"Never Forget..."

Yesterday I was honored to be among those gathered for the dedication of the new Erna & Arthur Salm Holocaust and Genocide Memorial Grove on the campus of Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park.  It features the moving Memorial pictured above.  Fabricated and installed by Professor Jann Nunn, with the help of SSU sculpture students and alumni, the column reflects light, both sunlight and artificial, through some 5000 specially handcrafted glass plates.  

The tracks, reminiscent of those by which millions of Jewish people were transported to their deaths in gas chambers, lie across a footpath and slope down to the base of the Memorial column.  There are inscribed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:  "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."  The white strips under the tracks include 460 bricks inscribed with the names and communities of those who have endured genocide.  A series of symbols enable visitors to match victims' names with the corresponding genocides.  These include the Native American, Armenian, Holocaust, Cambodian, Rwandan, and Darfur genocides.  As Dean Elaine Leeder, of the SSU School of Social Sciences, who conceived of and spearheaded this project, observed: it is exceedingly sad to realize that there is now a new academic area known as "comparative genocide".

Representatives from all the groups represented by the Memorial were on hand to speak, sing, pray, and dance throughout the program, thus sharing a visible record of the life and culture which has endured even holocaust and genocide, blossoming and developing with grace and strength and determination.  It was particularly moving to hear the keynote speaker, Professor Joseph Nsengimana, Ambassador to the United Nations, representing the Rwandan Tutsi Community, himself a survivor of the Rwandan genocide after losing his family.  Equally compelling was the urgent appeal of Mr. Abdulhafiz Abaker, a survivor of the developing genocide in Darfur, for everyone to join in solidarity, denouncing the oppression in Darfur and doing whatever can be done to stop it.  At this time 300,000 lives have been extinguished. 2, 700,000 people have been displaced and are struggling to survive in refugee camps under horrific conditions.  More than 85% of all the villages in Darfur have been obliterated.  So great is the fear of surviving Darfuris that there will be retribution to their families, that they have chosen to remember their loved ones in Darfur by inscribing on the Memorial stones only the names of the villages where they once lived, rather than actual names of their relatives.

The Memorial program notes:  "The crime of genocide stems from prejudice, ignorance, extremism, hate, intolerance, and complacency.  Genocide thrives when good people ignore an injustice committed against another."   May we all have the resolve and grace to stand up and speak out when we witness oppression wherever we see it in the world, beginning with our own communities.

About the Greeks...

Did you notice the curious passage at the beginning of John 12:20-33, yesterday's Gospel reading for the 5th Sunday of Lent?

"Some Greeks" among the worshippers at Passover came to Philip and asked to see Jesus.  The good news is: they weren't bearing gifts!  The bad news is: we'll never really know what they wanted with Jesus because, after Philip relays the request to Andrew and the both of them tell Jesus, there's no further mention of them.

Albert Newton, not the English zoologist, offers an interpretation:

Meditation on the Greek Event

All they said is

"We want to see Jesus"

and that's the last we hear of them

no "Well, show them in"

no "What are they up to"

no "What Greeks?"

no "Not right now -- I'm too busy"

no nothing

about the Greeks

'cause the story is not about the Greeks

but Jesus.

All the Greeks are is an event

in a way beyond our comprehend

they are a sign

that now is the time

not yesterday in the wandering 

not tomorrow when it's done

not when we looked for it

not when the shadow broke its shade

not even when the wine is free

but now

when the world says

I've heard of something

I want to see.

So it's time

when it may still be Greek to you

but not to me

though I may not yet understand

I want to see

and be.

As this Lenten season moves towards the great Holy Week, we, too, "want to see and be."  To do so we  must look at the Cross which, already next week, will be graphically set before us in the Passion.  We must look at the Man stretched out upon it.  We come to see God face to face only through this human Jesus, this One who deals gently with our ignorance and waywardness because of his own experience of human weakness, the One acquainted with "loud cries and tears," with obedience and suffering and death.  We come to be through the One who "being made perfect...became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him." 

Remembering Charles Henry Brent 80 Years Later

"Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us with your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name."  [Prayer for Mission, BCP]

Simply knowing that Bishop Charles Henry Brent had composed the magnificent  prayer shown above would give you some indication of the spiritual depth of the man and of his incredible ministry.  I couldn't find anything about his early years, other than that he was born in Newcastle, Ontario, Canada on April 9, 1862.  He graduated with an A.B. in classics from Trinity College, University of Toronto in 1884.  From 1885-1887 he served as Undermaster at Trinity College School, Port Hope, Canada.  He was ordained deacon in 1886, priested in 1887, and earned an A.M. from Trinity College, University of Toronto in 1889.

In 1891 Brent became an American citizen and served for 10 years as assistant rector at St. Stephen's, Boston.  At the early age of 39, he was elected by the House of Bishops as first Missionary Bishop of the Philippines.  He arrived at the Port of Manila in 1902 in the company of William Howard Taft.  The Library of Congress has quite a bit of Brent's material, including correspondence which he had with many well-known figures, including Taft:  Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Philander Chase Knox, J. Pierpont Morgan, John J. Pershing, Theodore Roosevelt, and Elihu Root.

Aside from a vigorous ministry of evangelism among the Chinese population of Manila, the uncivilized Igorots of Luzon, and the hostile Moros of the Sulu Archipelago, he established several schools and an excellent charity hospital in Manila.  Confronted by the moral and physical devastation of opium addiction, Brent became an unflinching advocate of drug control.  He took the cause internationally, calling for cooperation in eradicating drug abuse.  He served on a committee, appointed by the Philippine government to investigate the use of opium, from 1902-1914.  He served as chief commissioner for the United States and president of the first international Opium Commission at Shanghai, 1908-1919, and chair of the U.S. delegation to the Opium Conference at the Hague from 1911-1912, and as president of the Conference in 1912.  During these years Bishop Brent was also busy writing and publishing three books.  Oh yes, and he was also the Senior Chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I! Little wonder, then, that by his mid-fifties, in 1917, his health began to give out.

In 1919 Charles Brent accepted election as the Bishop of the Diocese of Western New York, having declined three previous elections during the time he was in the Philippines.  Though he continued his crusade against drug abuse, attending various conferences, and being appointed by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 to the Advisory Committee on Narcotics of the League of Nations, Brent turned his attention to the ecumenical movement.  After attending the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910, Brent was at the forefront of ecumenical endeavors in the Episcopal Church.  The movement culminated in the first World Conference on Faith and Order, held in Lausanne, Switzerland, over which Bishop Brent presided.  This significant ecumenical gathering helped lay the foundation for the World Council of Churches.

In 1926 Bishop Brent was appointed as Bishop in charge of the American Episcopal churches in Europe [two in Paris, others at Nice, Florence, Rome, Dresden, Munich, Geneva and Lucerne], a post which he retained until he was hospitalized in November, 1927.  Bishop Brent, in his last public appearance, represented the Episcopal Church in the U.S. at the installation of Cosmo Gordon Lang as the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Archbishop Lang had previously baptized the future Queen Elizabeth II.  Charles Henry Brent was only 67 years old when he died on March 27, 1929.

Historian James Thayer Addison rendered Brent the highest praise in describing him as "...a saint of disciplined mental vigor, one whom soldiers were proud to salute and whom children were happy to play with, who could dominate a parliament and minister to an invalid, a priest and bishop who gloried in the heritage of his Church, yet who stood among all Christian brothers as one who served...He was everywhere an ambassador of Christ."   

When the Well Runs Dry

Father John Sanford, Episcopal priest and son of the late Agnes Sanford, widely known for her healing ministry, tells of an old well at the New Hampshire farmhouse where his family used to spend time each summer.  The house was 150 years old and had never been modernized.  The old well supplied water which was unusually cold, pure, and delicious for the family, and was remarkable for the fact that it never ran dry.  Even during the most severe summer droughts, the old well faithfully yielded up its high-quality water.

When the family decided to remodel the house, modern plumbing and running water were installed.  A new artesian well was drilled near the house.  Since it was no longer needed, the old well was sealed over to be kept in reserve should the new well ever cease functioning.

Several years later, Father Sanford says that, out of curiosity, he removed the well's cover to inspect its condition.  Fully expecting to find the cool, moist depths which he had known so well as a boy, he was disappointed to find the well bone dry.

Researching why the well had run dry, he learned that a well like this is fed by hundreds of tiny underground rivulets, along which seep a constant supply of water.  As water is drawn from the well, more water moves into it along the rivulets, keeping these tiny openings clean and flowing.  But when a well isn't used and water isn't regularly drawn, the tiny rivulets clog up and close.  The old Sanford well, so faithful all those years, had run dry, not because there was no water, but because it hadn't been used.

A person's spirit can be like that.  If the living water of God's presence and peace aren't asked for and used, then we, too, dry up and become barren.  Without God's life-giving joy, there's only sadness and darkness in the human spirit.  Many people today, perhaps more especially in these difficult economic times in our country, find themselves immersed in sadness and darkness.  Some may even eventually adopt the attitude of the young schoolboy mentioned by C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity: when asked what he thought God was like, the schoolboy replied, "The sort of person who is always snooping around to see if anyone is enjoying himself, and then trying to stop it."  

On the contrary, faith and God's Word suggest the only solution our sadness and darkness.  The 49th chapter of Isaiah tells of God's faithful servant "saying to the prisoners, 'Come forth,' and to those who are in darkness, 'Appear.'" Isaiah speaks of God in terms of a woman suckling her infant: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you."  Jesus, the greatest of God's servants, say in John 5:19-29: "...the Son gives life to whom he will...I say to you, the one who hears my word and believes God who sent me has eternal life...has passed from death to life...for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear God's voice and come forth..."

Sadness and darkness are like a tomb for us.  Like the well, we become dry and dark.  But through living water, the presence of God's Spirit, and through Jesus, the light of the world, the well can once again become filled; the tomb can open and we can walk out.

But there is a price.  Whatever lasts and whatever is of value always has a price.  The servant of which Isaiah speaks and Jesus, God's perfect servant, remember, are both suffering servants.  Perhaps the following story can be helpful:

"One winter day when Saint Francis and Brother Leo were walking along the road to Assisi from Perugia, Francis called out to Leo in the bitter cold five times, each time telling him what perfect joy was not: 'Brother Leo, even if a Friar Minor gives sight to the blind, heals the paralyzed, drives out devils, gives hearing to the deaf, makes the lame walk, and restores speech to the dumb, and what is more, brings back to life a man who has been dead four days -- write that perfect joy is not in that.'  He continued with different descriptions of success -- and even spiritual enjoyment.  When he had been talking this way for two miles, Brother Leo in great amazement asked him: 'Father, I beg you in God's name to tell me where perfect joy is to be found?'

And Francis replied: 'When we come to the Portiuncula, soaked by the rain and frozen by the cold, all soiled with mud and suffering from hunger, and we ring at the gate of our friary and the brother porter comes and says angrily: 'Who are you?' And we say: 'We are two of your brothers.'  And he contradicts us, saying: 'You are not telling the truth.  Go away!'  And he does not open for us, but makes us stand outside in the snow and rain, cold and hungry until night falls -- then if we endure the cruel rebuffs patiently, without being troubled and without complaining, and if we reflect humbly and lovingly that the porter really knows us.  O, Brother Leo, write that perfect joy is to be found there!

And if we continue to knock and the porter comes out and drives us away with curses and hard blows -- and if we bear it patiently and take the insults with joy and love in our hearts.  O, Brother Leo, that is perfect joy! And now hear the conclusion: Above all the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit which Christ gives to his friends is that of conquering oneself and willingly enduring sufferings, insults, humiliations, and hardships for the love of Christ.'"

(from The Fioretti [Little Flowers] of St. Francis of Assisi, Chapter VIII)

Look at the crucifix: there you will see the cost of joy and light.  It will take that to fill the well and open the tomb.  But that kind of hard-won joy will endure.  Just prior to his death, Jesus assured us:  "...you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you..."

29th Anniversary - Lest We Forget

The Prayer of Archbishop Oscar Romero

(1917 - 1980)

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

It is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction

Of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying

that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about,

we plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted,

knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation

In realizing that. This enables us to do something,

And to do it very well. It may be incomplete,

But it is a beginning, a step along the way,

An opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference

Between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen.

(Thanks to Marcia Ghali at The Second Time Around…)

"Unconditional Positive Regard"

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ 

came down from heaven to be the true bread 

which gives life to the world: 

Evermore give us this bread, 

that he may live in us,  and we in him; 

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, 

one God, now and for ever. Amen.

You could call St. Andrew's appearance in John 6:4-15, the Episcopal lectionary Gospel for the 4th Sunday of Lent, a cameo appearance.  He's almost incidental in the story about Jesus' feeding of the crowd.  As in other parts of the Gospel, Andrew is just Peter's younger brother, an ordinary chap who stays in the background, doesn't make any waves, and seems to always be in the right place at the right time.  He has an uncanny ability to offer whatever is available: ordinary things, ordinary gifts, which help get the job done.

In the story Andrew accepts and brings to Jesus' attention a young boy's five loaves of bread and two fish.  The whole miraculous feeding turns on these simple, ordinary supplies.  When Jesus blesses, breaks, and gives them, they prove to be more than adequate to satisfy the immediate need.  In other words, ordinary people and ordinary gifts can sometimes be life-changing.

So often you and I, our society, and even the Church seem to hold up and onto only important people, heroic ones, "big names", as examples for imitation.  While it's true that we need great figures to inspire us, frankly, such heroes can often be depressing to us ordinary folks because they make us feel so inadequate, so klutzy, so ungifted.  Most of us figured out long ago that we're not and never will be "heroes", or great leaders, or statesmen, or notable saints.  History focusses on the great and generally ignores the countless host of "little people" who oftentimes make the great ones possible.

Recall for a moment the ordinary people who've been crucial in your own life and development.  When you were an awkward teenager, struggling to grow up, was there, perhaps, an adult who really believed in you?  who encouraged you to be confident enough to take a risk?  Think of the ordinary people who've stood with you at each crossroad of your life and have given you wise counsel.  Where would you and I be today without these ordinary folks who shared with us their ordinary gifts?

That you and I may never be remembered in dramatic ways by posterity isn't at all to say that you and I aren't important. Ordinary as we are, each one of us has countless opportunties to encourage others, to be sensitive, to heal, to forgive, to be open to another's hurt, to offer some small, ordinary gift: as ordinary as bread or fish.

Part of the problem is that we too often think of ourselves as unimportant, even useless, because we focus on our deficiencies, rather than on our gifts and skills.  Every one of us has some disability or handicap.  Some of mine are: flat feet; one leg shorter than the other; and the inability to understand advanced math! For others it may be a birth-mark; an ugly nose; not being able to whistle or ski.  Still others are limited in learning, physically challenged, or unable to communicate because of a visual, hearing, or language impairment.  2% of our population are developmentally delayed, mentally retarded, autistic, or severely emotionally disturbed.  All of us have some limitation, deficiency, or disability, to a lesser or greater degree.  That fact, however, should never become the occasion of convincing ourselves that we have nothing to offer to others to enrich their lives.

For two and a half years back in the 1980's I was privileged to work as a classroom aide for the Sacramento County Office of Education in a special education program for young people, age 14-22.  They were, and still are, truly special to me.  Before becoming involved in the program, I'd stared at such people, avoided their company or dealing with them, mostly out of uncertainty and fear.  Once they accepted me into their lives, however, I came to discover both their ordinariness and their incredible giftedness, in some areas far beyond my own "normal" abilities.  My life would have been immensely impoverished had I not been the beneficiary of their very ordinary, but special, gifts.

One day, in the course of my duties in the program, I'd taken two of our students to a training center where, along with others who had various disabilities, they were involved in a work program where they could earn a bit of money for packaging a product.  As I and the other teachers and aides were looking on, a heated argument broke out between two of the young men there.  Such outbursts often tend to "set off" inappropriate behaviors among some of the severely handicapped, so the atmosphere at that time was immediately quite tense.  There was a long silence.  No one knew what might happen next.  And then one of the young men involved, without looking up from his work, said, very audibly, to the other young man: "I'm sorry."  An ordinary person, with an ordinary gift of reconciliation in two simple words!

Writer Mary Lou Redding captures the warmth of the gift of ordinariness thus:

Grandma isn't beautiful like Esther or brave like Deborah.  She's almost blind and not always pleasant.  When I was a little girl, Grandma would hug me and I'd feel the flesh of her upper arms kind of wrap me up.  She always smelled faintly of vanilla extract (Grandma made wonderful muffins, and I got to help), and she was soft everywhere.  But most important, Grandma thought I was wonderful.  Psychologists call it 'unconditional positive regard,' I think, but to me it was just being with Grandma.

 

Grandma's very old now.  Thick glasses obscure her dancing eyes.  She doesn't hear really well, either, but we just pull our chairs real close together so she can see and hear.  I go and sit with her and we talk and rock and she tells me about when she was a little girl and when I was a little girl.

Last time I went to see her, Grandma and I stood hugging when it was time for me to go.  She put her hands on my arms and said, 'You were always my favorite, you know.  I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, and I loved all you kids.  But you were my favorite.'  And I can't see her eyes, but I can feel them dancing.  Grandma just plain loves just plain me, and she loves me all the time." 

It's hard, if not impossible, for you and me to see God's eyes, but we can feel them dancing.  And that unseen, mighty and holy God "just plain loves just plain [you and] me", and God loves us all the time! Julian of Norwich, in a rather startling statement, assures us:  "Because of the great endless love that God has towards all mankind, He makes no distinction in love between the blessed soul of Christ and the least soul that shall be saved."   

Unconditional positive regard, indeed!        

Fault Finding: A Useless Enterprise

One of our common human afflictions is continually finding fault with one another.  John 4:26-42 recounts the second half of the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman's meeting at the well of Jacob.  After she and Jesus have their little back-and-forth about living water and genuine worship, the Apostles return to the scene after making a lunch-run in Sychar.  When they see Jesus with, horror of horrors, a woman, and a Samaritan woman at that, their discreetness only thinly veils their fault-finding with Jesus over his "breach" of cultural purity.  John's point, however, is that our task isn't to find fault with one another, but to find God and be found by God, and enable others to do the same.  

Each of us could ponder for a few minutes and call to mind someone or several someones within the past six months or a year somewhat like the Samaritan woman: a person whom we've judged by appearances; someone with whom, silently or aloud, we've found fault.  John's story is a reminder to us of how idle an activity that is.  Even more important, how dangerous, how wrong, it is for us to ever presume to write anyone off on the basis of perceived or even real faults.  In receiving, totally undeserved, the cleansing, "living water" of Baptism, we've pledged ourselves to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and [to] respect the dignity of every human being..."  As we live more deeply into the mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection in this time of Lent, we recommit ourselves more firmly to that pledge.