"Mulberry Days"

Our daughter recently gave me a DVD of one of my favorite “Britcoms”. Mulberry was filmed in the early 1990s and starred the wonderful Geraldine McEwan as Miss Farnaby, an aging, resentful, unhappy spinster who lived with two grudgingly faithful servants in her ancestral manor house and who, due to her ill temper and demanding nature, could not keep a paid companion on staff. One day a young man shows up at her door, identifies himself simply as “Mulberry”, and insinuates his way into the household as her new companion. Initially, Miss Farnaby and her servants, accustomed as they are to their depressingly dull existence, don’t quite know what to make of Mulberry; his zany sense of humor and enthusiasm for life are completely foreign to them. Eventually, however, his infectious energy causes them to begin to see themselves and their world differently. Always lurking in the shadows outside the manor house, though, is an old man dressed completely in black. As the story unfolds we learn that the old man is in fact the Grim Reaper, and that Mulberry is his son, sent as an “apprentice reaper” to usher Miss Farnaby to her demise. But what Mulberry has learned is that Miss Farnaby has never really lived, and he wants her to enjoy herself before she departs this life. Thus he keeps putting off the deed he has been sent to do, much to his father’s dismay. And there’s one more catch to the story, as we learn why Mulberry is so conflicted about his job. At one point the Grim Reaper confesses to him, “I fell from grace with your mother.” “Who is my mother?” Mulberry asks. His father answers, “Her name is Spring.”

I think the season of Lent is a little bit like Mulberry. There is a sense in which both death and rebirth coexist. We begin the season still in the cold and dark of winter with a substantive reminder of our mortality: ashes on our foreheads in the shape of a cross and the solemn words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is a time of austerity, simplicity, and surrender to God. Always looming at its conclusion is the passion of our Lord. But the word Lent originates with Anglo-Saxon and Germanic words referring to longer days; in other words, “spring”. As we move through Lent, the days lengthen and the earth begins to warm. New growth appears. Finally, the tomb empties. Death does not, in fact, have the last word. The resurrection of Jesus ushers in the season of rebirth.

May we all be able to live into the ambiguity that this season brings: solemnity tempered with joy, intentionality interrupted by surprise, death to an old way of life for the sake of transformation and resurrection. In the words of the show’s theme song, “These are Mulberry days.”

Ashes to Ashes

I’ve been a priest for just over eleven years. As I was anticipating ordination I would often wonder what it was really going to be like to celebrate Eucharist, to preach on a regular basis, to take the Sacrament to the sick and homebound, to exercise ordained leadership in a parish….It has all been, and continues to be, blessing beyond all I could have imagined.

But one thing I hadn’t considered, and wasn’t prepared for, was the impact of imposing ashes on the foreheads of the faithful on Ash Wednesday. In a society that continues to deny that death is part of life, using tangible symbols to remind people of their mortality is countercultural. As a priest I am privileged – no, blessed – to be allowed into places in the lives of my parishioners where few others will enter. On Ash Wednesday it all comes home. Over the years I’ve given ashes to the elderly in failing health, and to a least a few who I know, though others may not, are suffering terminal illnesses; do these folks really need to be reminded of their mortality? And yet I say the words and make the sign. I’ve told very young children with beautiful faces, shining eyes, lives of promise: “…to dust you shall return?” Not for decades and decades from now, I hope, I pray; but there are no guarantees. What will a child take away from this experience? And then there are those vital people, the proverbial “picture of health” who can be expected to return year after year but once again, knowledge of our mortality prevents taking that, or them, for granted: “Remember, you are dust….”

So once again, tomorrow, I will stand behind the chancel rail and remind people I have come to love dearly that this life will come to an end and our bodies will eventually disintegrate. I will probably choke up at some point; I usually do. But I try to remember: God created us out of the dust of the earth, and we could do much worse than fear returning to it.

Wayside Inn

At a recent diocesan event, our bishop asked us to consider what it would mean to our congregations for our churches to function as “wayside inns”. I interpreted this question as asking how we, as Christians, allow and plan for the fact that our communities might feed a person’s needs – spiritual or otherwise - on an occasional or even one-time basis, without any expectation of further involvement or participation. This is an especially pertinent question in this age of ongoing anxiety about decreasing attendance and diminished membership in more traditional churches.

I listened to the table conversation around me regarding that question, and it became clear that the majority of people either didn’t interpret the question as I had, or were not up to going down that path of possibility. “My church is the place I go to get recharged so I can live the Christian life all week,” or some variation of that, was the answer I heard most frequently. That’s how a church becomes a wayside inn for its own members. No harm in that; we need that weekly worship to equip ourselves to do God’s work in the world. And most of us have no problem helping those who are totally outside the scope of our congregational life – foreign missions, soup kitchens and the like. But what about those who brush up against the community, receive something, and seldom if ever return?

A little thing got me thinking about this last week. As I walked around the circular drive from the church office to the rectory where I live, I noticed a car parked in the curve of the driveway. Approaching the car, and wanting to make sure that nothing was amiss, I noticed the engine was running but no one was in the driver’s seat. Then I saw a woman in the back seat. I waved; she waved back. The windows were tinted so it wasn’t until I got very close that I noticed she was breastfeeding a baby. A little embarrassed, I apologized and made sure she was OK. She asked if she needed to leave and I assured her she was fine where she was. Then I went on home to eat lunch.

The congregation I serve is friendly, warm, reasonably outgoing, and offers engaging, accessible liturgy; still, we have trouble attracting visitors and when we do, taking that next step of “turning them into” members. But we do have a fair share of people who stay for a brief time and then move on – geographically in some cases, but often because church in general, or perhaps our particular tradition or parish, ultimately just doesn’t speak to them. But I can tell they’ve received something when they’re here, and I do my best to keep in touch with them if I can and they are willing. That’s my concept of the “wayside inn”. If only we could embrace the notion that we haven’t failed if we don’t “keep” everybody.

A little thing, that woman and her baby. I have no idea if she has a church, or if she has any religious leanings at all. It doesn’t matter. But I do like to think she’ll remember our parish campus as a wayside inn where, for a short while on a mild winter day, she could stop to nurture her little one in (nearly uninterrupted) peace.

Madness

It all began innocently enough, I suppose. Two years ago my friend and seminary classmate the Rev. Tim Schenck thought it would be both fun and educational to put the Church’s saints in competition with one another for the coveted (may we say that about saints? he did) Golden Halo, and to set up said competition in a single-elimination bracket a la the NCAA basketball championship tournament “March Madness”, which as any good churchgoer knows always manages to occupy Lent no matter what the date of Easter. Add a thorough search through the heavenly roster of the communion of saints for the first set of 32 candidates, and “Lent Madness” was born. Votes were cast via Tim’s blog, “ClergyFamily Confidential”; the winner was George Herbert, the 17^th century English priest and poet. Building on his success in the 2010 competition, Tim offered it again last year, but with a whole new collection of saints. (Unlike Duke and the University of Kentucky, to name a few, I don’t recall any repeats in this “Madness” from year to year – so far. And if, as I recommend, the recent publication Holy Women, Holy Men becomes the resource of choice for the so-called “saintly smackdown” - I think we’re mixing sports metaphors here - there won’t need to be any until long after the “Table to Find Easter Day” in the back of The Book of Common Prayer runs out in 2089, the same year my younger child turns 100. But, I digress.) Last year’s winner was C. S. Lewis. I see a pattern already.

And now, as if the Anglican Communion wasn’t fractured enough, and less than one week after the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, this rivalry in religion has hit the big time. Tim is partnering with Forward Movement Publications and its Executive Director, the Rev. Scott Gunn, to take Lent Madness to the masses (of people). Frs. Gunn and Schenck have given the competition its own website, invited celebrity bloggers to weigh in, and are featuring a weekly video “Monday Madness”.

It’s an impressive list of contestants this year, including several Archbishops of Canterbury. Augustine of Hippo, evidently having listened closely to Jesus, goes up against his mother, Monnica (nice touch, guys). Will Paul of Tarsus, not running aimlessly, defeat Theodore of Tarsus in the first round and, being all things to all people go all the way? How far will Philander Chase the Golden Halo? Will Brigid lose out to Rose of Lima? And what about Rose of Sharon?

Seriously, Lent Madness is an impressive piece of work. It’s fun, it’s clever, and it really does fulfill its mission to educate about that vast “cloud of witnesses” in a way that’s entertaining and engaging. It’s also a much healthier mix of religion and sports than the Sunday morning youth athletics vs. church attendance that most of us face in our parishes. Who says a Lenten discipline can’t be enjoyable? Some, I suppose, but I’m not one of them. So, “I heartily endorse this game” and urge you to give it a try. Two years ago I followed the saintly Mr. Herbert all the way to victory, and it was tremendously rewarding.

The contest begins on Thursday, February 23 with daily match-ups until the winner is, um, elected. “Forward Day by Day” suddenly has a whole new meaning.

P.S. On the Lent Madness website we’ve been warned to vote only once per match-up because “this isn’t Chicago”. Actually, Tim, for some of us it is.

Love Song

I first entered the main building of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in April of 1997 as a newly minted postulant and prospective student, through those heavy wooden doors just off the parking lot. What I discovered wasn’t modern and institutional; it didn’t look like a school or university, even though it was situated on a Big Ten campus. It looked, and felt, like a place where religious community flourished. It even smelled right. I may not have been sure what I sought when I entered that building, but my gut (and isn’t that where the Holy Spirit resides, after all?) told me I belonged here.

The mechanics of enrollment and planning for a vastly different life followed. My husband was prepared to make tremendous professional sacrifices to I could pursue my calling. Through it all I never doubted that call, and I never doubted that I belonged at Seabury.

Places sometimes take hold of us. The setting, people, situations, and experiences all combine to create a deep sense of what Kathleen Norris calls “spiritual geography”. Seabury became that for me.

There was the chapel, the place where we gathered as many as three or four times daily to immerse ourselves in the Daily Office or celebrate Eucharist. It was the place where many of us first led worship, officiating at Morning Prayer or Evensong or gathering in the late evening, praying Compline by candlelight. We greeted Jesus’ resurrection at the Great Vigil of Easter. Babies born to seminarians were baptized here. When our all-too-human words and actions offended, it was often here that we were reconciled to God and one another.

The chapel was central, but the community was more than that. We held family/community evening Eucharists weekly, usually in Seabury Lounge. At one of these I witnessed my son, only eight years old, turn and give the Body of Christ to the bishop-elect of New York, then-Dean Mark Sisk. (Does anything like that ever happen in a parish?) We groused about the food in the Refectory, and about the living conditions in the student apartments. We learned from an exceptionally gifted faculty, who treated us as colleagues. We studied in the library and in the basement room known affectionately (?) as “Purgatory”. I held my classmate’s baby son while he preached in the parking lot at “Mass on the Asphalt”. Living “on the block” was a particular gift to my family, especially my young son and daughter. For years they had heard their parents talk about the importance of tolerating and accepting human diversity; at Seabury it was incarnate and they, and we, learned to embrace it. Life in that community wasn’t painless, and it wasn’t perfect. But it was right.

Several years ago Seabury made the very difficult decision to cease its residential M.Div. program, thus ending nearly 150 years of a time-honored and very specific system of theological education. The trustees advised most of the remaining faculty and staff that their jobs would soon end, and agreed to sell the property to Northwestern University and lease it back for use. Seabury would be “what’s next” in a seminary. Grief among graduates manifested itself in anger with the board. How could future Episcopal clergy possibly function and minister in the Church without a traditional seminary education?

Last Friday, the Feast of the Epiphany, the staff, faculty, trustees and many graduates of Seabury gathered for an extended liturgy that began with a leave-taking of the old chapel as the seminary made a journey from the physical space it had called home for so many decades and, going home by another way, moved into a new space in Chicago near O'Hare Airport: smaller, less burdensome financially, and much more accessible for both clergy and laity seeking a new kind of theological and spiritual formation for the missional Church we must all reclaim if we are to continue to spread and live into the Good News. Here in this new space the liturgy continued, dedicating it as a center for prayer, formation, and communal life right smack in the middle of the marketplace where cross the crowded ways of life. The Church in the world – not painless, not perfect, but right.

I’m proud to be an alumna of a seminary that took such a courageous step, and that continues to model faithful risk-taking. The memories that I and my fellow alumni/ae treasure, the formation we received will always be with us, and no one can take them away. But I would never be so presumptuous as to suggest that future leaders of the church want, or even need, those same experiences. We are waking up to a new and necessary reality, and Seabury is in the vanguard. The One who makes all things new is clearly at work, and I can’t wait to see what’s next! 

Naming Rites

Names are important. Some of us are quite happy with the name given us at birth and have no desire to alter it. Some of us choose to change our name when we marry or enter into a holy or civil union. Some shed a formal name in favor of a nickname – or vice versa. Sometimes a brand new name is adopted: Frances Gumm becomes Judy Garland; Archibald Leach, Cary Grant; Reginald Dwight, Elton John. A name can be an accident: Oprah Winfrey was to have been named Orpah (after Ruth’s sister-in-law who stayed behind) but the second and third letters were switched on her birth certificate and it stuck. And surely those who recall the ridiculous, uneducated reaction by some in our country to President Obama’s middle moniker have no need to ask “What’s in a name?”

Tomorrow, January 1, many churches will celebrate either the First Sunday after Christmas, or observe the Epiphany five days early. But some, like my parish, will address Shakepeare’s question by celebrating the feast of the Holy Name. Once known as the Feast of the Circumcision, the fact that this day is marked on the church calendar reflects the importance of the Jewish naming rite for male babies, which occurs eight days after birth and thus on the church calendar always on January first. It also signifies the importance attached, for Christians, to the name “Jesus”.

Mary and Joseph had each been visited by an angel, who told each one of the coming birth and its significance. Oh, and one other thing: “You will call him Jesus.” And so they do. (One does not, after all, argue with an angel!) The actually name would have been Joshua, or Yehoshua, of which Jesus is the Greek version. The name means God is salvation. Mary’s son was not the first or last to have that name – it was most likely even the first name of Barabbas, the prisoner released by Pilate when Jesus was arrested and condemned to death. But for Christians this Jesus of Nazareth, who is called the Christ (the Messiah or “Anointed One” - a title, not a name) is the Incarnate One who took on our humanity in order to show us God’s salvation.

We call him many, many things - savior, Son of God, Lord, master, rabbi, King of kings, Lord of lords, Lamb of God, Bread of Life, True Vine, Good Shepherd, Logos, Alpha and Omega – and so many more. And so he is, all of those things. But it is the name of Jesus that defines his humanity as one who, according to Paul, “was descended from David according to the flesh", it was as Jesus that he identified himself to Paul on the Damascus road, and it is at that name the letter to the Philippians bids every knee bow.

Jesus. The name of the One who came among us to share our fragile humanity, the One by whom we know God. It is this that we rightfully celebrate on this eighth day of Christmas.

Christmastide

A stable is graced, and angels sing,
shepherds arise as they hear the skies ring.

Young Mary delights; her babe is so fair!
Faithful Joseph stands watch, guarding the pair.

Bethlehem rests in quiet so deep;
The newly-born Jesus enjoys blissful sleep

Wise men travel far, in holy sojourn,

Their path unfamiliar; what will they learn?

May we travel too, in heart and in mind,
Seeking that child, our Savior to find.

May God’s love fill our being, peace in us abide.
And the meaning of Christmas forever reside

In our hearts, as we seek to follow our Lord,
And may Christ, our Redeemer, be always adored!

                                                                                      ©Cynthia J. Hallas