Traits of A Grandmother

 

Reflection and Poem for 12^th Sunday After Pentecost        Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Hertford, NC                  August 20, 2023

Genesis 45:1-15          Psalm 133         Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32          Matthew 15: 21-28

Traits of a Grandmother.

The stories in the lectionary are about how faith evolves from hatred to love. The Genesis lesson for today has the story of Joseph. You remember the story of Joseph. His brothers had so much jealousy towards him that they got rid of him by almost killing him and then selling him into slavery. Their intent was murderous. They told Joseph's father that a wild beast had killed Joseph and showing his “Coat of Many Colors” all ripped up and covered with goats' blood. For years Jacob, Joseph's father would have dreams of his beloved son being devoured by a wild beast. The brothers laughed and made money from the slave traders. Joseph spent years plotting revenge on his brothers. Then it came to pass and Joseph could get his revenge. And he did, he played with their need for the food that Joseph's brothers desperately needed. He framed them for theft and he laughed at their predicament. Except now he could not go through the charade. He found that revenge is not sweet but bitter. He made the decision to forgive his brothers and wipe out the barriers that existed between them. Life is better when we see one another as not something to be feared but someone to love.

Jesus, in the Gospel lesson, is being bothered by a Canaanite. In the communities he grew up in, he had been taught to see Canaanites as people who were not as good as Israelites. He learned from his neighbors that Canaanites were just trash, sub-human trash. Maybe is was something passed on from his family, like information is passed on by Grandmothers and Uncles about which prejudices to hold onto. Yet Jesus, the human Jesus, after spouting off some of his prejudices, saw that this woman was a human being, made in the image of God, who loves her child with the same kind of love his Mother Mary had for him. He is brought short and all the stuff that had been passed on to him about Canaanites had to come into God's light. It was time to lose his superiority and love his enemy rather than waste time on hate.

When I was growing up we had two Grandmothers and we gave them different names to differentiate them. My Mother's Mother we called “Mamita”, a variation of Spanish for “Little Mother”. There was nothing Spanish about her, she was born and bred Scottish Pennsylvania Presbyterian who distrusted “Papists”. The preacher in their city spent much of his sermons warning about how the faith and well being of Christians, meaning Presbyterians, were constantly being threatened by Papists in Northern Ireland and in America. My mother passed on a story about that preacher, set in 1928, when she was 10 years old and he had preached against the election of the Democratic Candidate for President, Governor Al Smith of New York who was a Roman Catholic, a supporter of of the Repeal of Prohibition and working together with the Southern States. The Preacher prayed for the election of the Republican Hebert Hoover and the defeat of Smith, the symbol of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion”.The community in which she lived tried to teach her how to hate.

My Father's Mother we called “Nana”, which was the name given her already by our older cousins. She was a devout Roman Catholic. She was a woman of the South and proud of her Confederate Heritage. My Father was born and raised in Asheville and when he was 10 years old, he saw the Racist Movie “Birth of A Nation” and he and a couple of his friends liberate their parents bed sheets from the clothesline and dressed up like the Klansman in the movie to save the heroine from “A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH!' Nana objected to the use of those sheets and reminded my Father that the Klan didn't like Catholics either. The community in which he lived tried to teach my father to hate.

So, my Mother and Father came from two different worlds with two different things that Grandparents had taught them. The thing Nana and Mamita had in common was that they loved their children.

My parents met in college in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and they fell in love. As the country prepared for war they knew was coming, my father was given a commission in the Marine Corps and my mother finished her degree. On a sunny day on August 11, almost 4 months before Pearl Harbor, they were married by a Presbyterian Minister in the Rose Garden of my Mother's parents' summer home After the war, when children started to show up; my parents, splitting the difference, baptized the four of us into the Episcopal Church.

Whenever my older brother and I were palmed off to the Grandparents in Pennsylvania's house for part of the summer to give my parents some rest to take care of the two younger, better behaved sister and brother, my brother and I went with them every Sunday to the Chapel of the Presbyterian College. We felt at home there and Mamita would quiz us about what we learned in the VERY LONG Sermon. After a couple Sundays we learned to pay attention; usually a variation of Jesus wants us to be good. After the time was up for us to go home, my Grandfather's older sister, an amazing woman would get on the train with us and accompany us home. She loved and admired my Father, but she still had trouble with the Church of England and tell stories  how the Evil Archbishop of England  in the 175h Century tried to take over the Church of Scotland, for which the good Presbyterian rose up to help the England King and Archbishop be overthrown and executed. She would have loved for us to be Presbyterians but she loved us and our parents.

When my parents would want to go out of town to have some time alone with each other, like taking a trip without children, Nana would arrive on the train to stay for a week to take care of us. I would often accompany her to the Roman Catholic Mass on Saturday. I delighted in the smoke and ritual of the Latin Mass and she taught me how to use the Rosary. The Homily was very Short and was almost always a variation of Jesus wants us to be good. On Thanksgivings, we would take the long drive to join with our cousins and Nana would check to see how I was doing on the Rosary. I learned how to practice the week before the visit.

Later, after my farther died, both Nana and Mamita  who were very conservative, worried about my becoming too liberal. We could disagree about many things except our love for each other.

In the lessons for today, Jesus and Joseph came to the conclusion that the world is too small for hate and time too short to hold on the grudges. What have you found out?

Traits of a Grandmother.

She said, “Remember who you are!”

as a way of living into family pride,

from when we're born until we died;

to never shame the family lodestar.

Looking over our companions to see,

if dirty necks, or improper words came,

to eye of sight or on her ear declaim,

or social lepers who'd our burdens be.

We had to be careful of in places seen,

questionable organizations belonging,

or suspect political objectives longing,

of which our ancestors were not keen.

She was quiet and to us never shouted,

and of her love, we all never doubted.

There Is Never Enough

 Poem and Reflection for 11th Sunday after Pentecost                       August 13, 2023
St Andrew's By The Sea Episcopal Church, Nags Head, NC            Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant
         1 Kings 19:9-18           Psalm 85:8-13            Romans 10:5-15              Matthew14:22-33
                                                           There Is Never Enough
 

Let’s start off with the story of Elijah in the Book of Kings. To fill you in, Elijah was filled with zeal and he challenged the Priests of Baal to a contest on whose God is more powerful. Elijah wins and in his victory he slaughters the Priests of Baal. Jezebel the Queen is ticked off at this blood thirsty act and swears that she will kill Elijah. Elijah runs for his life all the way to Mount Horeb, the Holy Mountain. 

Although God has provided the food on the way, Elijah is ticked with God because Elijah is not back at home with his feet up enjoying the good life of a prophet. But, heck, if you end up slaughtering a bunch of Priests, you are bound to have the authorities after you. He is now coming before God and the writer is setting Elijah up in how to approach God in Prayer:

At Horeb, the mount of God, Elijah came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the
Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He answered, “I have been very zealous  for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars,and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.

Then the “Word”, “the Spirit” of God tells Elijah to go out of the cave and face God, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” But Elijah, in his hurt arrogance, does not leave the cave of his frustrations and bitterness. In his arrogance, he yells out to the entrance of the cave. Can you hear the anger in Elijah setting up the conversation? First he starts off with an angry blast of how he, Elijah, has been faithful as if God even cares. There is no answer from God's Great Wind to the angry blast of Elijah. (Angry Blast-Great Wind.) He continues to shout how everything was falling part; and there is no answer from God in the earthquake. (Falling apart- Earthquake). With the burning fear that he has and there is no answer from God in the fire. (Burning Fear- Fire.). You get what you bring. Approaching God in arrogance; you usually get you what you bring. Elijah then leaves his cave of resentment and stands before God and speaks quietly to the silence and in the silence, he hears God. (Silence-hears God). The writer tells us that if we want to hear God, we need to clear the deck and listen in silence.

This week I had a visit from my sister and a niece. They shared a story about another niece's child, named
Marlowe. Apparently my Great nephew was in a school classroom and the Teacher was facing an unruly class and she said in frustration: “Does anybody know how to listen?" Marlowe quietly replied. “I do, I know how to listen.” He then sat down in a chair and smiling, extended his hands face up and closed his eyes. The other children looked at him in puzzlement, for the standard response to a question to which there is no “right” answer is to look down at the floor in shame. But Marlowe's parents are influenced by Buddhist practice and he was showing how they listen to God in peace-filled silence. Marlowe was showing his class that if you want to hear, you need to pay attention.

Which bring us to the story from the Gospel for today. It is the story of Jesus walking on the water in the
middle of a storm and Peter is, in his arrogance, asking to join Jesus in stepping on the storm-tossed waves. Notice Peter does no listening at all, he just demands that he become the equal of Jesus. For him, God is a storehouse of all sorts of things that he wants for himself. Prayer in this case is a little like wishful thinking, and if you please the owner of the storehouse, then you get what you want for your own. It is a little like the old song Janis Joplin sang: “O Lord Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz.”

This is what is going through the mind of Peter; he sees something that he desires and he asks for it when he asks Jesus to call him out of the boat. As he finds out, wishful thinking is not a prayer, but it is rather an ego gratification exercise. It is like when I find myself at a Lottery sales place and I think that God would really like me to have more money. Just think what I could do with more money than God. Or when I go to Duck Donuts and the thought goes through my mind that God would like to give me a reward for being so darn good, especially when I didn't want to. Or one of my favorites, from a line in the Musical, Finian's Rainbow, “to be delivered into the arms of a bouncing Babylonian Jezebel from Biloxi, Mississippi.” Or for me in this past year, for just one more year, one more month, one more week, one more day, one more hour with my wife. In wishful thinking there is never enough. 

My understanding of Prayer is not in the asking for things but in the participating of the nature of God, the
fountain of creating power for hope, love and faith. There is a prayer that I find most helpful: “God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot not change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. One day at a time, one moment at a time.”

This does not stop me from praying for peace among nations, but I begin with prayers for the strength to
change me into a person of peace. I continue to pray for healing, but my prayer means that I become an agent on the healing and care of the whole person. Prayers without commitment are like placebos; they don't hurt, but they don't help.

As Claudius says in Shakespeare's Hamlet: 

“My words fly up, My thoughts remain below,
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.”

Does anyone here know how to listen?

There Is Never Enough
Asking, “Is there ever or never enough?”
Spouting it like there is no tomorrow.
“More!” So not having to face sorrow,
of having not enough of all that stuff.
Wanting those things to hold in a hand,
like money, food, more time or honors
justifying breath before becoming “goners”
caught in stormy sea or parched land.
But what is important is not handheld
but that which is given freely away;
hope, faith, love, are what has sway,
giving meaning to a good life upheld.
Giving and forgiving in life left behind
are signs of walking with God aligned.

Transfiguration Sunday 2023

Poem and Reflection for Transfiguration Sunday                         Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher

The Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Hertford, NC                      August 6, 2023

Exodus 34:29-35    2 Peter 1:13-21     Luke 9:28-36      Psalm 99:5-9

The event of the Transfiguration was always a story told in the Christian church because it was about God's light shines in the midst of an every day. The blinding light is a surprise to the disciples with Jesus and they want to make the place a “Holy “ place. Peter says: “Hey, why don't we do it like we religious folks have always done is to make a living out of peddling access to God?” Jesus suggests that they are really missing the point; it is not the place that is Holy but the Holy is in every moment in every place but we just don't get around to seeing it unless we stop and open the eyes of faith. Jesus was not peddling a religion, he was pointing to a whole new way of living, dreaming and community.

As the church spread to the different parts of the Empire, The lessons for the Transfiguration was observed in many places at many different times of the year. In the 15^th Century with the rise of the Ottoman Turks, their Empire under Mehmed II in 1453 was able to conquer Constantinople. He figured that since Constantine had moved the center of the Roman Empire to Constantinople than the rest of the Western Roman territories were now under his rule. The rulers of the Western Europe begged to differ, so Mehmed thought that they needed to be forced to be under his rule. He invaded Europe to force his rule, but was blocked in 1456 at Belgrade. Western Christian Europe was terrified and Pope Callixtus III sent out a decree that all Christian churches should ring their bells at noon as a way of having a united time to prayer to defend Belgrade. The Battle raged and surprisingly the Ottoman forces were pushed back. On August 6, 1456 the news reached Rome and the Pope called for festivals of celebration for the Victory. A few years later, in joyful Thanksgiving of what he saw as God light breaking forth into everyday life, he sent word that the Christian churches should set aside August the 6^th as the Feast of the Transfiguration, God's light made manifest in every day life.

The problem was that naming a day for Transfiguration was not about stopping the wars but about using God's light for political advantage and for continuing slaughter. And the wars raged on unchecked.

August the 6^th is also the day in which we remember the huge light of an Atomic weapon of mass destruction on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. In the 1960's, when I was in my Peacenik stage, I would start protesting August 6. My Mother would get furious and tell me that my father who was a Major in the Marine Corps in the Pacific during the war, would probably have been killed in the planned Invasion of Japan. For, her the Atomic Bomb was an answer to her prayers and her beloved husband would be coming home safe. Years later, after when I bought a Japanese car, she disagreed vehemently and said, “Those people tried to kill your father!” I loved my mother, she was a wonderful woman and went to church regularly, but she never understood the point of the Transfiguration. It is about continuing living into a light of a new future, instead of remembering a past event.

When I graduated from Seminary, I got a job in a new diocese. A couple weeks after my first Sunday, I went to a diocesan Cursillo meeting in a near-by city.. One angry little woman came up to me to request that I work to get her son back into the Episcopal Church group of College students at the University in the town in which I would be serving. I was unimpressed with her, but I looked up her son's dorm room and left a message on his door. He did not not respond to my invitation to talk. The mother considered me incompetent. Over the years I had many more times to talk with her and work with her on some things. The anger receded and I saw a care and love she gave in so may aspects of her life. I saw God's light in so many of her actions when she would center herself, there was a beauty in the way she was living and helping others. Six years after I met her, we got married and she helped me day after day in my ministry. Many people put up with me because she loved me. For the next 34 years, while she was far from perfect, she gave daily occasions of my being in Transfiguring light. She died seven weeks ago but the light she so easily shared has not dimmed. She was a little woman and often I would be reminded of the song I learned back in the 60's:

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine!

Let it shine!

Let it shine!

The task of Holy Trinity in this time when you are in the process of being without a Rector, is to reflect the Transfiguration light to this community and beyond. Make the Candidates for the position really want to join you rather than save you. Let this be your song:

This little light of ours, we're going to let it shine?

This little light of ours, we're going to let it shine?

This little light of ours, we're going to let it shine?

Let it shine!

Let it shine!

Let it shine

Transfiguration 2023:

It is not the unique beauty of a gem

but the way the light shines through,

allowing the depth to speak to you,

about a pure hidden worth in them.

From 15th century, we remember

this day as a Victory in Belgrade

over Turks, as a time to applaud,

be relieved and Thanks tendered.

The chosen Gospel tells when light

breaks in middle of an ordinary day,

Heavenly visions are given as play,

of God breaking into our own sight.

Today, asking for victory not in war

but in everyday life for hope to soar.

Hide and Seek With Our Shadows

A Reflection/Poem for 8^th Sunday after Pentecost                   Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

The Church of the Holy Trinity, Hertford, N C                         July 23, 2023

Genesis 28:10-19a        Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23         Romans 8:12-25       Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Hide and Seek With Our Shadows

In the Hebrew Testament Lesson for today we have a story about Jacob who comes to rest dropping to the ground. He has been running for his life, away from his past where he had swindled a blessing meant for his brother, Esau, by lying to his father with his mother's help. Esau, wants to kill him.

Jacob is a mama's boy and she sends Jacob to hide out with her brother Laban, the boy's swindler Uncle. The next chapters of the book will have the Swindler, Laban enter into a series of dueling swindles with his nephew Jacob. That is the thing about Grifters and Swindlers, no matter how often they are caught in a lie, they are set up to do another grift. The story will continue to Jacob's children who will turn against one another. Jacob was what we in the business call an “NDG”, “No Darn Good” I cleaned it up a bit since this is a church service after all.

Yet, Jacob, the grifter, is the Hero of this story. He is the one who God blesses. For those of us who want the Heroes to be good guys, this story is a problem. In fact, many of the stories of the Hebrew Testament are about those who are not straight and narrow kind of people. These “heroes” are not the kind of people whose resume would make a Rector's Search Committee shout for joy.

Most of the time, in our view of the world, God blesses Good People and curses Bad, Boo-Hiss, People. This is what we learned in our homes in which we were nurtured. However, in the Epistle for this Day from Paul's Letter to the Romans, Paul remembers that God's blessings extends to even people like him, who early on did evil to the church of Christ and bad seed that he was, was still adopted by Christ's Spirit.

When we grow up in our faith, we learn the world is not so easily divided between the bad and the good. Take for example the stance of Jesus to the “good seed and bad seed” growing together in Matthew's Gospel. The Good and the Bad are nurtured together until it is time for the harvest. How do we deal with people who have what we would see as bad seeds in them and we have to share blessings with them until the harvest, when we all die and it seems like that that harvest is a long time in coming?

When I was a child, in the summer of 1956, I was 9 years old, there was a movie called “The Bad Seed”, which I was not allowed to see. It is about an 8 year old manipulating sociopath child who kills people. It is revealed that her parents are not to blame because the child was adopted, and the birth father was a psychopath; the source of the bad seed. It was a remnant of an echo of the Eugenics craze that swept America in the late 19th and early 20^th Century. The craze died down after we saw what Nazi Germany chose to do in getting rid of what they saw as Bad Seeds. The movie had a problem with the censors, in that in the Prize winning Novel and Play of the story, from which the movie was based, has the blameless adoptive mother killed and the bed seed is unscathed. Warner Brothers solved the problem by having the movie end with the mother saved and the Child with the Bad Seed is struck down by God's lighting hitting a flagpole. The movie did very well at the box office because people liked the idea of getting rid of Bad Seeds is what God in his heart of hearts had to say despite what Jesus said.

12 years later, after graduating from college, I spent 13 years, before I went to Seminary, working as a Social Worker, Teacher and Therapist dealing with families with problems, I had situations where parents who had seen the movie would wonder if their problem child was a “Bad Seed”, or if they needed to “Beat the Devil” out of them.

I have the sense that we all have bad seeds within us. Some good and bad seeds are implanted by our societies in which we grow, some come from behavior which we determined is unhelpful and some from behavior which is condemned but attractive. We are all born with the ability to make decisions and learn consequences of our behavior as we develop. Carl Jung said that we have an ego that helps us develop, and as we grow we develop a shadow within ourselves of those parts of us that our egos had pushed out of the conscious mind so that we can “fit in” to our culture.

Let me give you an example. When we are dragged kicking and screaming out of the womb; which, at that stage of our development, is a natural thing to do when we are having our environment change. Over the next couple of years, we learn that screaming is not acceptable everyday behavior. So we push it down, but the behavior stays under the surface with us, becoming part of our shadow; only becoming aware of it when light shines on it. When we get in complex situation with a lot of energy connected to it, like going down a Roller Coaster or facing an obscenity in our life; we might find ourselves screaming as a way of getting rid of the tension.

We learn that crying is not an acceptable way of social discourse, and when tears start to come, the first thing we do is apologize and feel guilty if we cry. However, often some kind person will say, “I understand, go ahead!” No matter how old and strong we are, we are always one day, one situation, away from crying; even when, as the saying goes,” it hurts too much to laugh and we think we are too old to cry.”

We learn that it is not appropriate to kill as a way of dealing with anger. Yet, we also learn that we think killing might be appropriate in certain causes like war. Yet, when all the cemeteries fill up with walls of names coming back, we reflect on our readiness to leap into slaughter. We also learn that one way to deal with all that frustration is to watch movies where the good guys slaughter the bad guys ,and laugh and clap when the villain gets slugged by Dirty Harry. The popularity of violent movies is shadow work of reclaiming in play our underlying anger.

One of the things that my wife and I used to do is to study dreams using Jungian Psychology. We find that Dreams are messages from our shadows, helping to point out, by the use of symbols, of what is bubbling up inside us. We learned how to pay attention to our preconscious and share it as a way to avoid it blowing up, and as a way of getting closer to each other. When we would honestly share our shadows with each other than the Song “Me and my Shadow/ all alone and feeling blue,” was no longer true. Also. what we learned was that unless we dealt and recognized our shadow, we had a tendency to project that negative shadow on to someone else.

An example: when I am upset I tend to “stuff it down” and often will literally swallow it with food. I feel guilty doing that, and in my guilt I will look at an overweight person and project on them my shadow and condemn them in my mind as being a “weak” person, so I don't have to deal with what I am already doing. In the midst of my Bad Seed moment, I am called to remember the words of the Psalm for today:

Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
     try me and know my restless thoughts.

Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
    and lead me in the way that is everlasting.

Jesus looked at the “Good” Seed and the “Bad” and said we had to learn how to live together, for he loved them and as the song goes; “Red and Yellow, Black and White/They were precious in his sight/Jesus loved the little children of the World.”

He loved, but had trouble with, professional “good” people, what he called “whitewashed tombs full of dead people's bones” with no heart for the neighbor. The “Good” people of the community called for his death. Jesus loved the sinner who came to him for healing and turned to one on the next cross, saying, “Today you are with me in Paradise!”. Notice, he said nothing to him about being thrown into the fiery pits of punishment. He understood that we seeds are all works in progress, with blessings offered to all.

For pleasure, I read mystery novels and the latest was dropped off when a friend and former Parishioner came by. One part of the story has a Priest tell about a old man of the streets telling him about how he talked to God every day. When the Priest asked about what God said, the old man: “Well, Father, I'll tell you. I never understood a word because He always talked in Hebrew.” The Priest continued: “God's presence is manifested in acts of love, in selfless acts of courage, in everyday human compassion”. When I read that last week, sinner and saint, Good and Bad Seed, that I am, I realized I needed to get busy as the prophet Micah suggested in “doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbling with our God.”

So, what is your shadow telling you?

Hide and Seek With Our Shadows

In Cosmic game of Hide and Seek, saying

To God, “Ready of Not. Here I come”!

Hoping that I won't appear too dumb,

Closing my eyes, starting with the praying.

Listing all those things that I couldn't hide,

then asking strength to enter my shadow,

into where my ego pretends not to know;

secretly always allowed to come for a ride.

Divine laughter surrendering a Hiding Place,

chuckling; “My beloved; there's no part,

of you beyond my love to place in heart

of the Universe, in center of a Sacred Space

between you, ME and every neighbor,

Good or not, to all I'll give my favor.

4th of July 2023

 

                            4^th of July 2023

It's that, “Home of the free and land of the brave”, day,

when we are supposed to give thanks for the past and

make promises how we'll strive to make a better land,

where we'll be generous in what we do and what we say.

Yet, today I have no energy to make plans for any future,

I want to yell out, “Attention, attention must be paid!

It is not a time for celebration of a failed British raid,

but for the loss of a one I can only see in an old picture.”

I can remember walking together down to our old beach

to watch the fireworks, “Oohing” and “Aweing”,

when words failing but as a prelude to kissing

each other as if this'd be last night our love could reach.

Your beautiful worshiped body is now out of my sight;

but your love, your precious love, I'll see here tonight.

The Next Day

 

The Next Day

Your side of the bed was empty this morning.

Last night you weren't there for me to kiss you,

and tell you again what I had hoped you knew,

in a ritual that for decades was habit forming.

I knew I should get going, work out at the gym,

but it seemed pointless without a morning tryst

as this sweaty lover telling you'd been missed

and his deep love was not just a passing whim.

Yesterday, you kept that deadly appointment;

feared, delayed and avoided, but now met.

I knew, of course, I'd have to give you up. Yet,

didn't do ritual prayers or anoint with Ointment.

I could not be your Priest, only a failed lover

who could not stop those angels to hover.

Bill Wadsworth

 

A Reflection on the Occasion of a Service to Honor the Life of Bill Wadsworth          June 19, 2023

All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC                     Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher

           Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33    Psalm 23      1^st Corinthians 13         John 14 1- 6

Being more fully in retirement, I have been free to do a lot more things outside the context of church services. I have a chance to read more things that aren't outwardly theological. One of the things was a study of the Rings of Saturn. The rings of Saturn are not solid, but they are collections of dust and pieces of rock that are all floating in space so close to one another, held in dynamic tension one to another, by this field of energy. This field of energy values all of the pieces of what we would call debris to create a thing of beauty with each piece having its own place of honor. The scientists suggest that this field of energy has been going on for something like a hundred million years and will probably last for another hundred million years.

As I thought about those broken pieces in the Rings of Saturn, I realized how, those broken pieces are a metaphor for our human life, indeed all of creation. The 11^th Century Chinese Philosopher of the Song Dynasty, Zhang Zai, wrote in his Western Inscription:

Heaven is my father, and Earth is my mother

and even such a small creature as I finds

an intimate place in their midst.

Therefore that which fills the universe

I regard as my body

and that which directs the universe

I consider my nature.

All people are my brothers and sisters, and

all things are my companions.

We are broken pieces connected to each other by a force much larger than our selves; dust and rocks in a mighty River of energy. In my own view of my life, I see myself surrounded in a river of energy from my birth to the time when I am emptied into the much larger sea of God's love. I think is is one of reasons so many of us are drawn to, or move to, the Outer Banks; we are aware of a power greater than ourselves; Life in a River of Love emptying out in the Sea of God's grace.

Maybe, like the dust and rocks we might be tempted to have a delusion that we are the center of our universes; thinking we the masters of our lives and have no deeper connection to our neighbors and no higher power through we live and move and have our being. So obsessed by our own private universe, we are unable to see the greater beauty in which we are privileged to live.

If you have trouble with my scientific explanation, let me quote a source of knowledge, whose birthday was yesterday, Sir Paul McCartney; “Life is an energy field, a bunch of molecules, And these particular molecules formed to make these four guys, [the Beatles].”

However, we are not meant to be mere voyeurs of our time on earth watching what molecules or God does. I came across a statement this last week; “God moves in his own mysterious ways, but a great deal of the time he moves through us.” Bill Wadsworth was not one of those who was just here for the ride. He came to be used as a vessel of love. Many of us here have know moments when we were gifted to drink deeply from that vessel we called Bill.

The family chose the lessons for today because they knew that they would remind us of Bill's journey. The 23^rd Psalm tells us that we are not alone on this journey; there is a guide to trust. Lamentations remind us that God's love in new every morning, even in the darkest days. Paul's 1^st letter to the Corinthians reminds us that we can hang out acting religious all we want; but living into love is that which brings God's Spirit into our daily lives. John's Gospel reminds us that with Christ we are already on the way

Bill, by example, showed us how to love and to live deeply. There is a poem by Mary Oliver in her book, New and Selected Poems, for which she won a National Book Award for Poetry in 1992. Over the decades I go to this poem when I have friends that have died and I come to the last line and I say “Yes!”

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Bill was not on earth to be a visitor, he was here to enrich us. I loved moments when Bill would come to meet me to talk over someone, or something, for whom he was concerned. I knew it was important because he was very careful with his words. He would look down and chew his bottom lip to give him time to search for the spirit to lead his words. Prayer is not about reciting the right words, but it is about entering into that right spirit who is greater than ourselves. The space between us was made holy because he was taking the time and energy to sanctify these moments. He would talk about someone who needed help, asking me if I could guide him or to join with him to help someone else. I cannot remember him asking for something for himself, but he was inviting the River of God's love to flow over and through him and us.

Bill was not perfect, none of who are pieces of stardust are, but he did know how to love.

Bill Wadsworth

Bill, when he and I would take to talk

In those moments which he chose to

Leave behind all mere pleasantries,

Looking at a space between our souls;

Would begin chewing on his lower lip,

And almost prayerfully, as if the Triune

Divine was so present, connecting those,

Saturn Ring-like pieces, one to another,

Wounded and broken, yet following

Our Savior's promise to be with us,

Releasing both of us to be of His body,

To “not simply having visited this world”,

Having been made free to live more fully.