desert fathers

This morning I read a story quoted in a book that Steve often referred to.  He had read it in a compilation of stories by the Desert Fathers and was taken with it.  I remember not really getting it.  I mean I listened because he obviously loved the story and resonated with it, but at that point it did not hold the same urgency, the same connection for me.

Here it is:

"One of the most powerful of the stories abut the fathers of the desert, those geniuses of the gospel life, tells of a meeting between Father Lot and Father Joseph.  Father Lot asked what else he must do to be perfect. He said that he ate little, slept little, prayed without ceasing, worked always with his hands, and shared whatever he had with the poor.  What, he wondered, did he lack?  Then Father Joseph rose and stretched out his arms, and tongues of fire flashed form his fingers.  'If you want,' he said, 'you can become a living flame.'  The fire of God, and whoever has faith to live only by his mercy will become a tongue of that fire.'

I think I am starting to get it.

from the Hours/Today

I continue to read daily from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours.  I am using Steve's copy instead of my own and am glad when I find a day where he has underlined things or marked them.  Today's reading for the Monday nearest to January 8 has these words in parenthesis (To You that hear prayer shall all flesh come, because of their transgressions.  Our sins are stronger than we are, but you will blot them out.)  He has underlined the words, 'our sins are stronger than we are.'

Fifth Day of Christmas

I have heard the phrase 'word made flesh' since my earliest days.  But in Steve I see, I know 'flesh made Word.'

Advent Day 24

I gathered all of these Advent quotes and gave them to our family and friends last year, emailing one a day as a way of hearing Steve's voice in our season of waiting and hoping.   I still hear life in them, just as fresh as when I first read them.  

Just a few week or so ago I discovered the 'O Antiphons.'  Do you know about these?  I have never even noticed them.  This octave of days has been celebrated by the church since its earliest days.  From my reading I find that they have something to do with the hope of Jesus, his  presence in the world, words from Isaiah and the giving of gifts.  Maybe I will reflect on these words next advent when the loss of Steve is even more integrated in who I am and what is asked of me.  Maybe these ideas will resonate with me in a new way and will feel like gifts to me, in this time and place.  For now I am reminded that there is always more to be unearthed in a life bent on believing it all. Just when I think I am either too empty to face my future or too overwhelmed with its possibilities I am met with another way to 'order my days.'

 May the emptiness we taste in our loss of Steve be filled with the ‘more’ that he believed in and talked about so tenderly.

Advent Day 23

You can’t get here from there           

We used to use the term “paradigm shift” a good bit to describe dramatic changes in the way one would see the world.  I also remember the term “watershed”, and in that image I picture a dam that is holding back water that suddenly bursts, and the water crashes out.  That is close to describing what I think and experience in the way ideas take a hold of a person…and to somehow explaining how I suddenly find myself in such a different place than I inhabited just a few years ago.

I heard Amy Grant (of all people) once say that she had a jar of ocean water in her room as a child.  And she imagined what the ocean was like and could probably describe something of it.  But then in her late teens, she went to the beach for the first time.  She was awestruck.  It was nothing that she had imagined…it was so much more.  It’s not that the jar of water wasn’t some fragment of what “ocean” is, it’s just that it doesn’t begin to encompass it.   The moment she steps from the car, sinks her feet in the sand, runs to the water’s edge, feels the iciness of the waves, or just simply sees it, breathes it…it’s a watershed.

One of my favorite thoughts about truth was the Hebrew idea that if something were true, it would hold water.  It wouldn’t collapse or burst when you put pressure on it.  In fact, it would expand when it was filled.  If it eventually burst, then it wasn’t true.

I have previously described my thoughts and beliefs like horses at the starting gate.  Imagine that I had built a horse track. And the gate was a framework for all that I believed- sort of a systematic way of organizing my thoughts-and restraining them.  It’s sturdy and it’s locked.  But then, these wild and powerful horses are led into each stall.  They snort and kick and butt the gates.  They are contained until someone rings the bell and opens the doors.  Then “they’re off!!!”  Once they run, there is no stuffing them back in, and that gate no longer holds them.  You just have to ride it out, see which horses carry you to the finish, or see which ones might even break out of the track and run away (or which horse will just stop short and start eating the grass).  You don’t know until they are free.

I recently heard in interview on NPR with the author of the book “Shop Class as Soulcraft”.  I’m fuzzy on detail, but he said he finished a PHD in philosophy and went to work at a think tank in Washington, believing that he would get to pursue ideas and logic- sort of a free for all of thinking.  But instead, he found that the organization had already established an acceptable set of conclusions, and his job was to reason backwards to find suitable premises that would always lead back to those conclusions.  In other words, there was a set framework, and they used all their powers of reason to make sure that the framework stayed in tact.  He quit and opened a motorcycle repair shop. 

Charlotte Mason said that when we only deal in “fact” and not living ideas, that we are not even really dealing in those facts.  We will stop short of them for fear of going beyond them.  Living ideas will burst through “facts” all the time as new exploration and discovery change the way we see, and constantly bring forth new connections.

In my old denomination, we had a framework for describing the world.  It was contained in several documents, primarily the Westminster Confession of Faith.  We said our primary source of belief was the Bible, but it was really only seen through the Confession and the other documents.  I, through regular and long study of these documents, found many beautiful things…ideas that were planted in my mind like seeds.  But with each idea came many questions as well.  These questions begin to paw at the gate.  For a very long time, a strong gate can contain all the ruckus, but at some point, you have to ring the bell.  Horses were made to run. 

A glass of water, a starting gate, systematics- they all contain something of what is true, but they are static and they are dead.  I suppose you could put the jar of ocean water in the fridge, then pour it over your head to get something of the experience, but it can never replace that first running dive into the icy surf.  It’s one thing to bring someone ocean water and then say, “let’s go to the beach”.  It’s another to hand them a jar and say, “this is the ocean.  Don’t ask questions.” 

All this to say, I had a framework that I studied, taught, defended, and reasoned backwards from.  But more and more, it could not contain either my questions or my experiences.  Finally the gates opened and all Hell broke loose.  To be fair, I didn’t just calmly ring the bell.  I brought about my own demise as a pastor, and I can hear people saying (because I have said this about others myself), that I have changed my views on things as a convenient way to rationalize my own sin.  “He is deceived”.  That may be true (if one were deceived, how would one know?).  Nevertheless, I have had a watershed, and there is no going back.  There is no stuffing where I have come experientially and theologically back into the PCA jar.  I make no claim to being wiser.  I’m just on this wild horse and I can’t stop it.

Advent Day 22

I keep finding a few places in Steve’s journals/files where he will have added some paragraphs to  the story of our story that he had hidden in his ‘novella.’   This gives me a window into the way he saw our love and also the ways he loved others.   

The day she appeared at St. George’s, everything began to change.

It is hard to put an experience into words when you are in the middle of that experience.  There are these eternal moments where timelessness enters into chronological time and change us forever.  And their meaning takes time to unfold and describe.

He would say that he was aware of her from the first time that she walked into the room.  He was in love with her from the first time he heard her voice.  “Deep called to deep,” he said.  At the time, he held it as a secret, even from himself.   Years would pass before he would give voice to the desire and affections that grew steadily in him.   Her presence in the world made it hard for him to be completely present anywhere ever again, since from their first encounters and conversations on, she was never far from his mind.             

And yet…

And yet, there was work and there was family.  His and hers. 

And people really don’t like their priests to fall in love, not like this anyway.

When he first arrived at St. George’s, Sam spent the majority of his time, to the dismay of some, in local haunts and houses.  He was as much at home in the tavern as in his study.  Because he now had his collar back on, it didn’t take long for people to know who he was. 

            There was a period of time in his work, early in his career, that was marked by zeal, when he worked feverishly for the advancement of the church.  When he was like a man with a cause, a mission.  The great discovery of this period was that zeal tended to attract zealots (and those who liked to ride on zealous coattails.)  The more passionate, confident he became, the more impatient he became.  And the more he noticed people quietly slinking away to nurse hurts and fears alone, in hiding.  Zealots make for dull company, while those who have tasted a little heartbreak have a capacity to both laugh and cry. By the time he came to St. George’s, the zeal had given way to a quiet hope that love would encompass the things that drive us into exile, and could find us in our pain. Hope had to be big enough for his own inner turbulence too- desire, fear, loneliness.

Sam was no fiery preacher.  People would say that his sermons were like having a conversation between “Me, and Sam, and God”.  And people began to come to enter this conversation.  For some of the long standing members in the church, this was what they had hoped for.  For others, well, not so much.

Tommy looked like a drunk.  He approached Sam along 20^th Street one day and asked for some money, with what became a very familiar “Can you help me out for the holidays?”  It was a funny way to start a friendship, but a day didn’t go buy when Sam and Tommy didn’t speak.  Sam learned Tommy’s story a sentence at a time, since the man couldn’t hold still long enough to link two sentences together. 

It wasn’t the bottle.  It was his nerves.  At sixteen, in a strict catholic high school, Tommy was teased so hard that his young nerves gave way.  He landed in the state asylum for the first time.  Who knows what horrors went on there in the 1950’s?  His family made sure he kept an apartment, but they kept him at arms length.  And now, at 57, he made the rounds of about four blocks of the neighborhood from around 4 a.m. until night. 

For some reason, Tommy thought that Sam was as crazy as he was.  So he started confiding in him.  At first he didn’t make much sense, but then in lucid snatches he would talk about his life, being lonely, not sleeping, and especially the girls he liked.  Actually, Tommy liked all the girls.  He tried to kiss each woman that came around.  The ones who knew who he was might let him get away with it now and again, but he got slapped a lot.

There was quite a stir when Tommy first strolled into St. George’s during the Eucharist.  Sam was just beginning with the preparatory words, when the man walked straight to the front and asked for the cup.  “Kneel right there Tommy.  I’ve got to say the magic words first.”  So he did.  Sam gave the congregants a “deal with it!” glare, and Tommy was a fixture from then on.  Even when he worked the pews looking for a kiss.

Advent Day 21

One of my unexpected comforts comes to me as I reread books that Steve and I read together.  I often come across passages that he underlined or thoughts he wrote in the margins. .  His scribblings are in his favorite kind of pen – the uniball roller in blue or black/blue ink.

Evelyn Underhill is an author that I return to and one that Steve found compelling.  In her Memoir’s Steve has marked these quotes:

“When she writes of the Father’s business being the only business of man “and not very spectacular” at that she is unwittingly, describing her own life.  “Ordinary life, love, devotedness,” she says, “will do very well for the revealing action of God.”     .