Three short thoughts

It seems to me that part of seminary has been a time to act on what my reality should be (and what it has become) and to reorient my attention to the other.  This has meant coming to a better understanding of myself and cultivating the ability to do the 'Jesus thing'.  Here are some examples.
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I think it was 2005 or 2006.  My dad gave me his gun--a 9mm Beretta--as a birthday gift.  I had wanted that gun for years, and even after I had left military school.    I think over the years since then I had fired the gun twice, both times at a range.  When I started my discernment process in Arizona, I started to feel uneasy about owning the gun.  Laura was always uneasy about having it in the house.  I eventually came to the conclusion that, for some reason, I found that I didn't need the gun anymore.  Whatever place or mystique it had held in my mind was gone. 

In my mind, I was pulling away from my militaristic past (now I realize it was always more of a front than a reality) to my pacifistic future.  While I am still quite comfortable around guns, and I can find target shooting as enjoyable as I always have, the desire to own a gun or an identification with the martial meanings of guns hold no sway with me anymore. 

While Laura and I were in Mobile, on our way to Connecticut, I left the Beretta boxed and with the extra magazines on dad's dresser and without comment.  A gun certainly isn't the tool of a priest and  I ain't gonna study war no more. At least not in the way of a practitioner.
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I was on a flight to Charlotte from Phoenix.  We were still boarding and I had found my seat on the plane, an aisle seat.  Down the row came a mother and her four year old daughter.  Apparently they had gotten tickets pretty late; they were not going to be sitting together.  They were on my row, yet they both were in the middle seats on opposite sides of the aisle.  The mother was trying to explain this to the little girl, who was obviously scared.

It's odd how the idea of "our seat" as assigned to us by the airline company holds such power.  The four of us already in the row were watching the drama enfold in front us in the way people tend to watch these things:  as though it was on TV, as though we weren't really there, as though we hoped it would be over soon, as though we were powerless.  The mother was trying to explain to the little girl that it would be okay and the little girl wasn't understanding it.  Why should she?

Then I saw the little girl's bottom lip tremble, and my duty became clear.

"I'll trade seats with your daughter, ma'am."       

It occurred to me that some would say that it would not have been a big deal for the mother and daughter to sit apart; some would argue it would have been a benefit to the little girl to learn to be apart from her mother.  Yet it seemed clear that the little girl wasn't ready for that.  It also seemed to me that to force a separation for the sake of something so artificial as assigned seats was nonsensical.

I wish what I did would not seem so exceptional. It was an application of something that was commended to me the weekend before the flight: the ability to break the boundaries we are used to, to pay attention to the people around us, to sense pain and fear and to commit ourselves to finding the better alternative.
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What do you do when a cashier breaks into tears while talking to the customer in front of you?  Do you look for another line?  Do you stay in the same line and pretend you didn't see the tears?  Does it depend on why you think he or she is crying?

We don't always know what to do with pain that breaks out in public. It interferes with our efficiency, our ability to get from point A to Point B unhindered.  It forces us to expend brainpower in the interim between meetings or between work and home, exactly when we think we do not need to think.  And so we might feel like we need to shut out the pain of the other.  It'll get us home faster.  It'll "protect his or her privacy."

I submit both of the options above, finding another line or pretending something didn't just happen right in front of us, are dehumanizing to the person in pain.  It denies the person their brokenness.  And then, as we drift to another line or pretend we aren't moved by tears, we further alienate the broken person, even as we expect them to serve us.  We emphasize in that moment just how alone they are.  To dehumanize and alienate a person in such a way is an abdication of a Christian duty to be a healing presence.

Stay in the line.  You don't need the complete rundown, but ask "May I pray for you?"  Go from there.  Get names if nothing else.  Be willing to follow the person into the depths.  Let the others behind you find another line or wait.  This moment of connection is what you are meant to do.  Be an agent of the Kingdom, an agent of resurrection. 

Of Praying Always

Sermon on Thursday night to St. Brigid’s Community

…Pray always and do not lose faith…- Luke 18:1

I have missed you.  On behalf of Laura and myself, I thank you for your prayers while we have been away.  It has been 16 weeks since I have worshiped with this community and 11 weeks since we left St. Augustine’s and Arizona.  But I have joined you on Thursday nights by praying compline, 2481 miles away, and then it doesn’t seem that we are so far.

Seminary has been draining, uplifting, and challenging in all of the good ways.  In some ways it has been spoiling me.  For the past six weeks, I have participated in Eucharist at least six days a week.  From both Episcopal and ecumenical services offered from the two communities of YDS and BDS, I can worship at least thirteen times a week.  I generally make eight.  Then there are the numerous parishes around Yale, each offering a different flavor and different ways of being an Episcopalian.  

But St. Brigid’s and St. Augustine’s is where my heart is.

I think we’ve worked very hard to make this liturgy—this time of prayer—a safe space.  But I think the word safety may be deceiving.  We are free to admit our vulnerabilities to each other, and we hold open space for all.  We should not fear our neighbor.  Yet God moves among us; to call upon God (our opening hymn is Veni Sancte Spiritus—Come Holy Spirit—from Taize) is to bring God’s power and presence into our midst.  Worship and liturgy do not simply create community and give us a way to talk to God, they offer God the space to work small ontological changes to our very being.  My experience of eight worship services per week allows me to witness a quickening of that work in myself and in others. 

Liturgy here at St. Brigid’s and St. Augustine’s changed me in those small ways.  I recognized a call to the altar.  That isn’t very safe.  It meant Laura and I moved across country, a risky move in this economy, and a dedication of three years to more graduate work.  Then there is a near-certainty of a return to somewhere in Arizona after these three years, but that remains an open question.  And I’m doing this on some vague-sounding yet certain conviction of “calling” that never sounds adequate when I try to talk about it.

Yet there is comfort in prayer and in community and in knowing that I am remembered and loved in this place.  I offer that you can expect the same.

It makes the fearful manageable…not safe, but manageable.

And we follow a God and Christ who were not safe, but good.

So pray always.  See what worship and liturgy (with God) lead you to…For God is at work here.