Beginning with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer the beginning of communion was marked by the priest reciting a collection of biblical verses called the Comfortable Words.
They went like this:
“Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him.
COME unto me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Hear also what Saint Paul saith: This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Hear also what Saint John saith: If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins.”
These words were meant to remind what was being relived in the celebration of the Eucharist, and to reassure us, in a way, that each and every one of us was worthy and welcome to share in the sacrament at the table, because Jesus had assured our invitation.
In a way, we convey the same message here at Trinity when we say “All are welcome”.
Along the way fom the 1662 Prayerbook to the 1979 Book of common prayer that we use today, these comfortable words dropped out. Many hours and pages of sound theological and liturgical argument went into the decision to leave this aspect of the Eucharistic Prayer out of our current prayerbook, but in times of great difficulty or grief, they immediately return to my mind, because in them I am reminded that I am beloved of the Lord, precisely because I don’t deserve his love, and I live my life in the safe cradle of his love, even when the world feels frightening and uncertain.
I mention grief particularly because just yesterday we as a parish lost someone very dear to us. Those of you who in the parish who did not know Wendy Woodcock have probably heard her story- diagnosed with cancer as a young mother, she was given six months at most to live. 14 years later, her battle had become our battle too, and the fierce strength and perseverance she showed in her fight for life was a humbling inspiration to us all.
This was a woman who was a force to be reckoned with- she was the entertainment at our monthly Peacemeal dinners for folks in the area affected by HIV and AIDs, and scheduled her chemotherapy sessions so that she would have the most strength on those third Sundays of the month.
This is why, as we share in the grief of her mother Barbara, her daughter Victoria, and her husband Ron, I take comfort in the knowledge that God, in losing Jesus to sacrificial death, shared in the experience of grief and death as well, and feels our sorrow with us.
We have heard some other very comfortable and comforting words today. In the reading from Samuel we hear God calling to a young prophet, in the psalm we are reminded that God has known us in our mothers’ wombs, has created us and knit together our features and limbs, and has created us lovingly, always watching over us, knowing our thoughts from afar.
And then, in the Gospel story, we have Jesus, literally knowing Nathanael’s thoughts from afar, amazing him with a report of his own actions carried out under a fig tree far from Jesus’ sight. Jesus cautions Nathanael not to be amazed by this, it is simply a parlor trick compared to the sights he will see in the Reign of the Son of God, visions of angels ascending and descending from heaven, but we can tell that Nathanael is impressed anyway, and flattered, that this great and powerful Rabbi Jesus has taken the time to know him.
Who among us is not comforted by this parental, omniscient God? And, being good children, who among us hasn't railed against him at some point as well?
And I know that, hearing this, I find myself longing for a God right now that will step in, save me from grief and difficulty, and make the way clear, tell me what to do and map out the path I should take, but I was reminded recently that God rarely shouts!
Instead, God is a steady, quiet presence, waiting for us to notice the tugs and coincidences and series of events that, upon reflection, have been showing us the path we are already on, with God’s hands spread over us, protecting us and giving us that little extra nudge we needed along the way.
And what greater comfort can we ask for, than that certainty of God’s love for us in Christ, in the knowledge that we are offered refreshment when we are weary, and the assurance of everlasting life?
For so God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
On Christmas Day, I read a sermon written by Barbara Brown Taylor, fellow Georgian and Episcopal priest, who is one of the best preachers around these days. A few folks have asked for the text of the sermon, which is called God's Daring Plan, and is found in her collection of sermons titled Bread of Angels.
Though I encourage you to buy the whole book, since it has a number of wonderful reflections in it, you can find an excerpt of the text of this sermon here. But if you have some post-Christmas gift cards, pick up the whole book and throw in "When God is Silent", a lecture she gave as part of the Lyman Beecher Lecture series in 1997 that has been published on its own.
I'm off to my homeland for the next two weeks!
Though I encourage you to buy the whole book, since it has a number of wonderful reflections in it, you can find an excerpt of the text of this sermon here. But if you have some post-Christmas gift cards, pick up the whole book and throw in "When God is Silent", a lecture she gave as part of the Lyman Beecher Lecture series in 1997 that has been published on its own.
I'm off to my homeland for the next two weeks!
Monday, December 15, 2008
A Bright Spot
My seminary class, the General Theological Seminary class of 2007, did an amazing job of raising money for our class gift, and as a result, we had the chance to really make an addition to the fabric of seminary life that would hopefully outlast us by a century at least. We decided on a baptismal font for our Chapel of the Good Shepherd.
The chapel was dedicated on Halloween in 1888, given by Glorvina Hoffman, the mother of the then-current dean, in memory of her husband, his father. It is a beautiful structure built in the college gothic style, based loosely on the chapel at Keble College, Oxford (coincidentally where I finished my undergraduate degree, though I didn't spend much time in the chapel). The chapel was, and is, the heart of seminary life, but never had a font since it was not a parish, but a college chapel devoted primarily to the saying of the Daily office and celebration of the Eucharist by students and faculty. If any baptisms needed to be done, they took place at St. Peter's Parish, Chelsea, around the corner on 20th St. Presumably weddings and funerals followed the same pattern.
However, as the seminary class make-up shifted from entirely young, unmarried men to a mix of genders, ages, and marital/partner status (and some might argue as the Book of Common Prayer shifted to an Easter focus), the need for a baptismal font became clearer- and the opportunity to use it arose more than once as babies were born to residents of the Close. During my time as a student and chapel sacristan, the compromise was an oval shaped copper roasting pan, which quickly took on the grim and hilarious name of The Baby Poacher.
Many things are changing on the life of General these days. For many reasons, seminary education is transforming from something that was almost exclusively a residential, three year program to part time and local study options, sometimes over six or more years, on numerous campuses throughout the world, and often with students commuting in from communities where they continue to live with their families and work in their secular jobs. Endowments are dwindling and buildings are aging and words like missional and emergent are entering the ecclesiastic vocabulary, and so places like my seminary Close, a city block in Manhattan surrounded by the busy city but enclosing an oasis of calm green where the spirit is nurtured in community, are getting rarer by the moment. Two Episcopal seminaries shuttered their buildings this year, and others will probably follow. General has agreed to let a private contractor build multi-million dollar condos on our 9th Avenue front, and leases our Tenth Avenue building as a conference center and luxury hotel, all in the hopes of staving off a similar fate.
In our own way, my class has embraced this perhaps necessary evolution. We raised a lot of money for our standards, but not a drop in the bucket of what GTS needs to insure its survival. However, for as long as students worship in the Chapel, as of installation last week they will be greeted by a tactile memorial of the centrality of the Baptismal Covenant in our lives as Christians, and of our continual rebirth into Christ in that Easter morning of our baptisms:
The chapel was dedicated on Halloween in 1888, given by Glorvina Hoffman, the mother of the then-current dean, in memory of her husband, his father. It is a beautiful structure built in the college gothic style, based loosely on the chapel at Keble College, Oxford (coincidentally where I finished my undergraduate degree, though I didn't spend much time in the chapel). The chapel was, and is, the heart of seminary life, but never had a font since it was not a parish, but a college chapel devoted primarily to the saying of the Daily office and celebration of the Eucharist by students and faculty. If any baptisms needed to be done, they took place at St. Peter's Parish, Chelsea, around the corner on 20th St. Presumably weddings and funerals followed the same pattern.
However, as the seminary class make-up shifted from entirely young, unmarried men to a mix of genders, ages, and marital/partner status (and some might argue as the Book of Common Prayer shifted to an Easter focus), the need for a baptismal font became clearer- and the opportunity to use it arose more than once as babies were born to residents of the Close. During my time as a student and chapel sacristan, the compromise was an oval shaped copper roasting pan, which quickly took on the grim and hilarious name of The Baby Poacher.
Many things are changing on the life of General these days. For many reasons, seminary education is transforming from something that was almost exclusively a residential, three year program to part time and local study options, sometimes over six or more years, on numerous campuses throughout the world, and often with students commuting in from communities where they continue to live with their families and work in their secular jobs. Endowments are dwindling and buildings are aging and words like missional and emergent are entering the ecclesiastic vocabulary, and so places like my seminary Close, a city block in Manhattan surrounded by the busy city but enclosing an oasis of calm green where the spirit is nurtured in community, are getting rarer by the moment. Two Episcopal seminaries shuttered their buildings this year, and others will probably follow. General has agreed to let a private contractor build multi-million dollar condos on our 9th Avenue front, and leases our Tenth Avenue building as a conference center and luxury hotel, all in the hopes of staving off a similar fate.
In our own way, my class has embraced this perhaps necessary evolution. We raised a lot of money for our standards, but not a drop in the bucket of what GTS needs to insure its survival. However, for as long as students worship in the Chapel, as of installation last week they will be greeted by a tactile memorial of the centrality of the Baptismal Covenant in our lives as Christians, and of our continual rebirth into Christ in that Easter morning of our baptisms:
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Final Sunday After Pentecost, Nov. 23, 2008
We have a beautiful image of God’s love painted for us by Ezekiel this morning. Speaking to his own people during the Babylonian exile, he reassures them that they have not been forgotten by their Lord, recounting a vision of God’s love for his chosen:
“As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep, [says the Lord]. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness…they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, says the Lord God, I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.”
This tender language contrasts with the language of division that comes next, of the proud, fat sheep separated from the lean, sentenced to slaughter for their scattering of the weaker sheep in the flock, who are fed on this justice, in a powerful message of hope to the Jews who had been taken from their homes and scattered in a foreign land. It is in a different context historically that Jesus tells his parable of the sheep and the goats. In exile no more, his fellow Jews are in Israel again, but still subject to foreign rule, and still in need of words of direction and hope. Jesus speaks of the goats not as dominating or strong but as lacking in compassion- and for this they are damned. This passage paints Jesus as Christ the King, judging in the final days, and I have always found that image difficult- which is why I am happy that we begin with Ezekiel, and his love song to his sheep.
What is clear here in both passages is that God loves his people as a shepherd loves his sheep, as a parent loves a child, and for me that love, and what we do with it as God’s beloved sheep, is the true message of the Gospel.
Recently, I was at a conference, and as happens in a group of strangers, I began to chat during breaks with those around me, and engage in the usual sort of introductory talk, typically about anything but the reason we’d all wound up together in this room.
As the week wore on we became united in our common plight, in this case the pursuit of the artful homily, and we became more familiar with each others’ stories and lives, and it was in this context that I had a conversation with a woman who’s daughter had very recently experienced a break-up. The girl was heart-wounded, in a way that I think we all have experienced in our lives, usually in our teens or early twenties, and can all identify with no matter how many years it has been or how happy we presently find ourselves. The daughter was in that stage of grieving where the very idea of finding the energy to live the number of years it will take to learn to live with the pain seems defeating, and even the intellectual reality of a future day when this loss wasn’t all consuming isn’t conceivable.
The woman was suffering equally, in her way- as a mother who sees a child suffering and knows that there is nothing she can do to spare her baby this experience, that she cannot make it right and also cannot do much at all, except sit and comfort and share in the passing of time.
I think we find Jesus in a similar place, emotionally, in the gospel passage we have heard today, as he contemplates the sheep, and the goats. Jesus tells this story as one in a series- lazy bridesmaids shut out of the banquet for failing to prepare their lamps, a slave cast out into the darkness alone for failing to be a proper steward of resources, goats cast into eternal fire, denied the presence of God, for failing to take care of each other.
Who is Jesus in this story?
He is a shepherd as Ezekiel paints him- a shepherd who, having raised his sheep from lambs, rescued them when they strayed, bound their wounds when they were injured, is now heartbroken at the prospect that they might be lost to him by their own willful refusal to love each other.
He is a teacher and friend and lord, who is trying desperately to impress upon his disciples the importance of loving, feeding, clothing, sharing the least in their midst. His anxiety is for their success, and he knows that his death approaches, and so he also fears for his own sake- that he has failed them, somehow, has perhaps not done quite enough- and in this he is like that mother grieving for her daughter’s heartbreak- grieving the reality that he will not always be in this life to wipe the tears away, offer comfort in pain.
And so he also needs something, as Passover approaches, and the cross, and his death. He needs a bit of certainty, certainty that he has done all that he can to prepare his brash and beloved sheep to venture forth into a world that has the potential to be frightening, and cruel, and careless about the fragility of a mother’s child.
Jesus knows that to survive the living of life with their spirits and souls intact, these men and women will need every help they can get, and the greatest tool he can give them is compassion, a consciousness of their shared lives, their shared experiences, and their sharing of his word with the world. And so he gives them this gift: the love that they share with one another and with the stranger, through feeding, and clothing, and welcoming, and comforting, and hopes that it assures them of safety and little suffering in their lives.
I can’t think of a better gift to be given this day, than a reminder of the need for compassion in our lives, in our dealings with each other- that we remember that we are all loved as a sheep raised from a lamb, as a mother’s child, and as God’s beloved creation.
AMEN+
“As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep, [says the Lord]. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness…they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, says the Lord God, I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.”
This tender language contrasts with the language of division that comes next, of the proud, fat sheep separated from the lean, sentenced to slaughter for their scattering of the weaker sheep in the flock, who are fed on this justice, in a powerful message of hope to the Jews who had been taken from their homes and scattered in a foreign land. It is in a different context historically that Jesus tells his parable of the sheep and the goats. In exile no more, his fellow Jews are in Israel again, but still subject to foreign rule, and still in need of words of direction and hope. Jesus speaks of the goats not as dominating or strong but as lacking in compassion- and for this they are damned. This passage paints Jesus as Christ the King, judging in the final days, and I have always found that image difficult- which is why I am happy that we begin with Ezekiel, and his love song to his sheep.
What is clear here in both passages is that God loves his people as a shepherd loves his sheep, as a parent loves a child, and for me that love, and what we do with it as God’s beloved sheep, is the true message of the Gospel.
Recently, I was at a conference, and as happens in a group of strangers, I began to chat during breaks with those around me, and engage in the usual sort of introductory talk, typically about anything but the reason we’d all wound up together in this room.
As the week wore on we became united in our common plight, in this case the pursuit of the artful homily, and we became more familiar with each others’ stories and lives, and it was in this context that I had a conversation with a woman who’s daughter had very recently experienced a break-up. The girl was heart-wounded, in a way that I think we all have experienced in our lives, usually in our teens or early twenties, and can all identify with no matter how many years it has been or how happy we presently find ourselves. The daughter was in that stage of grieving where the very idea of finding the energy to live the number of years it will take to learn to live with the pain seems defeating, and even the intellectual reality of a future day when this loss wasn’t all consuming isn’t conceivable.
The woman was suffering equally, in her way- as a mother who sees a child suffering and knows that there is nothing she can do to spare her baby this experience, that she cannot make it right and also cannot do much at all, except sit and comfort and share in the passing of time.
I think we find Jesus in a similar place, emotionally, in the gospel passage we have heard today, as he contemplates the sheep, and the goats. Jesus tells this story as one in a series- lazy bridesmaids shut out of the banquet for failing to prepare their lamps, a slave cast out into the darkness alone for failing to be a proper steward of resources, goats cast into eternal fire, denied the presence of God, for failing to take care of each other.
Who is Jesus in this story?
He is a shepherd as Ezekiel paints him- a shepherd who, having raised his sheep from lambs, rescued them when they strayed, bound their wounds when they were injured, is now heartbroken at the prospect that they might be lost to him by their own willful refusal to love each other.
He is a teacher and friend and lord, who is trying desperately to impress upon his disciples the importance of loving, feeding, clothing, sharing the least in their midst. His anxiety is for their success, and he knows that his death approaches, and so he also fears for his own sake- that he has failed them, somehow, has perhaps not done quite enough- and in this he is like that mother grieving for her daughter’s heartbreak- grieving the reality that he will not always be in this life to wipe the tears away, offer comfort in pain.
And so he also needs something, as Passover approaches, and the cross, and his death. He needs a bit of certainty, certainty that he has done all that he can to prepare his brash and beloved sheep to venture forth into a world that has the potential to be frightening, and cruel, and careless about the fragility of a mother’s child.
Jesus knows that to survive the living of life with their spirits and souls intact, these men and women will need every help they can get, and the greatest tool he can give them is compassion, a consciousness of their shared lives, their shared experiences, and their sharing of his word with the world. And so he gives them this gift: the love that they share with one another and with the stranger, through feeding, and clothing, and welcoming, and comforting, and hopes that it assures them of safety and little suffering in their lives.
I can’t think of a better gift to be given this day, than a reminder of the need for compassion in our lives, in our dealings with each other- that we remember that we are all loved as a sheep raised from a lamb, as a mother’s child, and as God’s beloved creation.
AMEN+
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sermon 26 October 2008
Twenty Fourth Sunday of Pentecost
'“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
We have had some rough times in the Episcopal Church of late- dioceses split, bishops deposed and defrocked, various factions aligning and realigning.
Quoting a wise priest and psychologist on the current state of the Anglican Communion*:
“We know that many factors have contributed to the current movement to split the Church and create some form of [central] international authority for Anglicanism. Disagreements about doctrine and governance, differences in cultural practices and beliefs, personal ambition, power struggles, subversion and funding from outside parties, reverberations from colonial and missionary history, and other causes have been discussed at great length. What I haven’t seen is much attention to psychological factors, and specifically to the psychology of bullying. Where bizarre thinking and behavior have been observed in a particular place over a period of many years, leading to a catastrophic outcome, the possibility should be considered that a critical factor in the entire drama has been the success of a disordered individual in gaining a position of power and using it to play out on a grand scale his own internal need to split the world into pure and impure, good and evil, true and false, faithful and treasonous, saved and damned, orthodox and apostate/heretical.
A skilled bully is fully capable of wrecking the health of people she works with…and of destroying or disabling the organization she works [within]. This kind of bully typically struggles against feelings of being empty and worthless (thus is profoundly envious of other people’s capabilities and self-esteem). Her inner world is characterized by a severe split between these extreme negative emotions and thoughts and the need to see the self as positive, even ideal. She projects her intense self-destructive impulses onto others and thus believes herself to be an innocent victim under constant threat.
Any disagreement with the bully’s views or questioning of her actions is interpreted as persecution. Her destructive actions toward others are, in her mind, justified by this perceived danger to herself. Her talents and charisma are systematically and relentlessly deployed in a calculated effort to gain power over those around her and displace her intolerable inner conflict and negativity onto the environment. Organizations [and communities] provide the bully with an inviting container for her disordered projections and an arena in which she can safely play out her inner battles, which might otherwise destroy her.
Those around the bully must be either duped or intimidated into complying with her program, or else expelled. The aim is to eliminate anyone whose competency would show up the bully’s limitations or reveal her machinations, and to keep everyone else under tight control.
In this mission of control-and-destroy, [the bully] counts on other people’s trusting nature, their essential decency and fairness and their inclination to play by the rules, think and debate logically, negotiate in good faith, and give each other (and her) the benefit of the doubt. Having created a chaotic situation in which the rules cannot effectively be mobilized to defend individuals or restore the organization to healthy functioning, she punishes and attempts to induce guilt in those who try to undertake any creative or restorative action. Efforts to reduce harm or avert disaster are thus blunted or driven underground.
[Eventually] a culture of bullying may develop. Like abuse in families, bullying in organizations can become systemic. The bully in a position of power surrounds him- or herself with people he or she can rely on to bully those beneath them, keeping the foot soldiers or pew-sitters in line.
Bullies often bring out the worst in people and aggravate any existing weaknesses and problems in organizations. What is worse, they use the virtues and strengths of people and organizations to undermine them. A highly-placed bully strives to persuade his constituents or employees that the destruction and division being wrought are for their benefit and reflect the organization’s highest purposes. It is, in reality, never about them; yet their souls and bodies, their time and devotion and talent, along with all the other assets of the organization, will be systematically exploited for the purposes of the campaign.
Eventually the inner pathology of the bully may dominate or even become embodied in the organization. The bully has achieved victory when her internal splits, her paranoia, her lack of a core positive identity, her boundary issues, her negativity and instability have been successfully displaced and given concrete form outside herself. The membership becomes severely polarized and alienated; the organization may either fragment or become so damaged as to have to shut down. Those left on the ground typically feel worthless, impotent, tainted, disorganized, incompetent, empty and exhausted. They find it very hard to recover mutual trust and to mobilize the…resources to salvage the organization so that it can get back to its original mission.
Where bullying has broken down an organization, harmed individuals and shattered relationships, an important first step in the healing process is to recognize that this is not a ‘normal’ situation of people behaving badly (for which they could ask forgiveness and learn to do better), or an ordinary (though serious) disagreement (about which there could be further study and negotiation); nor is it mainly a matter of inept administration or inadequate application of law or policy. The survivors first need to realize that they have been left holding the bag of a serious disease which is not itself communicable, yet which damages the mental, physical and spiritual health of all those it touches.”
I submit that this pattern of dysfunction goes much deeper than a few rogue bishops in the Anglican Communion in the 21st Century, and in fact is the root of all sinful behavior of which we have all been victim and perpetrator- so much so that Jesus himself spoke to it in the Gospel passage we read today:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' And `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
As my wise priest notes, the root cause of bullying behavior is a deep sense of worthlessness in the bully, a firmly seated insecurity, which causes an inability to believe that God crafted every single one of us lovingly, intentionally, so that we might reflect that love to the world.
In fact, when we assert ourselves over others with no attention to the damage done, we are denying Christ in that other person- by asserting our selfhood violently, emotionally, physically, over that person.
This pattern of behavior is self-allowing as well- Who among us wishes to view our self as a victim? So we fail to hold the bully accountable for her or his actions, and the accountability necessary for a healthy community breaks down as a continuation of our own powerlessness.
The cycle of ugliness replicates- feeling powerless, we grasp at what power we feel like we do have and assert it over others, forgetting love and God completely as we strive for self-interest.
Where does this seemingly universal instinct come from?
I think it is from our own human need to rally against our smallness in this great big world, our need to seize control in any way we can, and in the seizing denying God his place in our life. Afraid of having nothing, no one, we grasp at false idols, and perversely they ensure our solitude!
For the last eight weeks or so here at Trinity we have been running a Disciples of Christ in Community program. In DOCC, we meet in small groups and discuss different issues, and two of those are the Greek concepts of AGAPE and ADIKIA.
Agape is divine love, the sort of love that God showed us in his creation of the world, and reasserted in his giving of Christ for us. This is a love that we are filled with and reflect outward to others, and we can never love as perfectly as God does. But in our striving for perfection we perfect our humanity.
Adikia is also a sort of love, but it is a love for other that is motivated by need, selfish self-serving behavior that is sinful in its essence. It is love given to another conditionally, with the expectation that we will receive something in return.
In another gospel story, a wealthy young man comes to Jesus and asks how he can be assured of eternal life. Jesus tells him to follow the commandments. The young man tells him that he already does this, and so Jesus says, “You are half way there then! Now sell everything you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have eternal life.”
The man walks away, heartbroken.
Jesus tells us to release our self-serving agendas, to stop trying to control every aspect of our own little worlds, to stop trying to insure our own security, and instead become part
of God’s one great big beautiful world, where we can love without ceasing, rather than lobby and manipulate and politic.
Fear of insignificance leads us to ensure our own meaninglessness; fear of death leads us to abandon the living of this life.
SO HOW DO WE MOVE FORWARD?
“The full extent of the damage and pain now have to be brought out into the open. Anger and regret must be expressed, and losses mourned. Individuals and…groups will have to face their own weaknesses and acknowledge any contributions they may have made to the present debacle. People will have to come to grips with the ways in which bullying has… twisted their behavior, exploited their vulnerabilities, and even used their virtues to set them against their own best interests and isolate them from their fellows.
Anglicanism itself with its Broad Church tradition is vulnerable to exploitation by this kind of illness. This is not a reason to give up our tradition. Nor should individuals doubt their own gifts, whatever they may be, which set them up for being exploited in this situation. I submit, in fact, that the Anglican way, tolerant and inclusive, embracing such a broad range of theological views and liturgical styles, is a model of good mental and spiritual health. Where we see that model under attack, we should be suspicious.”
CONCLUSION:
Assertion of self over the needs of all others, no matter the consequences, is a bill of goods that we have been sold for generations. Our current economic crisis can find its roots in the selling of an image of success that requires the leveraging and mortgaging of every last dollar to attain more and more material things, to force others to admire our success as exemplified in these things, to be beholden in our own images of our selves in them. We are in a place in our society where some parents think it is better to die, and take their children with them into death, than face a life of reduced buying power.
We have the chance in this time, in this place, to realize that this bill of goods we have been sold is FALSE, that it can only leave us, like overgrown playground tyrants, perched on our mountains of ill-gotten toys, heartbroken and terribly alone- afraid even of the God who made us.
In Christ, we are shown that another way is possible, if only we can be so brave as to trust God, love our own selves, and love our neighbor…
What a wonderful message- love of self, other, God- for this church- this Anglican Communion, this Episcopal Church, this Trinity Parish- in these confusing but potentially life-changing times!
AMEN+'
* For the full text of the blog thread that I am quoting, click here. It is not in its original blog, which was the beloved "Fr. Jake Stops the World", which closed its doors in July of 2008. Please note as well that, despite the similarities in screename, I am not Mary Clara, the original author of the article. I have been many thigns but never a psychologist- but hey, there's still time!
'“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
We have had some rough times in the Episcopal Church of late- dioceses split, bishops deposed and defrocked, various factions aligning and realigning.
Quoting a wise priest and psychologist on the current state of the Anglican Communion*:
“We know that many factors have contributed to the current movement to split the Church and create some form of [central] international authority for Anglicanism. Disagreements about doctrine and governance, differences in cultural practices and beliefs, personal ambition, power struggles, subversion and funding from outside parties, reverberations from colonial and missionary history, and other causes have been discussed at great length. What I haven’t seen is much attention to psychological factors, and specifically to the psychology of bullying. Where bizarre thinking and behavior have been observed in a particular place over a period of many years, leading to a catastrophic outcome, the possibility should be considered that a critical factor in the entire drama has been the success of a disordered individual in gaining a position of power and using it to play out on a grand scale his own internal need to split the world into pure and impure, good and evil, true and false, faithful and treasonous, saved and damned, orthodox and apostate/heretical.
A skilled bully is fully capable of wrecking the health of people she works with…and of destroying or disabling the organization she works [within]. This kind of bully typically struggles against feelings of being empty and worthless (thus is profoundly envious of other people’s capabilities and self-esteem). Her inner world is characterized by a severe split between these extreme negative emotions and thoughts and the need to see the self as positive, even ideal. She projects her intense self-destructive impulses onto others and thus believes herself to be an innocent victim under constant threat.
Any disagreement with the bully’s views or questioning of her actions is interpreted as persecution. Her destructive actions toward others are, in her mind, justified by this perceived danger to herself. Her talents and charisma are systematically and relentlessly deployed in a calculated effort to gain power over those around her and displace her intolerable inner conflict and negativity onto the environment. Organizations [and communities] provide the bully with an inviting container for her disordered projections and an arena in which she can safely play out her inner battles, which might otherwise destroy her.
Those around the bully must be either duped or intimidated into complying with her program, or else expelled. The aim is to eliminate anyone whose competency would show up the bully’s limitations or reveal her machinations, and to keep everyone else under tight control.
In this mission of control-and-destroy, [the bully] counts on other people’s trusting nature, their essential decency and fairness and their inclination to play by the rules, think and debate logically, negotiate in good faith, and give each other (and her) the benefit of the doubt. Having created a chaotic situation in which the rules cannot effectively be mobilized to defend individuals or restore the organization to healthy functioning, she punishes and attempts to induce guilt in those who try to undertake any creative or restorative action. Efforts to reduce harm or avert disaster are thus blunted or driven underground.
[Eventually] a culture of bullying may develop. Like abuse in families, bullying in organizations can become systemic. The bully in a position of power surrounds him- or herself with people he or she can rely on to bully those beneath them, keeping the foot soldiers or pew-sitters in line.
Bullies often bring out the worst in people and aggravate any existing weaknesses and problems in organizations. What is worse, they use the virtues and strengths of people and organizations to undermine them. A highly-placed bully strives to persuade his constituents or employees that the destruction and division being wrought are for their benefit and reflect the organization’s highest purposes. It is, in reality, never about them; yet their souls and bodies, their time and devotion and talent, along with all the other assets of the organization, will be systematically exploited for the purposes of the campaign.
Eventually the inner pathology of the bully may dominate or even become embodied in the organization. The bully has achieved victory when her internal splits, her paranoia, her lack of a core positive identity, her boundary issues, her negativity and instability have been successfully displaced and given concrete form outside herself. The membership becomes severely polarized and alienated; the organization may either fragment or become so damaged as to have to shut down. Those left on the ground typically feel worthless, impotent, tainted, disorganized, incompetent, empty and exhausted. They find it very hard to recover mutual trust and to mobilize the…resources to salvage the organization so that it can get back to its original mission.
Where bullying has broken down an organization, harmed individuals and shattered relationships, an important first step in the healing process is to recognize that this is not a ‘normal’ situation of people behaving badly (for which they could ask forgiveness and learn to do better), or an ordinary (though serious) disagreement (about which there could be further study and negotiation); nor is it mainly a matter of inept administration or inadequate application of law or policy. The survivors first need to realize that they have been left holding the bag of a serious disease which is not itself communicable, yet which damages the mental, physical and spiritual health of all those it touches.”
I submit that this pattern of dysfunction goes much deeper than a few rogue bishops in the Anglican Communion in the 21st Century, and in fact is the root of all sinful behavior of which we have all been victim and perpetrator- so much so that Jesus himself spoke to it in the Gospel passage we read today:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' And `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
As my wise priest notes, the root cause of bullying behavior is a deep sense of worthlessness in the bully, a firmly seated insecurity, which causes an inability to believe that God crafted every single one of us lovingly, intentionally, so that we might reflect that love to the world.
In fact, when we assert ourselves over others with no attention to the damage done, we are denying Christ in that other person- by asserting our selfhood violently, emotionally, physically, over that person.
This pattern of behavior is self-allowing as well- Who among us wishes to view our self as a victim? So we fail to hold the bully accountable for her or his actions, and the accountability necessary for a healthy community breaks down as a continuation of our own powerlessness.
The cycle of ugliness replicates- feeling powerless, we grasp at what power we feel like we do have and assert it over others, forgetting love and God completely as we strive for self-interest.
Where does this seemingly universal instinct come from?
I think it is from our own human need to rally against our smallness in this great big world, our need to seize control in any way we can, and in the seizing denying God his place in our life. Afraid of having nothing, no one, we grasp at false idols, and perversely they ensure our solitude!
For the last eight weeks or so here at Trinity we have been running a Disciples of Christ in Community program. In DOCC, we meet in small groups and discuss different issues, and two of those are the Greek concepts of AGAPE and ADIKIA.
Agape is divine love, the sort of love that God showed us in his creation of the world, and reasserted in his giving of Christ for us. This is a love that we are filled with and reflect outward to others, and we can never love as perfectly as God does. But in our striving for perfection we perfect our humanity.
Adikia is also a sort of love, but it is a love for other that is motivated by need, selfish self-serving behavior that is sinful in its essence. It is love given to another conditionally, with the expectation that we will receive something in return.
In another gospel story, a wealthy young man comes to Jesus and asks how he can be assured of eternal life. Jesus tells him to follow the commandments. The young man tells him that he already does this, and so Jesus says, “You are half way there then! Now sell everything you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have eternal life.”
The man walks away, heartbroken.
Jesus tells us to release our self-serving agendas, to stop trying to control every aspect of our own little worlds, to stop trying to insure our own security, and instead become part
of God’s one great big beautiful world, where we can love without ceasing, rather than lobby and manipulate and politic.
Fear of insignificance leads us to ensure our own meaninglessness; fear of death leads us to abandon the living of this life.
SO HOW DO WE MOVE FORWARD?
“The full extent of the damage and pain now have to be brought out into the open. Anger and regret must be expressed, and losses mourned. Individuals and…groups will have to face their own weaknesses and acknowledge any contributions they may have made to the present debacle. People will have to come to grips with the ways in which bullying has… twisted their behavior, exploited their vulnerabilities, and even used their virtues to set them against their own best interests and isolate them from their fellows.
Anglicanism itself with its Broad Church tradition is vulnerable to exploitation by this kind of illness. This is not a reason to give up our tradition. Nor should individuals doubt their own gifts, whatever they may be, which set them up for being exploited in this situation. I submit, in fact, that the Anglican way, tolerant and inclusive, embracing such a broad range of theological views and liturgical styles, is a model of good mental and spiritual health. Where we see that model under attack, we should be suspicious.”
CONCLUSION:
Assertion of self over the needs of all others, no matter the consequences, is a bill of goods that we have been sold for generations. Our current economic crisis can find its roots in the selling of an image of success that requires the leveraging and mortgaging of every last dollar to attain more and more material things, to force others to admire our success as exemplified in these things, to be beholden in our own images of our selves in them. We are in a place in our society where some parents think it is better to die, and take their children with them into death, than face a life of reduced buying power.
We have the chance in this time, in this place, to realize that this bill of goods we have been sold is FALSE, that it can only leave us, like overgrown playground tyrants, perched on our mountains of ill-gotten toys, heartbroken and terribly alone- afraid even of the God who made us.
In Christ, we are shown that another way is possible, if only we can be so brave as to trust God, love our own selves, and love our neighbor…
What a wonderful message- love of self, other, God- for this church- this Anglican Communion, this Episcopal Church, this Trinity Parish- in these confusing but potentially life-changing times!
AMEN+'
* For the full text of the blog thread that I am quoting, click here. It is not in its original blog, which was the beloved "Fr. Jake Stops the World", which closed its doors in July of 2008. Please note as well that, despite the similarities in screename, I am not Mary Clara, the original author of the article. I have been many thigns but never a psychologist- but hey, there's still time!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Lately I have felt a lot like this little scrawny fuzzball of a chicken, running around so much that I can't remember to keep the feathers on my tail, much less where I'm headed next.
So, as I so often forget to do, I took a second to stop and enjoy this beautiful part of the world that I've managed to wind up in.
Just down the street from my church, on what is purported to be the most photographed road in Bucks County, some of my parishioners live in Cutalossa Farm. This historic property was once the home of Bucks County Impressionist Daniel Garber, whose studio has been renovated into a sheep barn/ events space, and where many of our parish gatherings like quiet days and retreats take place. It was where I interviewed for my job, and in the middle of March, getting on the train in gray slushy New York and getting out of the car in the middle of bucolic wonderland left me feeling like Dorothy when she stepped into Oz and technicolor for the first time. And there is livestock!
You can see the farm's website here if you happen to be in the market for a miniature babydoll sheep, or google the name for more scenery photos.
So today, in between casting my absentee ballot at the courthouse and returning phone calls in my office, I stopped in to visit the sheep.
The pasture scene, complete with Bromley's Mill:
To deter tourists from feeding the animals bananas (true story) or other unsuitable food, a feed dispenser was installed. The quarters it collects are given to local charities, and the chickens know the sound of a coin being rotated in the slot now, so all come running.
When a chicken takes feed from your hand, it is disconcerting, but feels like little gentle beak kisses, rather than actual pecking.
The sheep are famous for their small stature and "smiles", and are bred as pets rather than Sunday dinner. Their bells are just as picturesque as the rest of them, and as they charged over to the fence to get in on the feed I was distributing to the chickens, the sound and the sunlight and the green of the grass all worked together to take me out of my daily anixeties and rushing and worrying and into the mental equivalent of Switzerland in the summertime.
Who wouldn't love that face? Doesn't your blood pressure seem lower already?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Not to turn this into a personal journal but...
I managed to grow my first ever moonflower, after four years of trying!
A close-up of the bud before sundown:
And explosion of beauty!
And, as a bonus, a glamour shot of Lulubelle, plotting a jump up on the furniture:
A close-up of the bud before sundown:
And explosion of beauty!
And, as a bonus, a glamour shot of Lulubelle, plotting a jump up on the furniture:
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