Two Dishes But To One Table

Think Mark-Shaped Thoughts

I take comfort in observing how other people cope when things don't go as expected.  For example, what should a boss say when he presides over a group that is entrenched in disagreement?  

If that boss is the Archbishop of the worldwide Anglican Church (Rowan Williams) then there is probably something wise and diplomatic to be said, useful for the rest of us to read, whether we are religious or not.

Williams’ task  is  how to sum up a ten day meeting that accomplished almost nothing.  The 2009 Anglican Consultative Council was, apparently, a complete failure.   Although men and women traveled to Jamaica from around the globe and spent ten days meeting they failed to accomplish anything.   As I tuned in to the archived closing remarks I wondered how he could craft a twenty minute piece of rhetoric for his loggerheaded crew.   (Aside:  I get a "Ask the Priest" podcast that archives widely disparate miscellaneous church things like this.)

 Williams began his closing remarks for the last day of the Anglican Consultative Council by noting that "there's no point in being too sanguine.  Nobody’s moved very much in the last ten days".

He summed up the failures in an understated English way, saying that the delegates had turned out to be “not very good at resolution passing.”  But he went farther, more than once explicitly calling the meeting a failure.  Stunning!

Archbishop Williams clarified, saying there are miserable failures and glorious failures and that the delegates had a choice of which kind of failure to make this conference.   The Gospel of Mark, taken as a whole, has a recurrent theme of leaders (the apostles) who “don’t get it”  ( He pointedly noted  that "the Gospel of Mark is bad news for elites".)  In Mark these individuals risk being miserable failures.  He suggested that he, the archbishop, as well as the listeners in the meeting, perhaps dpn’t get it, the it being the real meaning of the teachings of Jesus. 

He noted that the real winners in the Gospel of Mark are the relative outsiders, The Centurion, several Marys, et al, who humbly find what nourishment is to be had in Jesus’ message and take from it spiritual food.  These people, Williams points out, can  be glorious failures, a preferred state to miserable failures.  He called on the delegates to return home thinking "Markian thoughts" as he put it.

On lesser aspects of the speech he touched on Israel and on gay leaders.

I was surprised that he alluded to the Anglican Church being split on issues in “The Holy Land”.  I wasn’t aware of this.  Is he referring to pro-war/anti-war stances?  Not sure.

On the more well known splits in the Anglican and Episcopal church Archbishop Williams noted that, where the “scapegoating” of gay and lesbian clergy was concerned,    “the decisions that others have made, in other parts of the world, have put (liberals here) in a position, where (we) cannot commend the Christianity   (we ) long to share with (our) neighbors with an ease or confidence because (we) feel that other Christians have somehow undermined (our) witness.”   I found this to be a poignant defense of the liberal wing of the Anglican Church.   

Links:  There are a few blogger comments on that conference.  Some  neutral accounts of the meeting are from an attendant blogger Colin Coward at Changing Attitude.  Some criticism of AOC Williams are here, from blogger Adrian Worsfold at Pluralist Speaks. I encountered Williams closing day speech in its entirity as part of the Ask The Priest podcast from April 22, 2009, searchable from the free iTunes podcast store. Thanks Colin Coward for the photo, from his blog, above.

The Sermon Dealt With Chaff

The sermon at Trinity Church Wall Street was by Daniel Simons today. He noted that Advent is a time when you can ask God what you should let go of.   He expanded on the Gospel passage where  John warns of Jesus coming to burn off the chaff.  Rev. Simons said that you are not chaff from head-to-toe, but that you probably incorporate chaff.  He got everyone's attention at the start saying "Are you ready for the end?" which sounded so Evangelical that everyone looked up suddenly but he clarified that, causing everyone to exhale, saying he was speaking more as an Episcopalian and therefore, emphasizing not an apocalyptic rapture, but your personal end, your death, going on to remind us to burn off chaff during advent, chaff that is blocking us from seeing what matters most while there is still time.  

I must confess I blogged this during the sermon.  This was possible because I attended church from home today (via live streaming).

Sibelius Hymn

We have just finished our second full week of classes.  I'm teaching chemistry and Regents chemistry this year.  Last Friday was our first lab, "Is a Candle Flame Matter?"  It is based on Michael Faraday's 1861 Christmas lectures for young people.  My favorite part of that one is taking a little scrap of window screen and placing it sideways in the middle of the flame.   It reveals the flame has the appearance of a hollow bubble:

If anyone wants to investigate a candle too here is what I typed up.  As usual, it's a first go; hopefully improve the instructions next time.  Download 08_lab_The_Candle

Saturday Meg and I used Google Earth to fly over to Madagascar.  I just started with GE at 12000 feet, pointed at my house, and spun the globe.  We flew (virtually) over featureless blue water for about two minutes noting the longitude.  When the latitude hit 50 degrees east with no landfall I knew I had mis-aimed.  We finally hit land amidst excellent coral reefs.  Stepping back to 20,000 feet we saw we were in an archipelago.  Finally, zooming way back we saw we had flown right beneath the Cape and had hit Indonesia!  We turned around and went back, finding S. Africa this time and from there setting out over the water to Madagascar.   The real hunting began then, as Meg had never considered what her daily routine among the dirt roads on her peninsula might look like from the air.   After 15 minutes we caught significant landmarks in the following order:  the beach, the market, the Catholic church, the much smaller Lutheran church.  Here is where Meg lived in the mid-nineties:

Finally on Sunday, I got all weepy at church.  The minister directly addressed the bigotry that is spreading about the Park 51 Muslim Center.  She tied our current situation in to the Old Testament lesson for the day, the one where Moses causes God to "change his mind" about the Israelites  and their golden calf.    The service closed with an excellent hymn to a Sibelius tune that I'd never heard before, from the chapter titled "National Songs".  It had the lines:

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine...

Complete hymn text at Prometheusli.

In Thought, Word, and Deed

For decades I attended church services and didn't really 'get' the confession of sin.

In our service, near the middle, the  celebrant will say "Let us now confess our sins against God and our neighbor".    It never resonated with me; I could never focus on any personal "things done and left undone".

I ever imagined it was supposed tounload some really juicy, torturous, latent tidbit except I couldn't because nothing ever came to mind big enough to unload. 

But I recently realised the confession doesn't have to be murder or some awful hidden secret -- in prayer I should just unburden yourself from the little things I beat myself up over.  They are tiny, tiny things but they really weigh me down when I think about them.  It can be as tiny as not handing back test grades in a timely manner or not staying in touch with the people important to me or not fully participating fully in organizations I belong to.  Forgiveness for those things suddenly makes the church service more meaningful.

Forgiveness Is Like Vegetable Oil

The easiest way for something to stick in my brain is with an analogy. This is especially true for things I learn during a lecture or sermon. For many sermons I struggle to retain the main point, sometimes scribbling it on the back of a church bulletin, other times trying to recite the one or two main points in my head as the pastor rolls along. The trouble with the scribbling technique is that I end up discarding or losing the bulletin. The trouble with the mental summarizing is that I retain it up until the end of the sermon and then all it takes is a doxology and lord's prayer to subsequently wash the whole thing out of my head. Many are the times when leaving church I turn to a companion and have to ask them what the sermon was about because I no longer have a clue. This is really frustrating because I go to church more for the intellectual content than for the ritual.

So imagine my enormous gratitude for having a pastor that is a gifted public speaker who writes very clear sermons and who frequently illustrates them with vivid analogies that deepen my emotional grasp and lengthen my mental retention. The following two analogies have repeatedly popped up in my head over the last several weeks:

A seal who loves his zoo trainer is able to hold a fish in his mouth and not swallow it, confident that the loving trainer will reward him ten times over with more fish later. ( The Sea Lion and Self-Discipline The Reverend J. Donald Waring  † February 21, 2010 ) Download Patient_loving_sealion_DON

A mouse is fooling himself if he thinks he can walk out of a glue trap by mere diligence and willpower -- his only hope is if someone comes along and pours vegetable oil on the trap, dissolving the bonds that the mouse could never hope to dissolve on his own  ( Of Mice and Moon. The Reverend J. Donald Waring † January 10, 2010 ) Download Of_mice_and_moon_DON

These are viewable directly (search for the title) at the sermon archive \web page.

Folding At Home Pt II

Like the protein-folding computer can get trapped (see above), I think personal-growth experiences can get trapped in local minima too.

One example is meditation, i..e. sitting at home on a cushion for ten minutes and thinking about how your breath feels going in and out.

I learned meditation in 1992, got to sort of a plateau, and then stopped.  Picked it up again in 1996, got better, and then stopped.  Did it seriously in 2004 for two years and got to a point where I felt no further progress and stopped.   Now in 2010, I am doing it again and it feels like I figured some things out about it. It's better now.

3

 Going away and then reinventing it from square one seems to have helped me escape the local minima.  This doesn't work in everything but in meditation it is for me true.

Highly worth checking out (and completely free of new age mumbo jumbo ) are the simple meditation instructions from the FWBO.  In their words, meditation is "the only real antidote to the anxiety, hatred, discontentedness, sleepiness, and confusion that beset the human condition".

Worms Show How to Be

Last Saturday WNYC-FM played an hour of John Cage, including a long tape of street noises with Cage reading Zen koans over them.  How amazing to realize what a debt Laurie Anderson owes to Cage.  (An influence I'm sure she openly acknowledges.)

The koan that stuck with me was a tale of two holy men walking, one a Hindu guru, the other an orange robed Buddhist monk.   Coming upon a daunting deep stream , both are initially taken back by the obstacle.  After sitting awhile in intense concentration, the guru begins to float up into the air.  The Buddhist objects, saying "That's not the solution."  Continuing to concentrate, the Hindu levitates above, and across to the other side, coming to a soft landing on the opposite bank.   The Buddhist repeats "That's not the solution", and points to a gap he spotted in the stream where he then walks easily across on some rocks.

---X----

I was thinking about the Buddhist injunction to "just be" the other day while looking at some worms in a compost bin.  From time to time we have to turn over the bin, or dig in the bin, or occasionally, empty out the bin, all of which causes displacement and agitation of the worm environment.  I wonder whether I should feel any compassion for the worms feelings at the disruption, which inevitably includes severing them in half or smashing them in the lid sometimes as I snap it tight.   And of course, the worms can barely have any feelings on the matter.  If you've dissected a worm, you know there aren't a whole lot of neurons up front.  And I got to realizing that worms seem to be experts at just being.    Bees too.   I imagine a bee going about his very focused routine with no conflict, no anxiety, no self-critique about a quota, just a focus on excellence, and an ability to be.   

Coming higher up the tree of life complex fauna start to have a certain amount of un-Buddhistic nature.  As we go from fish to frog to dog, behavior shows a loss, a lack of desire to be, creeping into the inner dialog.   I  admire the cat, as opposed to the dog in this regard.   Buddhism echoes this progression, saying that the stillness we need is not something we need to go get, its something we had that we lost.  Memory of how to "just be" can be rekindled to restore us to the peace we once knew.       

 

Remembering Especially __________ , Our President

Here is an obscure souvenir: humble but singular evidence of Inaugaration 2009. A hand corrected note for the weekly form prayer from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer:

I took this scribble-amended prayer script from the podium after the service.  This hasty footnote will be my scrapbook keepsake for the changing of the guard last month.

Is Humility in the Decalogue Anywhere?

I was thinking last month about what one usually declares in public when it is time to "Be Thankful". There are certain cliches: my kids, my job, visits from so and so. But what about something more humble, something that is located within our ego, not without.

I think we should have enough humility to thank God for the things in the core of our ego that we think of as being "us", like let's say "literacy", "magnanimity", "kindness" ... these things that we think of as intrinsically our personal good traits, I think we should not act like we made them through our sweat and will power; they are more appropriately to be thanked for as something bestowed, not something that we deserved or had coming to us.  That would be a more rending, poignant, stirring prayer.

Untill He Knowe Them to Bee Reconciled

The text and images of a 500 year old reformation era  prayer book are here.
If you go to the site be ready for all the blackletter you can handle:

One funny thing about church back then is that this 1549 Book of Common Prayer puts a high barrier to recieving communion, not only giving the Eucharist a preamble reminding us to not presume the deserving of even "the crumbs under (His) table", but also instructing the rector, right up front, that people who are quarrelsome or vexed on that particular Sunday should put off communion until they've made right.  As the BCP puts it:

"The same ordre (exclusion from the eucharist) shall the Curate use, with those betwixt whom he perceiveth malice, and hatred to reigne, not suffering them to bee partakers of the Lordes table, untill he knowe them to bee reconciled."