Episcopal Church | dual personalities

September 12, 2016

“My ransomed soul he leadeth”*

by chuckofish

I had a rather long to-do list this weekend, and I checked off most everything on it. This included getting my hair cut, going to several estate sales, going to Lowe’s, cleaning up my closet, doing a little yard work, and going to church. Pretty typical.

[Daughter #1 celebrated her birthday in NYC with daughter #2. They had fun (see picture) and cake!]

I started reading The Lamplighter by Maria Susanna Cummins, which daughter #2 sent me. (Sentimental novels of the mid-19th century are a concentration of her doctoral studies.)

Published in 1854, The Lamplighter, Cummins’s first novel, was an immediate best-seller, selling 20,000 copies in twenty days. The work sold 40,000 in eight weeks, and within five months it had sold 65,000. At the time it was second in sales only to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It sold over 100,000 copies in Britain and was translated into multiple different languages.

I am enjoying it immensely. Although Nathaniel Hawthorne may have sneered at it, there is a reason so many people gobbled it up. It is well-written, diverting and instructive, and to the average person struggling along in the daily grind, uplifting.

[Gerty’s] especial favorite was a little work on astronomy, which puzzled her more than all the rest put together, but which delighted her in the same proportion; for it made some things clear, and all the rest, though a mystery still, was to her a beautiful mystery, and one which she fully meant some time to explore to the uttermost. And this ambition to learn more, and understand better, by and by, was, after all, the greatest good she derived. Awaken a child’s ambition, and implant in her a taste for literature, and more is gained than by years of school-room drudgery, where the heart works not in unison with the head.

Agreed.

At church the Gospel lesson was about Christ eating with sinners and the Pharisees grumbling about it. The Apostle Paul reminded us that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, he foremost among them. In the OT lesson, God changed his mind, at Moses’ prompting, and forgave the slackers in the wilderness. Most of us are grumbling Pharisees ourselves, and it is good to be reminded of it. It is good to be reminded of it weekly and to say this prayer of confession:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

We will forget soon enough and once again be grumbling Pharisees.

Later today the OM and I are driving to Indianapolis where the boy is having surgery tomorrow at Indiana University Hospital. All trace of his cancer is gone, but there is still a tumor and they will remove it. If all goes well, we will return on Wednesday. Please keep us all in your prayers.

*Hymn 410

4 Comments

August 22, 2016

Trampling the sabbath*

by chuckofish

I had never heard/read/run across this phrase–“trampling the sabbath”–but I like it. It was from the first reading on Sunday, from Isaiah.

“If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs…” (NRSV)

Don’t you think this is much better than the NIV (also the New English Bible and the KJV):

“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words…”

“Trampling the sabbath” is so much more descriptive than “keeping your feet from breaking”…I mean really!

Anyway, I went to church. (Two weeks in a row!) We were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordination of one of our former rectors. There were a lot of people at church and cake and I got to sit behind my friend Carla’s granddaughter.

She let me hold her and didn’t even fuss about it. Quelle baby!

When I went home I got the OM to help me do some yard work. It was a glorious day–80-degrees and low humidity. Having filled up a couple of lawn and leaf bags, I sat outside for awhile and enjoyed the afternoon–unheard of in August in flyover country!

In other news this weekend, I read The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith, who wrote I Capture the Castle. I enjoyed it. I had lunch with my friends and caught up on the phone with my dual personality and my two dear daughters. I re-charged for the week at work. What did you do?

*Isaiah 58:13

3 Comments

August 18, 2016

“My comfort and salvation, Lord, shall surely come from Thee.”*

by chuckofish

Today on the Episcopal Church calendar we remember with a lesser feast the life of William Porcher Dubose (April 11, 1836 – August 18, 1918) .

Dubose served as a Confederate soldier and chaplain in Virginia and was captured and imprisoned at Fort Delaware. During Reconstruction he was an Episcopal minister in Abbeville and Winnsboro, S.C., and became a theologian at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1871. Indeed, according to the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, he was “probably the most original and creative thinker the American Episcopal Church has ever produced…He was not widely traveled, and not widely known, until, at the age of 56, he published the first of several books on theology that made him respected, not only in his own country, but also in England and France.”

You can read more about him here. Read the comments section for a long-winded, back-and-forth argument about whether Dubose should be disqualified from the Calendar because of his Confederate ties and his “support” of the KKK during Reconstruction and on and on. Or don’t bother. Whatever.

Here is a quote from a letter written by Dubose to his first wife Annie toward the end of the Civil War where he admits his imperfections:

“I have just commenced today our reading of the Old Testament. I will have to skip all the intervening chapters and begin afresh at the lesson for the day. You must read by the lessons and also keep in mind during the week the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel. It will be sweet to know that we are reading and thinking together. My traveling etc. threw me a little off my balance and I am just recovering again. How is it that we will so often stray away from God when it is so sweet to be near Him and so full of discomfort and wretchedness to be far from Him? If our hope rested on our own faithfulness how miserable we’d be! But blessed be God, it rests upon His faithfulness and not ours. Is not God’s patience and forbearance a mystery! I am almost tempted sometimes to feel that it is useless to try Him again. I have been so often faithless to my most sacred vows. Then I feel I cannot live without Him and I always find Him more ready to receive me. Oh how I wish I could be more consistent and steadfast. The hymn beginning ‘Jesus my strength, my hope’ is a very sweet one to me.”

I have no doubt that God is patient with and forebears even self-righteous comment-writers of the 21st century.

*Jesus, my Strength, my Hope, Charles Wesley, 1742

5 Comments

August 15, 2016

In a gadda da vida, baby

by chuckofish

Weekends that follow a weekend when one of my daughters has visited are always a little sad. You know, she was here and we were doing that, and now she is not here. And it was a rainy weekend to boot!

But I am not one to sit in a slough of despond, so I got busy. Since Gary is coming back this week to paint the living room and paper the dining room, I had to put away all the dishes in my china cabinet and pack up various shelves full of dishes etc. And there were also a lot of very dusty books to move. Good grief what a job!

I suppose it is a good job to do every once in awhile (and should no doubt be done more frequently) in order to dust off the books and be reminded what we have!

I also got a new pair of Tom’s on sale which made me happy.

I read the second lesson in church, a good long one from Hebrews (11:29–12:2) about how we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, something I believe in strongly. The Gospel was from Luke (12:49–56) where Jesus is at his politically-incorrect best, calling everyone a hypocrite and saying he “came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Our lady priest reminded us that there is no room for compromise in the Gospel and that the sweet Jesus people like to imagine is a fiction. (I think Zooey had something to say about that to Franny.)

Our organist/choirmaster has been on vacation for several weeks and so the organist substitute was the lady who always reminds me of Helen Feesh on the Simpsons.

I mean seriously.

I left right after the service and got back to work taking down drapes (more dust) and such.

Over the weekend I read Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, which my dual personality had recommended. Now I recommend it to you. Hard to put down.

In the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep I picked up a book by Eudora Welty and was reminded how really great she is.

It is our inward journey that leads us through time–forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction. (One Writer’s Beginnings)

Sigh. Now it is Monday and it’s back to the salt mines–have a good week!

8 Comments

August 1, 2016

“Not everything in life could be considered material for a sermon…”*

by chuckofish

I had sad news over the weekend. My old friend and rector, the Rev. Ken Semon, died last week as the result of a biking accident at the age of 70. (You can read about it here.)

After leaving flyover country twenty years ago, he had answered a call in Arizona and was still working as an Episcopal priest in Santa Fe at the Church of the Holy Faith, the oldest Episcopal Church in New Mexico. He was really the finest minister and one of the best people I have ever known.

He was also a fraternity brother of Harrison Ford at Ripon College, a fanatical skiier, a PhD in English Literature, and a convert to Christianity. Maybe because he came to Christianity by choice and not by birth, he took it very seriously. A little too high church for my tastes, he was nevertheless a true Christian in every way and in my mind a rather saintly person.

It is appropriate that I have been reading Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death, the first book in the Grantchester mystery series, upon which the PBS series is based.

The author James Runcie is the son of the Rt. Rev. Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury from 198o–1991, and the protagonist, Sidney Chambers, is based on his father. You will recall that Robert Runcie served as a tank commander in WWII and earned the Military Cross for two feats of bravery in March 1945. He was also the only tank commander to capture a submarine.

Anyway, the Rt. Rev. Runcie came to my old church as the Holy Week preacher in the 1990s when Ken Semon was the rector. Runcie was a nice man and a good preacher. (I had lunch with his wife and I thought she was a bit of a pill.) It is nice to know that his son must also be a good guy and an Anglican.

I am enjoying this book a lot and I recommend it.

…but the plain fact was that even before he had involved himself in this criminal investigation he had had too many things on his plate. His standards were slipping and the daily renewal of his faith had been put on the back burner. He thought of the General Confession: ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done…’

He started to make a list, and at the top of the list, as he had been advised at theological college, was the thing that he least wanted to do. ‘Always start with what you dread the most,’ he had been told. ‘Then the rest will seem less daunting.’ ‘Easier said than done,’ thought Sidney as he looked at the first item on the list of duties.

As you know, I do not believe in coincidence. I believe in the whispering voice saying, “You’re doing fine.”

Into paradise may the angels lead thee, Ken, and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem.

*Canon Sidney Chambers, “Grantchester” by James Runcie

7 Comments

July 19, 2016

Mary and Martha

by chuckofish

The Gospel lesson on Sunday was Luke 10:38-42.

As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

The message here is, of course, when Jesus is in your living room, pay attention! Beyond that, it is a wonderful vignette, captured in only a few words, of something we see all the time at church, in our families, in the world. We see bitterness and resentment, distracting Martha from what is really important. We see multi-tasking gone awry.

I mean really–Martha is the one who invited Jesus in the first place! But she’s too busy to pay attention. On top of that, she’s annoyed with her sister for not doing what she thinks she should be doing.

Marthas still abound at churches everywhere. Churches are full of people who give lots of time and talent to organizing fundraisers and social events, serving coffee and working in the kitchen, keeping up the buildings and grounds. All very well and good. However, these same pillars of the church often give little more than lip service to the real reason they are allegedly active there, i.e. being disciples of Christ. They get very uncomfortable at the idea of Bible Study.

Well, as I get older, I get worse and worse at multi-tasking. I embrace that. I never liked it much in the first place. One thing at a time, I now say.

As focusing becomes more of an issue in this modern sound-bite world, I try harder to focus.

I do not need to be an anchoress (a woman who chooses to withdraw from the world to live a solitary life of prayer and mortification, although the idea is somewhat attractive to me) in order to focus. I just need to take time every day to spend with Jesus. To be a Mary, to choose the better part.

*”Christ in the House of Martha and Mary” by Johannes Vermeer

4 Comments

July 18, 2016

“Let the trees of the forest sing”*

by chuckofish

When I got to church on Sunday I saw that two huge oak trees had been blown down in last Wednesday’s big storm. The branches had been moved out of the driveway, but the huge trunk with its root ball still remained.

During the announcements our rector told us that the pastor of the St. Louis Family Church, a very large evangelical church in west county, had called him the next day and said he would send people out to move the downed trees asap. This is part of their emergency storm relief mission. Our rector said, “Thank you!” The motto of this church is “Honor God. Help people.” I was surprised, impressed and the news made me feel very happy. This must be a very busy week for those volunteers.

I did quite a lot of work in our own yard on Saturday–cleaning up from the storm. I filled five bags with detritus.

The boy came over with some loppers and he and the OM cut up the big branches and filled a bag too. What a storm! I was actually driving home when it hit and it was very scary indeed. I was afraid a tree would fall on my little car and I would be squished. Zut alors! was I glad to get home.

In other news, we celebrated the OM’s birthday with the boy and daughter #3 at a restaurant down in Lafayette Square in the city–We are so adventurous!

I couldn’t be in this picture, because I didn’t get the memo about wearing blue!

Also, the boy got his first penalty in a hockey game and also made his first shot on goal. Onward and upward.

We watched a terrible movie: Hail, Caesar! (2016), the Coen brothers send-up of Hollywood in the 1950’s. Even Channing Tatum couldn’t salvage this mess. Totally not funny.

I finished The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine, the 17th installment of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency books by Alexander McCall Smith. Although I find these books mildly irritating, I am a loyal reader and always ultimately enjoy them. Precious Romotswe is a great character after all.

[Clovis Anderson] wrote: Do not allow the profession of which you are a member to induce you to take a bleak view of humanity. You will encounter all sorts of bad behavior but do not judge everybody by the standards of the lowest. If you did that, he pointed out, you would misjudge humanity in general and that would be fatal to discerning judgement. If everybody is a villain, then nobody is a villain, he wrote. That simple expression had intrigued her, even if it was some time before its full meaning–and the wisdom that lay behind it–became apparent.

Wise words to ponder this week. Discuss among yourselves.

*1 Chronicles 16:33

8 Comments

July 6, 2016

You don’t say!

by chuckofish

As you know, Olivia de Havilland turned 100 last week.

Of course, you know that she is a two-time Oscar winner, but did you know that she is a devout Episcopalian and a lay reader to boot? Well, she is. Just like me.

She attends the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity in Paris (aka the American Cathedral in Paris).

Here is an interesting article about Olivia and how she feels about lay reading–and within it a link to another, longer article.

I completely agree with Olivia, of course. Can you imagine having Olivia de Havilland as a lay reader in your church?

By the way, Olivia de Havilland is the Star of the Month on TCM, so they will be showing her movies every Friday in the month of July. Here’s the schedule.

In other news: TCM is “Presenting Shane and 100 other westerns” this month on Tuesday and Wednesday nights! Check out the schedule here.

SO many good movies!

5 Comments

June 30, 2016

Remember thy servant

by chuckofish

The other evening I attended the memorial service of a dear friend who died a few weeks ago, aged eighty. Barb was the exact opposite of me–extremely extroverted and effervescent, always on the go, always pitching in. She was like Auntie Mame–you know, “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!” She was not starving.

Barb was the person who got me to venture across the street to Ivy-Selkirk’s Auction House and started me on the road to estate sale-ing. She never understood timidity. She was a Just Do It person. We disagreed about many things, but unlike a lot of people these days, we respected each other’s opinions. We agreed, after all, on the important things.

After years of Catholic school and child-rearing and being told what she could and couldn’t do, Barb finally threw up her hands and turned her back on the RC Church. She became an Episcopalian at age 55 and she never looked back. She became a pillar of her new church and it was packed for her funeral.

The church she attended in the city is a self-styled “progressive” one and so there were liberties taken with the service–four speakers in the middle–but it was still very nice and even (surprisingly) Rite I. The readers, all adult grandchildren, were pretty terrible, but the scriptures were well chosen. The speakers–two friends and two children–were wonderful. They made everyone laugh, remembering Barb. The minister, young and wet behind the ears, was straight out of central casting–the guy to call when you need a nerdly, balding, beanpole cleric. I would not hold his looks against him, but his voice was high and thin and he raced through communion. He made me appreciate our rector and long for Arthur Shields.

It was a long service, but it was a celebration of Barb’s life, so why shouldn’t it be? Her friends and family will truly miss her. And we will remember her.

“Remember the wonderful works that he has done,” goes David’s song–remember what he has done in the lives of each of us; and beyond that remember what he has done in the life of the world; remember above all what he has done in Christ-remember those moments in our own lives when with only the dullest understanding but with the sharpest longing we have glimpsed that Christ’s kind of life is the only life that matters and that all other kinds of life are riddled with death; remember those moments in our lives when Christ came to us in countless disguises through people who one way or another strengthened us, comforted us, healed us, judged us, by the power of Christ alive within them. All that is the past. All that is what there is to remember. And because that is the past, because we remember, we have this high and holy hope: that what he has done, he will continue to do, that what he has begun in us and our world, he will in unimaginable ways bring to fullness and fruition.

Into paradise may the angels lead thee, Barb, and at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem.

(The quote, of course, is Frederick Buechner.)

3 Comments

June 15, 2016

A practical mystic

by chuckofish

Today in the Episcopal Church it is the feast day of Evelyn Underhill (6 December 1875 – 15 June 1941). She was a poet and novelist, you will recall, as well as a pacifist and a mystic. She was prominent in the Anglican Church as a lay leader of spiritual retreats, a spiritual director for hundreds of individuals, guest speaker, radio lecturer, and proponent of contemplative prayer.

“Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception—this “ordinary contemplation,” as the specialists call it—is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician.”

―Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism

Underhill taught that the life of contemplative prayer is not just for a saintly few, monks and nuns and such, but can be the life of any Christian who is willing to undertake it.

Good to remember when life gets complicated and busy. “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” (Matt. 6:6)

Here’s to Evelyn Underhill!

O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all creatures: Grant that thy Church, taught by thy servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by thy power, and guided by thy Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to thee all glory and thanksgiving, and attain with thy saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast promised us by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with thee and the same Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

–Collect for the day

And, yes, I do think that Underhill icon is awkward.

2 Comments

Tag: Episcopal Church

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish