Cynthia M. Slegel April 28, 1935 - December 27, 2017

A Reflection for a Celebration of Life for Cynthia Slegel             January 20, 2018

All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. Thomas E. Wilson Rector

Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39 Psalm 23 John 14:1-6

There is a very short one act play written in 1889 by Swedish author August Strindberg called The Stronger. It takes place in a café on Christmas Eve with one woman sitting at a table alone reading a newspaper when another woman comes in loaded with Christmas presents for her family. The other woman comes to the table and starts talking and the seated woman says nothing - for the whole play. The question is asked by viewers of the play “Which of the women was the Stronger; the one who talked or the one who listened?”

There is an old joke that goes: “The world is divided into two groups; one that says that the world is divided into two groups and the other that doesn’t.” One of things I believe is that we are all the same but, between the ones who tend to take space and those who make space, some tend to be stronger in one area than others.

Cynthia Slegel knew how to take space for she graduated from a prestigious school, she was a teacher who could teach children and control her classroom, and she was an effective Principal who could run a school of teachers of competing egos while managing to stretch a budget to make sure the children got the best education on things that mattered. The hardest job she had was being a Pastor’s wife - to put up with well-meaning but interfering advice and snide off-hand comments, guarding the secrets and foibles of congregants, putting up with Saturdays when Bob was trying to write a sermon for Sunday and demanding absolute quiet from three growing children and a wife who had to do things that there had not been time for during her work week, the dreading one more committee meeting with a stretched smile when yet another parishioner lamented the loss of the way things were done under a previous Pastor, and running a household of a demanding husband and three strong-willed children and making sure they were protected. In the words of a song of that time, she could “bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, . . . a woman W-O-M-A-N.”

I did not see that kind of strength often in my 15 years of knowing her, but I knew that I would greatly regret it if she ever saw me as a threat to her husband, children, or faith. The kind of strength I saw in her was the kind that made room for me in this community, at this church, and in her home. She was gracious and knew how to welcome in a quiet, understated way where the welcome was in the space between the words - the words she left to Bob, and the love she gave patiently away. I would periodically see the hints of a stretched smile as I would announce a bright idea I came up with to make a change and to which she would adjust out of loyalty. She had to do a lot of adjusting in her life out of love.

I remember the joy that she and Bob would have in welcoming people to the Outer Banks at the Visitors Center; it was a perfect job for them in retirement. They would come home filled with energy with Bob doing the “Hail fellow well met” kind of greeting full of words and Cynthia smiling and answering questions the visitors had. I remember visiting her at her rooms in Spring Arbor. The seats would be covered with knitting supplies and projects and piles of books from the library she had been reading that week. She would rush around to clear off a space for me so that I would be comfortable. She refused to complain because she did not want to burden me with negativity. She would do the same thing when I would visit her in the hospital. When I read the passage from John about Jesus saying that he will go and prepare a place for us in His Father’s House, I am aware of an image of Cynthia helping to make a space of welcome. 

 

I remember walking through the meetings of the knitting group and there would be all sorts of chattering and laughter as the women knitted away madly. I would call them the Madame Defarge Group, she was a character in Dickens Tale of Two Cities knitting at the guillotine, a representation of the mythical Ancient Greek Fates who handled the threat of life and would cut it short when it was time for someone to die. Their laughter was polite because they saw their work as the giving of life and hope as they knitted the prayer shawls for the people who needed outward and visible signs of the invisible prayers surrounding them and those they loved. Their knitting would be prayer, a loving prayer using their hands and hearts. Cynthia would be quieter than the rest for she was intent on making spiritual space for others. In this quiet spiritual strength, she faced all the trials that came her way, and there were many, yet she remained an embodiment faith of what Paul wrote to the Romans in today’s passage:

   Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine,    or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Today we give thanks for making space for us in her world in which there is strength to sustain us, we like the sheep of the shepherd who walk through this valley of the shadow of death. Bless you, Cynthia and bless you who loved her for we have been blessed by having her in our lives.

Pastor’s Wife

Now she sits quietly knitting something as a gift.

What it will be she doesn’t quite know, it begins

with a thought of love, figuring out outs and ins

and finding ways to repair all of the rips and rift

that so clogs her life as a pastor’s wife and lover;

the one chosen to silently pick up all the pieces

of unfinished puzzles; wrinkles causing creases

etching her face on top of ones of being mother.

Faithfully she keeps the secrets of those hurts,

of the parish pains for they are not her to share

with others as gossip, but only given in prayer

guiding her at both the center and the outskirts.

While husband is the one to get all the glory,

she provided the beating heart of their story.

Blessings

A Reflection for II Epiphany              All Saints’ Episcopal, Southern Shores, NC

January 14, 2018                               Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

1 Samuel 3:1-10        1 Corinthians 6: 12-20  John 1:43-51        Psalm 139: 1-5, 12-17

Blessings

Samuel, in the Hebrew Testament lesson for today, has a dream that he is hearing a voice. He shares the dream with Eli who understands that God is speaking through the dream. Eli instructs him to stop, be still, and listen to God. He is told to say  “Speak, Lord for your servant is listening”. Sometimes we can only hear the blessing when we stop and reflect enough to listen to the deeper messages.  It will be a difficult ministry for Samuel but, in all of it, he gives thanks to God. 

The Psalm read for today is part of the Jewish mystical tradition of meditatively looking at something deeply, being still and seeing it as holy, then saying a blessing about it and blessing God for that blessing. This Psalmist was looking with awe and wonder at his body and saw it as a gift from God.

Paul, raised in that tradition, wrote to the church in Corinth to remind them that they, collectively as a body and individually as bodies, were made in the image of God and were God's Holy Temple, God's gift of blessings to the world and to each other. The church in Corinth finds the blessing of God makes life more difficult, and they can't just go along with the norms of the city of Corinth. Paul has a difficult time in his ministry of Grace,  but he ends his life in thanksgiving for all he had received in following Jesus.

Jesus, also raised in that tradition, said the blessing not only with words but in his very life as in the reading from John's Gospel.  He gathers his disciples, calling them to a life of blessing where they will participate in the healing of the world. It will a difficult ministry for all of them, but at the end of their lives, they give thanks and bless God. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that blessings are even in the middle of adversity; Matthew remembers nine of those blessings and Luke remembers four in which Jesus says that, even when we mourn, we are realize how much we have been blessed. There is a Jewish prayer that says, “As long as we live, they too will live; for they are now are a part of us; as we remember them.” 

Today we are gathered in Eucharist, which means to give thanks for all the blessings we have in this life. Theologian Martin Israel writes about the mystical tradition: “There is nothing in this world that is unholy; there is only that which has not yet been blessed.”

We use the word “blessing” in many different way; when someone sneezes we say, “Bless you”, when Jews greet people they say  the blessing “Shalom”, Muslims say “Salaam”, the Hindus say “Namaste”, in English we use Hello, a variation of Hail, meaning good health, long life. Animals have instinct, but humans bless. The name that the scientists, like Carl Linnaeus in the 18^th Century, came up with for human beings is “Homo Sapiens”, meaning humans being wise, but in my theological taxonomy, it should be “Homo Benedictus” meaning humans blessing.  

When I first came down to the south, I soon learned two Southern expressions -“Blessing someone out” and “Bless His Heart”. The first is a way of yelling at someone without cussing which would be “cussing someone out”. The other is a way of getting a dig in on someone while pretending to be polite.

We went through a terrific snow storm for the Outer Banks. It would have been considered a small storm in other parts of the country. The accent you hear is from upstate New York where we were used to interruptions like that, but here on the Outer Banks, it threw us into a tizzy because we don't have the infrastructure to deal with it. So we spent a lot of time blessing out the weather, griping about it, throwing a pity party and “blessing out”, maybe crossing the boundary into “cussing out”, the weather.

Yet after a couple days we remembered it as beautiful and realized that it had some moments of blessing - giving blessings in the middle of situations that might not be perceived as blessed. During that storm we were wise and told people that they did not need to see church as an obligation, but they could safely stay home to worship God there and blessed that decision.  But there were people giving other blessings. We had Matt Octavio's people give time and energy to clear off the parking lot as a gift to the church. We had Gil Anderson shovel off the steps as a blessing to this church and Tess Judge spread the salt to melt the ice as a blessing. We were able to stay open not to prove that we were better Christians or to get more money to pay the bills of the institution, but to provide a time and place for blessing. As we gave thanks, we had people who don't usually come to this church be welcomed here as we blessed them with warmth, prayers, and refreshment for the soul and body. Each of the services had small numbers in the congregation, but there was nothing small about God's blessing.

Our church sees as its mission as the blessing in everything we do. The attempts we have to raise money to pay the bills is always tinged with blessing as we give a tithe of money away to be used as blessing. Yet even in the events themselves like Lobster Fest and Holly Days, we understand that the true meaning underlying what we do is to be a blessing to all who come. I think of the cast-off jewelry that once had been given in love as a blessing, but now the recipients have died and the family did not share the feeling that it was still a blessing, so they donated the items to the jewelry booth. The people at the booth take these gifts that had once been blessed with love and lovingly restore them to beauty  and make them available to be used as blessings for others. Yes it makes money, but I have to say, knowing how much time and energy went into the restoration by the dedicated people, the amount falls below minimum wage per hour. But you know blessings operate on a different market system that are less concerned with what we get than what we give.

Blessings are part of a full life and are necessary in this world which seems too obsessed with receiving the outward signs of blessing than giving grace-filled blessings. I remember my father who spent World War II in the South Pacific as an artillery officer working with geometric sines and cosines to lob shells at enemy positions. It was his job because he loved his country. But after the war, he turned the sines and cosines to building roads and bridges to make the country he loved a better place. I remember how he would see beauty in bridges, finding ways if possible to save the old elegant ones by moving them to another place of less traffic and replace them with things of beauty for the improved road. I remember how he would stop on the side of the road on family trips and tell us about how the cuts and fills had been made to make the highway a thing of beauty and how a particular tree had been spared in the intersection. He would have been a hundred this year; he had seen enough ugliness that he wanted to give blessings.

It thrills me to see how often we see members of this church give blessings. I see this in deaths in the church as the community gathers around, not to fix things but to show that the person who died is honored by giving blessings to help the surviving family. I see it when we have artists and musicians come to share their art and talents and how we bless them with a venue for their blessings. I see it when we welcome our homeless friends, and we bless them with food, warmth, and respect as they bless us with their presence.

I think back to how in these years here I have been blessed by you as I was welcomed and you allowed me to say blessings over bread, wine, people, and situations. Bless you!

Blessings

Looking deeper it is seen as blessing

touching us in the neighbor of soul

forming a fabric of the larger whole

seeing as divine action of caressing.

What if find the blessing frustrating

of our own desires to be holding on

and seeing troubles encroaching on

our valued pleasure; blessing hating?

And yet all blessings for good or ill

can take us further into heart of God

if we'd return blessing when awed

to take time entering to state of still,

realizing blessings are part of love

coming from creator of all above.

Baptisms; Reflection and Poem for January 7, 2018

A Reflection for I Epiphany                    All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC

January 7, 2018                                       Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Genesis 1:1-5 Acts 19:1-7 Mark 1:4-11 Psalm 29

Baptisms

Last week was New Year's Day when, over the years, I have heard - and said myself - a lot of resolutions and intentions to do things better from people hoping that just saying “Sorry - won't do it again” will make all the difference. They are tired of the past and want a new future, so they make promises based on good intentions and their own willpower. The trouble with resolutions is that putting them into practice can be an inconvenience to the way we usually structure our lives. The reason we don’t keep most of them is that they call for a change of ourselves, our lives, and we would rather say “Sorry about that” - it is more convenient.

Today is the first Sunday in the Epiphany season, the Baptism of our Lord, the commemoration of the Baptism of Jesus by John. John was baptizing people coming to him for repentance as we see in the Gospel lesson for today from Mark. It was inconvenient for they would have to travel to the far side of the Jordan and during the journey, mentally go through all of the sins they had committed, the places they had fallen short, and the hopes they had for the future. Then they would re-enact the entrance into the Promised Land by their ancestors, coming out of the wilderness from their trek from Egypt. John would meet them coming across and symbolically wash off the sins of the wilderness so that they might start over with a clean slate. He would tell them that this was a stop-gap measure for there would be someone in the future who was greater who would be walking with them and sharing strength to keep the promise they make.

This is what Paul encounters in the lesson from the Book of Acts for today; these are people who follow the teachings of Jesus and know about the Baptism of John, but they are waiting for Jesus to return. For them, Baptism was about washing away the shortcomings of their old life as a way of getting admitted to the Christian community. They are there and waiting for Jesus to return. Paul tells them that while we are waiting for Jesus to return, let us begin with the necessary inconvenience of having the Holy Spirit in our lives so that we have the strength to follow the Christ in this world.

It reminds me of a movie—oh come on now, we are three minutes into the reflection and you knew I was going to bring in a movie, so I am just not letting you wait in suspense. The movie is called The Apostle, starring, written, and directed by Robert Duval. It starts off with a minister who, in a fit of rage, kills his wife’s lover. He runs away from the law and begins a new life by re-baptizing himself and promises to do better. Baptism becomes a way of getting God off your back, a “Get Out of Hell Free Card” in this game of life. He re-baptizes himself because it is convenient; he changes his geography, he changes his name, but wherever he goes he is still the same because it is more convenient.

When I first saw the movie, I was reminded that the reason I got my daughter baptized was not because I thought I was going to change my life, nor did I really believe in God, but I did believe in Dante and his Divine Comedy and his description of the First Circle of Hell called Limbo where unbaptized good people and babies who have not sinned were kept. Dante describes the residents as those who live “without hope but are filled with longing”, a “suffering without torment”. So, out of superstition, I had her dipped by a friendly Presbyterian who was willing to help me through my fears. It was convenient.

The Greek word for Baptism comes from the Greek word for immersion or dip. It could be used as a metaphorical term like someone is baptized into debt meaning they were drowning in debt, baptized in wine meant drunk, or baptized in misery. Getting dipped or immersed was also used by some Eastern religions as a ritual way of washing away impurities of behavior, or as a transition from puberty to adulthood. Sometimes water is the symbol of death; one died to the old life and into a new through the water.

Sometimes one would be sprinkled with blood to get them ready for battle. Sometimes it was a way of a commitment to a god, to become a child of that god where the water was sprinkled as the seed of the god or pulled out of the water as out of the womb of the goddess. Sometimes penitents would pour dust over their heads as a sign of acceptance of their god’s judgment. All religions of the world recognize that humans louse up, and there are many ways to atone for that behavior. Most major religions believe in some sort of commitment process of salvation such as ritual, study or deeds; all of them are meant to be inconvenient.

So what is going on when Jesus comes to be baptized? Is it the preparation for the battle against evil, or getting rid of sins, or the humility of submission, to enter into a community or a new life of transition as he comes out of the water and the heavens are “torn open” (as the Marcan writer puts it), and the voice says that he is the chosen one? So which is it? I am in my15th year here, so you know that every time I ask, “Which is it?” the answer is usually “Yes”.

Mark has no infancy narrative or miraculous birth stories, and Mark knows Jesus was a human being so he is bound to have loused up. Mark knows that the first thing Jesus does is go into the wilderness to do battle with the demons and be ministered to by angels. Mark knows that after that, Jesus will start to gather a community around him. Mark knows that while Jesus is a human, he is also the Chosen of God, the Messiah, and he will be raised from the dead. Mark knows that when Jesus dies, the veil of the Temple which separated the holy of holies from the human precincts of the Temple will also be “torn apart” as the heavens where God dwells and the earth where Jesus lives will no longer be separate.

Mark begins the Gospel with the Baptism of Jesus as a man who is looking for something or someone out there and in here, and Jesus finds them both and they are one. Jesus lives his life and dies his death as if the common soil we walk upon is the streets of heaven, fully in the presence of God. He is not interested in self-improvement but in serving the world, to give an outward and visible witness of the strength and power of God working within ordinary mortals to redeem the world from its brokenness. He is not interested in convenience but in commitment.

Baptism is not a call to admire Jesus, but to enter into a community to follow Jesus. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that we cannot find Christ outside Christian Community. Peter Marty, the publisher of Christian Century, had an editorial this last week called Church is Inconvenient, which concludes:

As wonderful as it might be to have Christ apart from the hypocrisies and distractions of other people who believe, Christ is embedded in the church. Sounds foolish to say, but we are Christ’s body. That inconvenient claim, that we are joined to other body parts that don’t necessarily think or look like we do, can seem either ugly or beautiful. I find it beautiful.

So, how are you doing with your New Year’s Resolutions? How are you doing with your Baptism?

Baptisms

Saying “I'm sorry, won't do it again”,

is a way to begin putting away past

but it is just the starting line at last

coming down to put away the pain.

Buck and “sorry” gets cup of coffee,

now is that slow step by step path

which follows need to take a bath,

for that new road's tough and rocky.

Can't do it by myself. Help I'll need

entering what a new life will entail

times to succeed over times to fail

with a strength greater that I'll heed.

The heavens daily ripped open torn

as old way dies and new life is born.

Theology For Poeple in a Hurry

A Reflection for the First Sunday of Christmas         All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC December 31, 2017                                                            Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Isaiah 61:10-62:3        Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7          John 1:1-18

Theology For People In A Hurry.

For my birthday, Pat gave me a book by Neil De Grasse Tyson, Astrophysics For People In A Hurry, which begins, “In the beginning, nearly fourteen billion years ago, all the space and all the energy and all the matter of the known universe, was contained in a volume less than one trillionth of the size of the period at the end of this sentence.” 

I looked at that period for a while and could not even imagine what one trillionth would look like. Then I decided that the title of this reflection and poem would be Theology For People In A Hurry. This is the poem that my prayers gave me:

Theology For People In A Hurry.

In the beginning there was loving

searching for a way of expression,

Verb moving makes an impression

on the empty without any shoving.

Implied Promise echoes into Being

in an explosion of energy’s matter

that the empty is filled with scatter,

expressing love into order freeing.

Verb fashioning planets and stars

through the new breathing shared

so honor of all wouldn’t be spared

by intending sacred life to be ours.

Verb reminding “THIS is the pattern

of living. Now is time for your turn.” 

 “In the beginning was the Word”.  So begins the prologue to the Gospel of St. John. Before the beginning there was God, and the Word was the beginning. God gave God’s Word as the beginning of all creation. Then revisiting creation with the person of Jesus as an outward and visible sign of the Word becoming flesh, God shows us what life is like living into WORD. So what is like for us, made in the image of God, to give our Word?

The idea of giving our word is that what we say is not idle chatter, but each syllable is an outward and audible sound of the spiritual nature of our very soul. The Community of the Beloved Disciple reflected on the Jesus experience and they saw this Jesus as the outward expression of the soul/ spirit of God, the Christ. This is the one who walks along the dusty roads. This is the one who breathes life into those who seem to be living dead lives. This is the one who weeps, whose heart is broken time and again, but does not become bitter. This is the one who is betrayed time and time again and yet forgives. This is the one who loves the enemy. This is the one who pours out himself for the help of brothers, sisters, and strangers. The Community said that this is what God is like and therefore this is what life is like and how we live into giving our word, our life.

But it is hard to follow that path and, at times, we are like Jesus in the Gospel accounts when our human natures want to say “enough is enough, I don't want to keep facing the hard facts of living in this broken world”. I say broken because, as in the last two lines of my sonnet, “Verb reminding, THIS is the pattern/ of living. Now is time for your turn.”.  God, Verb, Being's very self tells us how to live, and we fall short as individuals and as societies all over the world. We open our papers or news feeds and read how at times all seems to be falling apart, and yet we speak the WORD of our lives. 

In 1920 William Butler Yeats, reflecting on the First World War, the Irish Rebellion, and the Russian Revolution, wrote in his poem, The Second Coming:

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

Sounds familiar doesn't it? The poem continues, and Yeats leaves it open to see if he has the strength, the faith, to hope for some sort of redemption. Yet he continues to write and in the fourth section of one of his last poems, Under Ben Bulben, he writes urgently:

Poet and sculptor do the work   

Nor let the modish painter shirk   

What his great forefathers did,   

Bring the soul of man to God,   

Make him fill the cradles right.

Measurement began our might:   

When I read that, I realize that all of the words we speak are meant to bring the soul of our fellow humans to God so that we might fill the cradles right of our lives.

In the Liturgical Calendar for the week after Christmas, there are two events set as Holy Days in this week of celebration, the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. December 27^th is the remembrance of the Martyrdom of Stephen, who was stoned because he kept giving the word about Jesus.  This is a reminder of how the world does not like to be reminded of the availability of God's hope because that might get in the way of the agenda of the religious establishments of this world and of how we must continue to give our word of hope. The second remembrance is of the Holy Innocents on December 28, the story of the children slaughtered by King Herod in his fear that the birth of Jesus might get in the way of the agendas of the rulers of this world and that we must continue to give our word of hope.  

As we end this year of 2017 and begin 2018, let us give our WORD again.  In this past month we have had two families have to bury a child, and I wrote a poem reflecting on that:

Weeping With Rachel In Ramah

Scholars tell us there was no historical

          evidence of Bible's Slaughter of Innocents

                   in Bethlehem from Herod's fear,

                             and it was only a myth to have

                             Jesus come across as the new Moses

                    by Matthew's church finding solace

          when their friend died before his mother.

Burying child is obscene, a perversion

          of all we have tried to do as parents

                   when we used to put them to bed

                             kiss them good night, sleep tight.

                             All the worry we did, all the advice

                   all the cheering, the yelling,

          sighing and crying

all the mistakes,

          all the missed opportunities we wasted,

                   all the hugs deferred and missed again,

                             all the secrets shared and kept,

                             all the birthdays still to come,

                   all the joys still to be found,

          all the what-if's crowding in.

We were not able to fully protect them

          from all the threats of inattention,

                   disease, broken hearts and violence.

                             Yet we give thanks for all the love given

                             and received to and from products of love,

                   hope and grace of these precious gifts

          in this, our fleeting gifted universe

where it is no myth to join Rachel weeping in Ramah.

                            

Theology for people in a hurry is that God, the Verb of all, is here wherever we areas we give our word.

Poem: Weeping With Rachel In Ramah

Weeping With Rachel In Ramah

Scholars tell us there was no historical

    evidence of Bible's Slaughter of Innocents

       in Bethlehem from Herod's fear,

        and it was only a myth to have

        Jesus come across as the new Moses

      by Matthew's church finding solace

   when their friend died before his mother.

Burying child is obscene, a perversion

    of all we have tried to do as parents

       when we used to put them to bed

           kiss them good night, sleep tight.

          All the worry we did, all the advice

      all the cheering, the yelling,

    sighing and crying

all the mistakes,

    all the missed opportunities we wasted,

        all the hugs deferred and missed again,

            all the secrets shared and kept,

            all the birthdays still to come,

        all the joys still to be found,

    all the what-if's crowding in.

We were not able to fully protect them

     from all the threats of inattention,

       disease, broken hearts and violence.

           Yet we give thanks for all the love given

            and received to and from products of love,

       hope and grace of these precious gifts

    in this, our fleeting gifted universe

where it is no myth to join Rachel weeping in Ramah.