UK ( not the university)2023

Dr. Samuel Johnson, the 18th century writer, critic, lexicographer and more, was right, as he often was, with his aphorisms. In one, expressed before inclusive language, he wrote: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”

I have never tired of life—or of London, a city I have loved since my first visit in 1986. I had just been graduated from General Seminary in New York City, and with earnings from freelance writing, my wife Penny and I flew to London. We spent a week in the city, seeing all the major sights there before traveling to Oxford, Canterbury, York and up to Scotland.

Since that first visit to London, I have returned often. The city reveals more of itself each time, including in July. I stayed in a small air b&b flat in Chelsea, with a great view of rooftops. (See photographs.) I enjoyed what was once a village in the southern part of the city. It still possesses a village feel, even amid the rumble of lorries and the honk of car horns and the walkways clotted with scurrying people. 

My lodgings in a big hotel-style building, now converted into condominiums, were near London Underground Tube stops, but I spent my time on foot as far as possible. I love walking London streets, despite blistered feet, and discovering hidden, interesting places. One was the 18th century red brick Georgian townhouse off Piccadilly Circus where Ben Franklin lived a few years before the American Revolution, of course.  

I toured museums, including the National Gallery and, for the first time ever, the Science Museum. It was fascinating. (I had decided that this visit I would do a few new things in the city, including make up for deficiencies in my formal education, science being one of them). For instance, I toured a floor devoted to engineering of all kinds: mechanical, electrical, computer, and medical. “Engineers solve problems,” the exhibit sign said. When I finished my visit, hours after I began, I thought—I hoped—that we humans might be able to engineer our way out of the ruin we have made of this planet. (At the time, Europe and the States were combusting in the heat and choking on the smoke from rampaging wild fires, the result of global warming. And still many people in elected office, who know better, deny this destructive reality and hope we will ignore it, too, and go on voting for them and keeping them in power.)

I visited London bookshops, including independent ones. There is an excellent one in Chelsea, one of the city’s oldest and best called John Sandhoe Books, an 18th century frame structure whose wood steps creak as you climb them. 

I attended the principal Sunday Eucharist at Westminster Abbey, and as I left walked over the crypt of Sir Isaac Newton, one of the many worthies buried there, and a prayed and sang and tapped my foot during a jazz Evensong that day at St . Martin in the Fields, an old and progressive Church of England parish. Keeping company with the people buried in its crypt are patrons of the cafe in the undercroft, which serves tea and scones, sandwiches and whole meals. I enjoyed a slice of lemon cake and a cup of tea and rested my feet.

A lover of London theater, or theatre, if you will, I saw Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, a dark but at times humorous play. I enjoyed it as I did his other plays. I sat in the second row from the stage, so close I could see the pores in the actors’ faces or at least their wrinkles.

My time in the city over, I thought about visiting Oxford, a city for which I pine after my study there and after hours of watching PBS’s Morse and Endeavour; but instead, I took the train north to Manchester. I did some research in the library there on my Howerth ancestors, who lived in nearby Bolton before immigrating to the United States in the 19th century. One day, I hope to get to that now industrialized city and to the Church of England parish where my forebears were baptized, married, and some, buried. I also want to see Cheshire, and the Chomondeley castle, where my Chumbley forebears lived for centuries before immigrating to the Virginia Colony in the 17th century. 

I found big, gray Manchester, the “London of the north,” interesting. It is blessed with an excellent tram system, which will move masses of people to wherever they want to go. I spent time in the Museum of Manufacturing and Science. I learned more about the Industrial Revolution, specifically weaving, my Howerth ancestors’ work. There is a great art museum there, too, where I enjoyed the paintings and ate breakfast most days and drank good strong coffee. I love to sit in the independent coffee shops of British cities and read the papers and write.

I took the train from Manchester up to Glasgow, delighting in the Scottish countryside of fir-clad mountains and shimmering lochs. I feel at home in Scotland, even more so than in England. 

I met Penny in Oban, Scotland, and then we traveled together by ferry to idyllic Tiree, an island in the Hebrides, where we rented a thatched cottage that looked over the green pasture full of sheep and cows and out to sea, the north Atlantic. We spent our mornings in creative pursuits; she, painting and I, writing, including a short story, inspired by my time in Burry, outside of Manchester. We are now planning a trip next summer to the Hebridean island of Uist. 

Love now

We Americans are living in unsettled times. Our country and churches are full of fury, factionalism and fragmentation. Many celebrate, but many others lament the actions of those in authority.  

I weep for our divided country and church. 

Whatever the issues and our positions on them, I think all of us would do well to pause and remember that before all the other claims on our loyalties, we belong to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In baptism, St. Paul writes, we died to sin and death and were raised to new life in Christ.

In our diversity, including in our opinions on the great issues of the day, we belong to Christ and are valued members of his one eternal body.

In our liturgy of Holy Baptism, we Episcopalians make a statement of faith, drawn from Ephesians, which sums up our essential Christian unity, regardless of denomination, unity that is deeper than our divisions:

“There is one Body and one Spirit; there is one hope in God’s call to us; one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; one God and Father of all.”

We are one in Christ now and always, one in his love for us and in our love for one another.

And he shows his love, which the gospels call agape, on the cross for the salvation of all, even the very religious authorities who called for his death and the soldiers who accomplished it.

As he loved us, so we are to love one another and all people, even those with whom we profoundly disagree, people who inflame our anger, our rage.

When I was away in North Carolina recently, I found a café in a grocery store where daily I read my Bible, prayed and wrote in my journal. I would occasionally look up and watch people. A few of them declared their political loyalty on their hats and shirts (and in the parking lot on their car bumpers and fluttering from flags in their truck beds).

At first, I was angry and expressed that feeling in my journal. Then, God the Holy Spirit spoke to me, challenging me to love my neighbor as myself, as Jesus taught, lived and died that love. 

I did something I was unable to do on my own when I saw those shoppers in their red hats and shirts, I smiled, said hello and prayed silently for God to bless them.

Wouldn’t America, wouldn’t the Body of Christ, with all the differences in theology, politics and more, be a much better place if we practiced the love of Jesus, with the help of God’s grace? Wouldn’t it be worth a try?

Love the other, especially the one with whom we so bitterly disagree, whom we might even see as the enemy. This person is first the child of God and loved by him. Love that person, if only with a smile, a hello and a prayer for Gods’ blessings upon him or her. 

And you and I will start to change the world by making it a little less cruel, a little more kind.

 

 

Finding refuge

Where is your refuge, that place of relief from life’s pressures, of rest and renewal and of peace?

For my wife and me, one refuge is in the mountains of western North Carolina at the John C. Campbell Folk School, which was started in the 19th century to train impoverished people to make and sell crafts to support themselves and their families.

The school still teaches and promotes arts and crafts—basket-making, blacksmithing, weaving and more.  I have studied writing and storytelling here; for my wife, painting and other visual arts. 

We are at Campbell for a week with our oldest grandchildren, who are learning blacksmithing, jewelry making and wood burning and carving.  

Here, I’m surrounded by the Appalachians. At dawn, the sun rises and spreads its light, like honey on toast, over the mountains and onto the meadows, gardens and campus.  

It is quiet in the early morning, apart from the the meadowlarks, cardinals, robins and assorted other birds, whose chirping, squeaking and trilling welcome the new day. My heart fills with the joy of living. In these stunning surroundings, I read, pray, write or just sit and let my usually active mind and body idle.  

Daily, from the onslaught of news, we know the world is a frightening place, and our lives are full, frenetic, and stressful, in part because of what we do to care for others in Christ’s name.

We long to feel human again, to restore our bodies and souls, and to find new strength to meet our challenges. 

 

I hope you will seek and find a refuge for your good and that of others to whom you are close, just as Jesus did when he went to the mountains to be alone with his Father in heaven. 

Perhaps your refuge will be in the mountains, or on a nearby lake or in your garden. That place will be holy to you, for there you will remember that you are more than what you do, or what you have or what you have accomplished. 

You are the child of God. And God delights in you. Just sit back in your refuge and know that you are his, and always will be, and as the medieval saint Julian of Norwich writes, All is well, and all will be well. In all manner of things, all will be well.

Huh?

 

Do you like mysteries? I do, especially the Scandinavia-crime-noir kind. Here’s a mystery for you:  There’s a mystery that’s not a mystery.

Huh?

This Sunday, I’ll celebrate the Holy Eucharist and preach at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Joplin. I’ll be the guest priest on the Feast of the Trinity, the Sunday when many rectors plan vacation rather than preach to a congregation about the Trinity—one God in three persons.

Yes, huh?

The doctrine of the Trinity expresses the mystery of our human experience of God. In the Holy Scriptures, you won’t find an explicit statement of this central teaching of the Christian church, but you will find an implicit one.

In the first person of the Trinity, we experience God as Father, Creator. We enjoy the gift of life only because God, in his love, willed us out of nothingness and into being as the unique people we are. And God surrounded us with the goodness of creation. Indeed, as the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes in “God’s Grandeur,” that the “world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil….”

In the second person of the Trinity, God became a human being. “The word was made flesh and dwelled among us full of grace and truth,” Jesus says in the Gospel of St. John. And in his Son, God the Father—-once again, in love—comes to save us, to take our brokenness and make us whole as individuals and as a world. Faith in Jesus Christ is the love that saves.

And in the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, Jesus fulfils his promise in the gospel that he will not leave us alone, without comfort and power for living but will give us the gift of his Holy Spirit, God with us always in this world and in the world to come, continuing the work of healing or sanctification.

The mystery is that we believe in one God in three persons. The huh? of the Trinity. But there’s no mystery in God loving us fully, as the Bible shows, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So, that huh? Is really, Aha!

Managing Mosquitos

Today, our lawn was sprayed for mosquitos. Penny and I’d tried everything to solve the problem. Now, though, with this regular treatment, we’ve learned how to manage it.   We all have a mosquito problem—one more tormenting than anything that buzzes, bites, and or raises red bumps on the skin.   This mosquito problem, as I’ve long thought about it, is what theologians call theodicy, the existence of evil, pain, suffering, and death. These human realities raise the question, why does an all-good, all-loving God allow bad things to happen to good people?   Or, to put it another way, God, why are there mosquitos?   I don’t know the answer. But I do know, or believe, that God is incapable of willing evil or of sending bad things upon us and others to punish us. And he suffers with us because of them. He does not condemn those of us who might lose faith in him and in his goodness because of them. He understands us and goes on loving us and seeking us to be in a relationship with him.     For my part, despite life’s tragedies, I still believe in God and his goodness. On balance, life is more good than bad.    We humans have been asking, “Why? God. Why war? Why Covid? Why another school shooting? We’ve been asking Why since the beginning of creation; the Genesis story of the Fall is an early attempt at an answer: bad things happen because of that first human’s sin.    We’ll go on asking and discovering that there’s no adequate answer. And like Job and the Psalmist and even Jesus on the cross— “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”—we’ll feel angry and disappointed with God. We’ll complain against him. We might even give up on God.    So, if we can never know why bad things happen to good people, in this world anyway, what if we ask instead, How? How can we live with—and through—them? How can we learn from our experience? How can we become better human beings because of it—more sensitive to the heartache of others? How can we tangibly help someone going through dark times? How might we grow in our relationship with Christ?   I can’t know exactly why God made mosquitos, but I can know how to manage them, both the ones that bite the skin and those that bite the soul.

 

From Other to Another

Jesus weeps. 

We all weep because of the two recent, horrific mass shootings, one in California and the other in New York, where people were murdered because they were the Other.

In one incident, victims were targeted because of their political ideology; in the second, because of the color of their skin.  

Both instances stand in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus. 

Jesus, God as a human being, came to us, the Other, and loved us, even sacrificing his life on the cross to show us that love is more powerful than the hate and violence that nailed him there.

On Sunday at St. James Episcopal Church, Springfield, I heard a powerful sermon by theologian Dr. Chris Dodson based on Peter’s vision. In it a piece of sail cloth descended from heaven. It teemed with all manner of unclean creatures, which faithful, law-abiding Jews were forbidden even to touch, because these animals were deemed to be the Other.

And yet, in the dream, God tells Peter to take up and eat, because there is no Other in the eyes of our loving, creator God, and in a further message from God to Peter, the Gentiles or non-Jews, who were once anathema to the faithful, are to be welcomed fully as members of Christ’s body.

For me, the message of Jesus’ Gospel is that God loves everyone. No exceptions. 

And his ministry, which is described in the Gospels, shows him always reaching out in saving love to Others: foreigners, tax collectors, sinners of all kinds. 

In Christ the Other is simply Another—another fellow human being; another child of God; another brother or sister in Christ; another to be loved. And love is doing the best for the full flourishing of An-Other. 

Hymn 529 from The Episcopal Church Hymnal puts it this way: “In Christ there is no east or west. In him no south or north, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide world.”

Christ suffered for all. He died and rose again from the dead for all. And through us, his followers, and our ministries, he serves all, alive in us and through us in our acts of unconditional love. 

I give God thanks for communities of faith, agencies and ministries throughout America and worldwide that express God’s love—welcoming, respecting, valuing and serving all human beings. 

Jesus weeps at the hatred and violence in the world, and he suffers with the victims, but he rejoices when we love, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, tutoring a struggling student, supporting the vulnerable young and elderly. 

In these tangible acts of service, we advance  God’s kingdom of love and light against the forces of evil, sin, darkness and death. And with them, more of God’s kingdom emerges in this world. 

Thanks be to God. 

Creating the Beloved Community

What kind of community do we want Springfield and Greene County to be for us, our families and future generations?

The release of the 2021 Community Focus Report in October raises this question for me, as do two other recent events.

The report notes the negatives and positives of life here. 

Negatives include: labor shortages, low wages, persistent poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, low voter participation, misinformation spread and received uncritically over social media, lack of affordable housing, slowing population growth and violent crime.

Positives include business development and strength, civic engagement, volunteerism, non-profit support, improved voter outreach and education, a spirit of collaboration and high-quality education.

We should celebrate the positives of life here, but, in the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “the fierce urgency of the now” demands that we act to address the negatives.

With the report as our guide, we can do so by forming a clear vision of what we want this community to be and then creating a plan to achieve it.

The cost of doing nothing is too high; the danger of caring only about meeting our needs and ignoring those of others, too great.

I saw that danger recently in what Fox commentator Ann Coulter, a provocateur of the extreme right, said during her talk at Missouri State University. (I support the university’s commitment to free speech, even the repugnant variety.)

Appealing to fear, anxiety and prejudice, she scapegoated immigrants and refugees. She falsely said they were taking jobs away from Americans—meaning, I believe, white, male, native-born, Christians ones. She referred to George Floyd, the black man murdered by a white police officer, asserting, without proof, that violent crime had increased because of Black Lives Matter. She said being opposed to racism was “the basis of all terrible ideas.”

Coulter’s vision of the community she wants for us and for America is a nightmare. It is hell on earth. 

In contrast, the day after her MSU speech, I attended the groundbreaking of the new Islamic center, the American Momen Park and Mosque, here in Springfield.

Despite strong thunderstorms, city officials, civic and religious leaders, Muslims, Christians, Jews and people of other faiths gathered in a field and celebrated one of our strengths as a community: our diversity, inclusivity and respect for people who are different from us.

Muslim spiritual leaders, drawing from their sacred scriptures, affirmed their faith in the God of creation, the oneness of humankind and their commitment to the love of neighbors and living in peace with all people and creation itself. 

One speaker, who had lived in other countries, said the welcome he and his family had received in this country surpassed that of elsewhere. Our hospitality to newcomers, he said, helped make America great.

I was inspired by the groundbreaking, glimpsing God’s kingdom there, the Beloved Community, as Dr. King described it:  One human family; united under one God, albeit understood and worshiped differently by us; animated and empowered by the spirit of God for the works of love, doing only good to others, regardless of color, religion, country of origin. 

Daily, people of faith, among others, are working for just this kind of community in Springfield, Greene County and on earth. In the fierce urgency of the now, please join us in this holy work