comedy of manners perhaps, 

with pratfalls of missing marks and maps, 

or tragedy as egos slip away from glory? 

Would there be a phrase of remembrance

 of reach achieving, or of exceeding grasp, 

or traits like a warm and firm handclasp; 

hint of having hero's strong resemblance? 

Would they see courage in being sailors 

together on the stormy crashing waves 

of odysseys taken on way to our graves, 

will they be kind to many moral failures? 

Will they remind us the spirits were alive, 

redeeming all, until we, finally, in love arrive?

Speaking With Not At

A Reflection and Poem for Pentecost Sunday              St. Andrew's Church, NagsHead,    NC            

June 5,  2022                                                                 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant                                                                                                                                                            

  Genesis 11:1-9     Acts 2:1-21     John 14:8-17, 25-27     Psalm 104:25-35, 37 

 I know that you have heard me tell you that there are different ways to translate words from Hebrew or Greek because some words have multiple meanings. In Hebrew, the word “ruach” and the Greek word “pneuma” can be translated into at least four different English words: wind, breath, soul or spirit. From the beginning of creation in Genesis the writer says that the “Ruach Elohim”, the wind, breath, soul, Spirit of God, hovers over the formless mass and waters. It will be God's wind, breath, spirit which will bring forth words of creation. It is the God's breath, wind, spirit that is breathed into the lump of clay to become human, a being made from humus, that has breath and spirit. A being in whom the movement of air, the wind, in our lungs will allow humans to speak, reflect and project the spirit that is within us. 

 In the first lesson for today, the mythic story of the Tower of Babel is told about having the freedom to speak, reflect and project God's spirit within in us humans. The people gather together, but there is a spirit of arrogance inside them. That spirit brings into being a desire to build a structure to rival God. The people were declaring war on God to show who was the biggest, meanest SOB in town. The writer wants to attribute the division into differing languages as a reaction by God. However, what usually happens with humans having an arrogant spirit is that we end up speaking AT people rather than WITH people. The Tower of Babel fell apart as people stopped listening with each other and they were speaking at each other. Winston Churchill said, that it is always better to talk jaw to jaw than to have war. However, when we arrogantly refuse to talk jaw to jaw, heart to heart, soul to soul; it is just a matter of time until we start the whole exercise of lowering our flags to half staff in honor of the victims lost to our arrogance when we refuse to listen or try to understand, Of course, we don't listen because that gets in the way of our freedom to pursue our own agendas. We think freedom is a vacuum of responsibility to our neighbor.                       

In the Hebrew Scriptures, after the Babel story, there comes an awareness that pure freedom without relationship may not be the best way to run a universe; so the religious leaders came up with Law; a list of things we were not allowed to do like: steal, kill, sleep with someone's wife, lie in court, not make religious idols etc. But law breaks down when it is only applied to people without power. The religious authorities usually went along and turned a benevolent eye toward the rulers of the nations. As Gibbons warned in his study of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar. that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people.” 

In almost all the stories that are in the Hebrew Scriptures there is a theme about the centuries of people following their own agendas for their own freedom, that arrogance of an “no one can make me do anything” attitude, and people just talking at other people rather than with them, not trying to understand each other. Then, in tension with that attitude, almost all the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures try to talk with the people inviting us into that Holy Space that exists between each person and their neighbor; where each person has a responsibility for the other. They suggest that we are like Moses who when he meets with God, he must remove his shoes, because wherever God is, is Holy Ground and nothing should get between us and God. The Shalom, the Peace of God, is not a just cessation of outward conflict but a change of life where we stop stomping on people, places and things. We have prophets like Micah who in his conversation with people advises; “What does the LORD require of you. To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” 

 Another prophet, Isaiah, laments the tendency of economic, political and religious systems in which he lives to hinder a faithful relationship with the Holy. Isaiah sings a song it which he hears a lament of God: Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood of innocent victims Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. Many of those prophets ended up imprisoned for undermining the authority of the economic, legal or religious institutions. “I mean after all”, the authorities say, “what kind of economy would we have if people forgive debts, or cared for people who are drains on our gross national product. To care for the poor is wasting precious time and resources which could be spent on our own economic or religious interests?” The prophets still speak with us. 

Last Sunday, on May 29th, at 8:20 AM I heard a prophet speak with us, not at us. Your Rector was speaking about what it was like as a parent to be confronted with the horrible news of the slaughter of children in Texas. He told about what it was like to stop working on next week's sermon and go home and hold his children and his wife. Love of our children and our neighbor, which is the work of all of us, is much more important than sermons. I was sitting in the pews and I heard a prophet speak with us in moments of absolute honesty. 

 Later that same morning, Senator Cory Booker was speaking on a television program, Meet The Press, where he said: “I’m sorry we are at a point we have to mobilize a greater movement than just expressing regret and sorrow. until the redemptive power of love for all of our children is greater than the destructive power of the love of our guns and money and power, until that redemptive love of our children turns into action, then nothing is going to change.”

 The message of the Hebrew prophets is “Where is our love?” They warned about the un-official national message of arrogant self-interest. Their nation became like any nation, alienating many of its own people by fawning to their own power brokers. Eventually, nations lose out to nations who practice that same arrogant self-interest but who are bigger than them. 

On a sabbatical in 1994, Pat and I were studying in Jerusalem and on different walks we would see the signs of the different nations that came to overthrow the governing parties; first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans, than the Byzantines, then the Arabs, then the Crusaders, then the Mamluks, then the Turks, then the British, then the Zionists, then . . . who knows? And all the time, they are speaking at each other. 

Yet, the prophetic voice continues to urge a deeper conversation with God. Jesus continued that Jaw to Jaw conversation in the Gospel for today: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid." The community around Jesus held on to this Peace even after Jesus was no longer in their sight for they understood that Peace of Christ is in the midst of them. And it is turned into action. 

Centuries later Teresa of Avila wrote about this awareness: “God of love, help us to remember That Christ has no body now on earth but ours, No hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world. Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now. Ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, Ours are the eyes with which he looks. Compassion on this world. Amen.” 

The lesson from the book of Acts for today remembers how the disciples acted by enter into into the wind, spirit, breath of the Risen Christ dwelling in and among them, driving them out into the world in order to enter into conversation with people who have decided that life is too short to have people speak at them instead of with them. 

Pentecost Poem 2022 

All right! Uh uh! Get it over with! Please 

just stop talking AT me. Banging on of God 

being pleased we're putting bodies in sod 

as a way of reaching someday some peace. 

We all dutifully lined up to spew some hate 

on the enemy de jour; who are just like us 

under the labels and languages that we cuss, 

so we'll get more to stuff into one more crate. 

Can't we stop making a lot of volume sound, 

dial back our language by at least two-thirds, 

finding instead hopeful, loving, gentle words, 

to speak together as we walk on Holy Ground. 

The Holy One's Spirit has not left the building, 

but rather is singing for us; Shalom rebuilding.

Through John 5:1-9

 

A Poem and Reflection for VI Easter              St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Ahoskie, NC

May 22, 2022 Thomas E. Wilson,                      Guest Celebrant

                        Through John 5:1-9

Today's Gospel story is about a man who has tried for years to be healed. He gives a litany of reasons why he has never been healed and they are all the same, “I am a failure and it is someone else's fault because they get in my way.”

Every time he tries to get up and move to the pool of be healed, he not only tries to carry himself but he carries all the other times he failed; he carries the fear of failure. He does not pick up his bed because he is riddled, not only with disease, but with fear; he knows he will fail. The bed stays where it is because it is always comforting to have the same place to return and never leave.

Karl Jung, the great 20^th Century psychologist, received a letter from someone who was stuck in a dilemma. Jung answered: “The question is, of course, what do you feel to be your task? Where the fear; there is the task?”

We humans have a tendency to be lazy because we like to keep things predictable and to stay the way they are because we are afraid it could get worse. Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet's “To be or not to be” speech.

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

The man's fear keeps him where he is. Where is he? In his fear, he is alone, even in the midst of others. Possible allies or enemies surround him. but he is alone with his fear. All of his energy goes into keeping the fear at bay. He is suffering. Suffering is not bad in and of itself indeed it is part of life. Joanna Siebert, a Deacon in the Episcopal Church in Memphis, in a blog a couple weeks ago reflected on suffering and borrowed from Sue Monk Kidd who:

. . . reminds us of Marion Woodman’s writings about creative suffering in the dark. Creative suffering burns clean, as opposed to neurotic suffering, which creates more soot. Creative suffering “easters” us or transforms us, chooses a new way, owns our shadow, heals our wounds—as opposed to neurotic or self-pitying suffering, which is untransforming and leads to despair. Kidd continues to tell us that pain may not kill us but running from it might.

St. Benedict had a phrase; “Let us begin again.” To begin again is not to revisit the place in which we are stuck, but to go back to the beginning and start over. It is an experience to be done when we begin a new day, without becoming mired in the wreckage of the past attempts, but to begin with a new beginning. What happens is what Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist calls prayer: “the conversion of your fretful anxiety into promising hope.”

Jesus comes to the man and invites him to begin again. “Pick up your bed and walk!” Jesus claims the space as Holy Space and the man leaves the past behind and walks into a new future with a strength greater than himself walking with him. It is, at its heart, an “Eastering”, a foretaste of a Resurrection story.

T S Elliot in Four Quartets, East Coker reflects:

^{There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.}

^{In your bulletin, you may notice a poem I wrote that is titled “Steve Hammond through John 5:1-9” and you may ask yourself, “Who the heck is Steve Hammond?”}

^{Steve is a friend of mine for the last 17 years. He is the Principal of St. Patrick's Catholic School in Norfolk, VA. That it what the title is about. He was about to retire, and a mutual friend asked if I would write a poem for the occasion of his retirement party. I agreed; but when I started to write, I still was knee deep in the lessons for today. I realized that the Gospel lesson fit perfectly what I wanted to say. I first met Steve when he was hired to build a whole new school. He was coming from Nashville to a community unknown to him.There was nothing to tear down, but only to build on a whole new foundation, physical and relational, heavily influenced by William Glasser's Choice Theory. The past could be left behind and a whole new philosophy of relationship between the students, teachers, administrators, staff, the community and a religious corporation had to be nurtured.}

^{Each year before the school year would begin, Steve would visit the church in which I was serving in Southern Shores, and have a prayer and joy filled retreat with all the staff and teachers to revisit the ministry of education they shared. It was one of my favorite times of the year. What they did on their retreat is to go back to the fundamentals of their faith and their educational philosophy and “begin again.” When they left to return to begin the new school year,, they left the past behind and walked into a new future. After they left, I would walk through the now empty rooms they used and I could feel the remnants of the faith filled love they shared, which seemed to have seeped into the walls and the air was rearranging itself to be ready for our worship service the next Sunday. It was Holy Space ready to welcome people who were coming to leave the past behind and walk into a new future.}

^{What does this have to do with St. Thomas, Ahoskie? Your Rector has retired, and you have choices. You can either enter into fretful anxiety about the past or the future, or enter into a conversion into promising hope to leave the past behind and walk into a new future holding on to the promise that there is a strength greater than ourselves walking with us. You are invited into an “Eastering time”. To re-quote T.S. Eliot's faith filled line: “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”}

Steve Hammond through John 5:1-9

Jung said: “Where the fear, there is your task!”

Steve sat down with the guitar to sing; singing

not acting even a bit afraid, he'd be bringing

shame to himself; letting slip a confident mask.

So: he sang, a song about children all learning,

in an environment of challenging them to grow,

not just up but deeper, with joyful faces aglow,

shinning their path to a God seeking yearning.

It was a new school, fresh from opening dreams

of new relationships, growing between them all,

creating something alive, a color for every wall

instead of uniformity but honoring those seams

binding all them together; student and teacher,

into fearful places where courage's the feature.

Mary Magdalene

I wrote a reflection about Thomas this last week for the 2nd Sunday of Easter at St. Andrew's. A friend asked me if I had ever written a poem about Mary Magdalene. I told her I might have. I looked and I couldn't find one so I went to work on this - imagining a conversation between two good friends a couple thousand years ago. 

Mary Magdalene

Tonight's lamp caught a tear glistening

in your eye as I railed on once or twice.

Thank you Mary for not giving advice,

instead you are really quietly listening.

Talking with the brothers can be a pain,

they want to tell me what I should do

before I even finish my thoughts thru;

posturing how their ministry will gain.

Between you and I there is holy space,

eternity, where passing time is banished

as all barriers between us have vanished,

when the hearts of our souls touch grace.

You are an apostle of love to me and them;

a fire of passion that none could condemn.