One of the videos I uploaded during the Lambeth Conference, 2008 was an interview with a man in charge of the construction of an outdoor labyrinth at the University of Kent, overlooking Canterbury, and oriented towards the towers of Canterbury Cathedral.
The crew completed the labyrinth in half the time they had projected, cutting thousands of York stone blocks on site and laying them in the newly-designed labyrinth pattern, the work of Jeff Saward who drew on labyrinths from several indigenous cultures, as well as Western models like the famous labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral.
The reason for the haste in construction was so that the labyrinth would be complete before the Lambeth Conference ended. I had the privilege of taking part in a dedicatory service near the end of the Conference, meaningful to me as I have the honor of serving in the diocese that is the birth of labyrinth movement, home of the Rev. Lauren Artress and the labyrinths of Grace Cathedral.
This past summer Sheila and went back to Canterbury, to hear our friends in the Piedmont Singers from Virginia sing Evensong at the cathedral. After the mid-afternoon Evensong, there was a draught of time before we would join the singers for dinner, so we went to the university in order to walk the labyrinth.
There, on that huge, sprawling, yet beautifully ordered, organic labyrinth we saw an English woman walking a young Rhodesian Ridgeback. He was red-wheaten in color, like our beloved Blaise, who had died only a few months before after an extraordinary life of 14 years. Really, he was the most beautiful Ridgeback I have every seen, next to Blaise.
Blaise was a great being, as the “Tale of Jumping Mouse” describes a bison – great in heart, in spirit, in intelligence, and bodily strength. Diagnosed with cancer on our car trip across the country to move to San Francisco, she lived on for three years, out of love for us, I believe. Like so many people, she hung onto life because she had a mission, supporting her human family.
Nobody in our family but me liked the movie “The Jane Austen Book Club,” but I have my reasons. A central reason was that one of the characters raised Rhodesians, and in explaining about the breed to another character said, “Rhodesians are matriarchal.” Lots fell into place about Blaise and our family then. I had always seen how deeply she loved us, and anyone who spent any time with her also knew what a dominant and dominating personality she had. I finally saw that the two went together; she was mothering us all those years.
The labyrinth is, if you will, the field of our being. In it we meet, recapitulate our life journey. These meetings are not in the mode of ghostly visitations, but in the manner of anamnesis, a representing. Thus, walking the labyrinth may be an occasion of transformation, brought about by prayerfully encountering the past, learning from the past in our present, and emerging into the new life that follows.
Blaise’s great being now inheres in our family as a whole, I think. The quality of unswerving devotion and love, the mothering principle, always there among us, I can now identify, celebrate, and honor.
At easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships,
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger …
At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears …
To shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And to turn their pain into joy.
May God bless you with foolishness …
To believe that you can make a difference in this world,
So that you can do what others say cannot be done.
Amen.
— A Franciscan benediction for challenging times
In his book The New Realities (New York: Harper & Row, 1989) Peter Drucker asks seven questions of leaders. They are as applicable to church leaders as to managing directors.
1. How well do we know our people? There is no substitute for "management by walking around" -- not just in the church but in the world outside. This puts oneself in the position of ordinary people -- whether in the congregation or outside. Do we give ourselves time to think through methodically each role within the church, evaluate the people who are fulfilling it, see the strains they are under and decide what help they need? At the same time we need to look at people outside the life of the church. Is there anything in the habits of our church which makes it difficult for them to hear and respond to the gospel? Is our personal ministry to them evangelistic? Who is best placed to communicate with them? A prayerful "walkabout" can be immensely significant, either done alone or with a group of other leaders.2. What information do we need to do our job effectively? Are we getting unnecessary information which merely overloads the system? Often churches are awash with the wrong information, e.g., finance, organization, charities and structures and not enough about people and the local community.
3. Which tasks do we do which advance the kingdom -- and which have we merely got used to doing? Cut out the latter: maximize the former.
4. Are we communicative? "Remember, what is obvious to us may not be obvious to others." The management expert, John Humble, said, "If you are an accountant, don't talk to them as though they were also accountants." He might have said that ministers should not talk as though everyone else were ministers, Anglicans as though everyone else were Anglicans, and old-agers as though everyone else had been in church for all their lives.
5. Has what we expected to happen, happened? Check that what you expect to happen has happened. If not, find out why.
6. Are we still learning? Keep learning. Continuing personal development, in spiritual depth and in human maturity, is necessary if we are not to become stale and dull. If one is working in technologically based industry, it is obvious, but no less necessary, for the Christian leader.
7. Are we taking care of ourselves? If we are, we will last a long time. (Peter Drucker is himself a good example of this. New Realities was published when he was 80 and he still keeps up a punishing routine of lecturing and writing.)
--John Finney, Church on the
Move: Leadership for Mission (London: Daybreak, 1992),
122-23, 178.
Don't tell me how God's mercy is as wide as the ocean, as deep as the sea. I already believe it, but that infinite prospect gets farther away the more we mouth it.
I thank you for lamenting his absences--from marriages going mad, from the deaths of your son and mine, from the inescapable terrors of history: Treblinka. Viet Nam. September Eleven. It's hard to celebrate his invisible Presence in the sacrament while seeing his visible absence from the world.
This must be why mystics and poets record the slender incursions of splintered light, echoes, fragments, odd words and phrases like flashes through darkened hallways. These stabs remind me that the proud and portly old church is really only that cut green slip grafted into a tiny nick that merciful God himself slit into the stem of his chosen Judah. The thin and tenuous thread we hang by, so astonishing, is the metaphor I need at the shoreline of all those immeasurable oceans of love.
-Rod Jellema
A billionaire threw a part somewhere on the Eastern seaboard shore. While there were many at the party, two of the guests who struck up a conversation were authors Joseph Heller (of Catch-22 fame) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, etc). Kurt says to Joseph, "You know Joseph, our billionaire friend has earned more money in just one night than all the sales of your book, Catch-22! Heller shook his head and said, "You know, that's probably true." Heller then replied by saying "Ah, but I have one thing that he does not." "Oh," says Vonnegut, "What's that?" "Enough!" says Heller.
I find this story profound.
For years I have heard the rant of the theology of abundance. And I must tell you, I'm sick of it (I never liked it from the beginning and have used it grudgingly). For me, the theology of abundance plays right into the same game that the rest of the world plays: spend more, cause I have more! Or as the Dorritos chip commercial used to say: "We'll make more!" Only in this case, it's not the chip company making more, but rather God is making more.
While it is true that God gives and gives and gives again, what I like better is that God gives enough. Let me explain.
I woke up this morning, and it would have been enough for God to stop at that. I was owed nothing by God to permit me to rise up today, but who-hoo!, here I am and doing fine! Ah, but it would have been enough for God to have stopped there...but God didn't!
It would have been enough for God to not only allow me to rise, but to do so in my right mind (many of you think I'm out of my mind, but that's another subject). God owed me nothing to allow me to rise up and to be in my right mind...but ah, God in God's goodness gave those gifts to me (and even more) but it would have been enough.
A time is coming and in some sense is now here where I have less now than I did in the past: I'm wearing glasses these days, and while the body works wonderfully, it doesn't run like it did in my late teens and early twenties....but it is enough. Indeed, a day is coming when my health will fail, I won't own my house, my children will leave, loss is an inevitable part of the human condition. Ah, but it will be enough because I know that God is consistently loving and kind. No wonder the apostle Paul said (using God's voice) "My grace is sufficient for you..." More than sufficient, it is enough!
Yours for the reign of God,
Ron
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. Ephesians 4:14
The above verse came to mind as I’ve been thinking about the health care debate in this country. When the specter of socialism was invoked regarding the “public option,” its doom seemed certain. Then, almost overnight, the public option was re-branded as “Medicare:e” (Medicare for everyone), and suddenly new life was breathed into the idea.
The Ephesians verse referred to dissent and confusion in the nascent Christian movement, proving that a base in faith is no vaccine against facile currents of shifting opinion. I would like to point out, however, that while it is common to deride the massive legislative work of The Episcopal Church’s General Convention (I have heard the 300+ resolutions referred to as “so what” resolutions in the main), our deliberative process, bringing to bear passionate, expert people from many perspectives on any one issue under debate, and submitting each resolution that makes it that far in the process to the vote of the whole representative democratic body, gives us ground to stand on in areas like health care.
Due to the work of the 2009 General Convention, I am able to say, not only on my own, but on the basis of the above-mentioned legislative process, that our denomination believes there should be quality health care available for all in this country, and that at best there should be a form of what is called the “public option.” Individual Episcopalians may well differ from the substance of the relevant resolution that is the basis for the above statement, but that is understood in a denomination that has embraced a democratic process, and, further, that values the diversity of minds that make up our church.
And finally, it is most important to me that I can say, within the public debate, that our church’s stance on health care rests on our faith, our apprehension of Christ who lifts up the dignity of all people, regardless of the presence or absence of worldly markers of success.
Only a few days after I developed an extensive pulmonary embolism, I slipped out of the house, against both medical and spousal advice, and was picked up by a driver to go to City Hall and speak at a hearing of the Planning Commission in favor of a plan that would allow the rebuilding of St. Luke’s Hospital. In conversation with the driver, a man in his sixties who lives 20 miles south of San Francisco, I learned that all four of his sons had been born at St. Luke’s, and that it was a place he loved and valued.
While St. Luke’s has been a valuable asset to this man and his family, I wonder if he has access to the excellent preventative health care that I have had, that has almost undoubtedly saved my life. The Christ I encounter in the Gospels and in my prayer life would, I believe, say that by being a child of God this man was as entitled as I, a person of privilege, to excellent health care. I’m glad to be part of a church that can and does say so.
MHA
The Chambered Nautilus
The nautilus is a living fossil whose close relatives date back hundreds of millions of years into geologic history. There are a few things we know about the life of the nautilus that invite us to think about our own lives. These animals live of course in their shell, but unlike other shelled sea animals they only live in a portion of the shell--one chamber at a time. The next chamber is constantly under construction. Each previous chamber is necessary for the animal to "swim" through the currents of the sea. Amazingly, each chamber is seven percent bigger than the chamber before it. When the animal grows the seven percent, it moves into the next chamber and starts preparing for the next move by building still another chamber. To move through the seas the animal releases gas into its previous homes (chambers) and that adds buoyancy that makes navigation possible. The building of the next chamber never ceases until the animal dies. These animals would seem to have perfected the balance between what has been and what will be.
Now, here's the rub for me...this story speaks to me about the reign of God. It would seem to me that like the nautilus, nothing, neither in our lives nor anything else in the reign of God is wasted. The "old chambers" of our lives are being used by God for buoyancy and navigation. Our old ways of being are not just left behind, but rather, are simply the "old shell" which God uses in our growth. Our whole lives are redeemed, and nothing is wasted in the reign of God. Good news, indeed.
Yours for the reign of God,
Ron
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Where there is too much, they reduce.
Where there is too little, they add.
Their people are neither overly busy, nor lazy and idle.
They resist the temptation to control to protect their position.
They do not need to take credit, for they already have all they need.
They do not need to succeed, for they are perfectly themselves already.
--That was Leadership.
Then he looked around and said, "Make sure the elephants don't see what the rabbits are up to."
--That was Management
