One Body

I heard a remarkable story the other day from Dan Aleshire, the President of the Association of Theological Schools.  Aleshire recently interviewed three pastors from Newtown, Connecticut, about their experiences following the shootings there in December.

He spoke about the tremendous privilege and awesome (a correct use of this trivialized word) responsibility the pastors carried.  If I heard the story right, on that horrific Friday the parents from the Sandy Hook Elementary School were sent to the community firehouse to meet (or possibly not meet) their children.  Besides first responders and local officials, the only other people invited into the firehouse were the town’s pastors. The pastors said all they could do was be present; indeed, all they could do was embody the ministry of presence.

What struck me as I listened to this beautiful story was that the pastors were from vastly different traditions.  They hold different positions on any number of theological, social and political issues.  But in the face of the Newtown tragedy, those pastors made a conscious decision to act as one body.  They decided one community memorial would be held, and until President Obama invited himself to the memorial, they had decided no one would preach.  The shootings happened two days before the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday traditionally marked by lighting the pink candle that represents joy.  They decided none of them would light that candle that Sunday.  The Catholic Church was hardest hit – nearly half the victims were Catholic – and other congregations opened their buildings to host visitations and post-funeral receptions for Catholic families.

Dan Aleshire’s point in telling these stories was to argue for the significance of pastors (and by implication the significance of theological education) in modern life.  While I certainly agree with him, I was also moved by the beauty of the pastors working as one body.

I’m currently working on the marketing plan for my seminary.  One of the first tasks in marketing is to differentiate yourself, to tell the world why and how you are different from others.  I feel that pull all the time in a variety of ways.  It’s not necessarily bad.  But how does that fit with the great New Testament theme of unity?  And why does it take a tragedy for us to stop heading in the direction of proclaiming our differences and turn around and act as one body?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a day spent with Kathleen Norris and her interest in etymology.  One of the words she did an etymology of was dogma.  She told us that originally dogma meant the things a group of people agreed on.  It was a unifying word.  Today, dogma seems to send us in the opposite direction. The word feels divisive, not unifying.

I’m the naïve guy who wrote in this space a year ago that I thought the Christian Reformed Church in North America and the Reformed Church in America should merge.  I wrote that piece in those halcyon days before last summer’s RCA General Synod, which cast shadows on whether or not the RCA can even hold together, let alone merge with others.  General Synod is on the horizon again, and the word on the street is that in the various Classes fracturing overtures are being prepared for this summer.  I wonder how further dividing and subdividing will help the witness of the body of Christ?  Before you answer too quickly, consider how dividing simply mirrors a world already so split.  Those on the “dogmatic purity” side of things want to save us from cultural capitulation, but isn’t it cultural capitulation to act like everyone else?  Around the globe nations joust with nations, at home our political system is stuck (and now the whole nation learns the word “sequestration”) and in any neighborhood disaffected people regularly murder their fellow citizens.  Can we differentiate ourselves by staying together despite our differences?  Can we model respectful and loving disagreement without dividing?  Can we be one body? 

Since I heard Dan Aleshire’s message, I can’t get the image of those Newtown pastors acting as one body out of my mind.  Somehow the words “Gonna lay down my sword and shield” and “Ain’t gonna study war no more” seem appropriate.  May it be so. 

Good + Books

Being good is complicated.

I’ve just read two British novels, written over 150 years apart, that make that point. It fascinates me that of all the titles ascribed to Jesus, the one he rejected was being called “good.”  No wonder -- these novels show how difficult “good” can be.  (Both books also, in their own way, skewer the Church of England, but that’s another topic for another day.) 

The first is How to Be Good by Nick Hornby.  I loved Hornby’s movies About a Boy and An Education and gleefully jumped at this book when I found it tucked away amid the treasures of a used bookstore.  Hornby is hilarious and compassionate and insightful and all of these qualities pour out in this novel.  Katie, the main character, is a good person; she cares about third-world debt and homelessness, she “saves the odd life” as a doctor and she’s a wife and mother.  Except she’s not that good at being a wife or mother.  She’s married to a lout who writes a newspaper column called The Angriest Man in Holloway (the name of their London suburb), and she opens the novel by asking for a divorce.

What happens next surprised me.  Instead of exploring the pain of a relationship going south, the novel takes a wonderful twist when Katie’s husband undergoes a dramatic spiritual awakening, aided by a mystic named DJ GoodNews.  “I believe all the things you believe,” he tells her, “except I am going to walk the talk.”

As you may guess, it is no easier being married to a saint than a lout.  He compulsively gives away the family’s Sunday dinner and various other possessions (including a computer), tries to convince the whole block to take in runaways (a few do with very mixed results), and forces his children into bringing home social outcasts (also with very mixed results).

The novel asks several profound social, moral and theological questions, but you are laughing so hard they never feel preachy.  (I love books that make me laugh out loud when I’m reading them.) I’m not sure I knew how to be good after reading the book, but I did know I’d read a good book.

Equally compelling but very different is Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, a book Henry James called “the history of an old man’s conscience.”

The Reverend Septimus Harding, a cello-playing, kind-hearted aging clergyman is warden of a charity house for a dozen infirm laborers.  His position is a church sinecure, providing a generous income for simple duties, and his position becomes the center of controversy when a crusading young man wants to expose corruption in the church.  Events spin out of control over time (in today’s world this would all happen in a 24-hour news cycle), and even though eventually all parties involved drop their pursuit of the matter against the warden, he feels compelled to resign his position.

Should you continue doing something you have become convinced is wrong even though those around you have absolved you of wrongdoing?  The warden’s resignation placates his conscience, but no one is the better for it.  The very clear implication is that it is better to do compromised good than to follow a path of righteousness that helps no one.

Is that right?  Before you get on your high horse, I’d argue it happens every day in all of our lives, businesses, churches and schools.  Being good is complicated.  And I love novels that engage me and make me think about the complexities of life.

Instead of allowing you a high horse, please indulge me while I ride mine for one hundred more words.  I want to ask you to read a novel.  I know too many Christians who do not read fiction.  Too many of us only read books about Christianity and too many pastors only read books about being a better pastor.  Need a place to start? I just gave you two good suggestions.  If those don’t strike you, may I suggest Moby Dick or Watership Down or The River Why instead?  Any of them will do, because all great fiction is about the same topic: life.  Church leaders suffering from predictability and blandness may find new life by spending time in the company of great writers. 

What are you reading?

More Wisdom from Kathleen Norris

If you read Jennifer Holberg’s entry last week you know that Jennifer and I were privileged to spend Saturday, January 26^th at the Buechner Institute in Tennessee in the company of the writer Kathleen Norris.  I could wax eloquently for a long time about the day, but I want you to read this so I will be brief and only share a few things – two nuggets of wisdom about writing, two more about words, and one poem.

Nugget one about writing: She was asked how she physically writes – if she uses pen and paper or a computer.  She said she uses pen and paper and recommends the same for two reasons.  First, using pen and paper slows you down enough to consider the weight and importance of each particular word.  Second, it helps you self-edit and shorten what you write.  Computers make it too easy to write too much.  I could go on about this, but that would only prove her point. 

Nugget two about writing: She was asked about editing and she said, “Anyone who thinks his or her writing doesn’t need editing is an amateur.” 

Nugget one about words: If you’ve read books of hers like Dakota or The Cloister Walk you may recall that she specializes in etymology.  Her love of word origins helps make her writing unique, and I asked her about the etymology of several different words, including “gossip.”  The origin of that word is in the word Godparent.  A Godparent was originally a gossip.  How words change over time. But she reflected on the devolution of this once holy word and said, “Perhaps church prayer chains are a way to recover the sacred use of gossip.”

Nugget two about words: In her most recent book Acedia and Me (which you really ought to read), she uses the word “demon” often.  I looked in vain throughout the book for an explanation of what she meant when she used this word.  Not finding one, I asked her.  She said, “I don’t know.”  That was not the most satisfying answer, but one full of wisdom.  How I wish there were more latitude for saying “I don’t know.”

She gave a fascinating lecture on faith and culture and talked about how the publishing world has changed over the past few decades to be much more open to Christian content.  As evidence of this, she read several poems, all with overtly Christian messages, which were first published in secular publications.  Apparently, she reads poetry at every event she does.  She is on a one-woman crusade to preserve poetry.  (There are worse crusades to be on.)  One of the poems she read was one of her own named Imperatives that simply lists a number of commands from the Bible.  I’m reprinting it here, and I would invite you to capture the full meaning by reading it slowly and aloud. 

Imperatives

by Kathleen Norris

Look at the birds
Consider the lilies
Drink ye all of it
Ask
Seek
Knock
Enter by the narrow gate
Do not be anxious
Judge not; do not give dogs what is holy
Go: be it done for you
Do not be afraid
Maiden, arise
Young man, I say, arise
Stretch out your hand
Stand up, be still
Rise, let us be going…
Love
Forgive
Remember me

Making my Sagging Spirits Billow with Hope

Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in a few weeks, and if that doesn’t make your sagging spirits billow with hope, then you must not have endured a day like I endured last Tuesday.

It all started Monday evening.  Instead of greeting me at the door with his normal two spins and a mild leap, my canine companion Maury stayed on the couch and simply raised an eyebrow in my direction.  We had moved from Grand Rapids to Holland a few days before, and I wondered if he were expressing some sort of previously repressed doggie-angst towards me. But something else was wrong.  He could hardly move.  By the morning he lay on his bed and looked at me with a “You go on about your day and don’t mind me while my life slowly ebbs away” look that made me genuinely worried. Who among us can stomach animal suffering?  Not I.  Or is it “not me”?

Regardless of the grammar and of being new residents, we found a vet and were in his office when it opened that morning.  “I wasn’t expecting that,” our new vet said while reading Maury’s temperature, and my first thought (which I wisely kept to myself) was, “Neither was Maury,” and my second thought (which I also kept to myself) was the old joke about the British doctor who was going to write a prescription and pulled a rectal thermometer out of his coat pocket.  “Uh oh,” he said, “some bum’s got my pen.”

But I digress.  Turns out Maury had a fever and some sort of infection that set up in his hind end parts that made walking and sitting next to impossible.  He is now taking three pills regularly, which, our new vet demonstrated, he enjoys embedded in cat food.  There’s just something about pork liver.

I won’t tell you how much this cost.  Can you put a value on the life of a beloved pet? (Don’t answer that.) Moving is expensive, and then there are inevitably unforeseen things that pop up.  One must always be ready to calmly deal with the unexpected.

Which is why I kept my composure that afternoon when my wife called and gently screamed into the phone, “The hot water heater has burst and there’s water flooding the basement!!!”  I won’t bore you with the details – I mean who gives a rip about another’s plumbing issues (not I and not me) – but I will say that I feared I was turning into my father when the plumber arrived and I thought he looked 12 years old.  I felt better about myself when my wife whispered, “Do you think it’s wise to trust our plumbing to a middle school student?” 

Suffice it to say junior fixed the problem and then presented me with a bill the size of the Gross National Product of Uruguay.  His bill made the vet’s office look like a thrift shop.  I could have had a dog sled team treated for what the plumber charged. 

But all is well now.  Maury is better, we have hot water, the basement has dried out, and pitchers and catchers report soon.  Life is good even though we hit a bump now and again.  Previous generations couldn’t get their pets (or themselves, for that matter) cured by antibiotics and never had the luxury of hot water heaters.  All is well, life is good and we’re lucky to be alive in this day and age.   Who cares about a few hundred unexpected dollars being spent?  It’s only money and I won’t miss it a few months from now.  This luxuriant and generous attitude helped me not even care as I watched the plumber drive away and noticed that the garage door wouldn’t shut. 

Resolved

This year I resolve to be a better wordsmith by thinking outside the box and giving 110%. Now that Father Time has flipped the pages on the calendar, first and foremost, I promise to run things up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes them or, better yet, put things out on the porch and see if the cat licks them up. What I mean is I’m going to throw a few ideas on the wall and see if they stick. I resolve to take it step by step and day by day. 

Let’s face facts.  Last year I was thrown under the bus a few times.  This stuff isn’t rocket science, you know, so I’m hoping by the end of the day to have marked improvement.  It remains to be seen if this will be true going forward, but I’m as happy as a clam at high tide or a lark or a witch in a broom factory or a mosquito in a nudist colony.  I don’t want to burn any bridges here, but truthfully my writing has literally been the best-kept secret on this blog.  It’s epic. Amazing.  Awesome. I don’t like to blow my own horn or beat my own drum but I’m an unsung hero. Oh sure, I’ll admit I avoided a few hot-button topics like the plague last year, but I’m simply trying not to shoot myself in the foot or bite the hand that feeds me.  Sometimes I spun my wheels, but that was when I felt as confused as a baby in a topless bar. Wait, was that over the line? Go too far? Cross a boundary? Break an unwritten rule? Hit the point of no return?  If so, I humbly apologize.

Although I have no excuse, truth be told I’ve grasped at a few straws because I’m a few fries short of a Happy Meal and not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Sometimes I feel dumber than a box of rocks or a bag of hammers or the guy who fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.  I give it my best and do my all and jump on things like a hobo on a nickel but occasionally I push my luck and my true colors come through.  I guess at heart I’m just a few guppies short of an aquarium.  I think I have a screw loose.  Big hat, no cattle -- if you know what I mean.  I think I woke up on third base and thought I’d hit a triple. You can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy.  Get my drift?  Smell what I’m stepping in? Feel my pain? I mean it’s as unavoidable as death and taxes, like white on rice or stink on a monkey. 

If you are like me, you know it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to write this blog.  I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that some of the other members of the 12 are accidents waiting to happen. I mean there are a couple of elevators around here not going all the way to the top floor.  I won’t name names, but let’s just say a certain someone isn’t quite the chip off the old block we were hoping he’d be.  I don’t want to get down and dirty or throw any low blows or add fuel to the fire, but frankly there is someone here who doesn’t measure up because he hasn’t figured out that there is no I in team.  He wouldn’t go for broke if his life depended on it.  He’s about as popular as cigarettes on the Hindenburg.  He’d mess up a two-car funeral.  He has all the personality of a snail on Valium.

That’s all I got.  I just want to say that I am pleased as punch to be one of The 12.  I resolve to do no harm and above all to be a go-to guy and someone you can rely on in a pinch or in the clutch or when the chips are down. If what I write doesn’t do it for you, if it doesn’t hit the spot or tickle your funny bone or make you stop and think, please remember, once and for all – and if I’ve said this once I’ve said it a hundred times -- that it’s not you, it’s me.

Thanks a million.