My personal experience of Syria

My personal experience of Syria is so very different from what is being portrayed in the media today.  In 2003 I traveled to three Muslim countries in the Middle East.  The trip was sponsored by a Muslim organization whose goal was to promote peace and understanding.  Their intention on this trip was to allow Christian leaders from the U.S. to experience Islam as it is practiced in Syria, Egypt and Jordan.

Two imams accompanied us.  One was from Baltimore and one from San Diego.  What we experienced changed my understanding, attitude and theology about Islam.  I came to know that as a Christian I am related to Muslims as sisters and brothers in God.  We have similar basic beliefs about God and our hopes and dreams for God’s presence among us.  We pray for the same peace and work for the same mutual good of all people.

We met with university presidents, cabinet level government officials and the highest ranking Muslim religious leaders in each country.  Here is a brief abstract of what I have learned.

The Syrians I met love their families just like us.  They worship God in public gatherings just like us.  They practice private prayers in ways that are more devout than many of us.  They tithe for the relief of the poor with something they call zakat, one of the Five Pillars of Islam.  Basically they give 2.5% of their income to the poor, apart from any contributions they may make to their local mosque.  They practice hospitality which is substantially greater than our cultural norms.  And they love peace as much as we do.  They mean us no harm and are appalled at violence in the name of religion.

Although we are hearing a lot these days that would push us into reaching other conclusions about Muslims from the Middle East, this trip helped me realize that the vast majority of the worlds Muslims practice mainstream moderate Islam which looks like what we found in Syria and not like what the media is reporting.

Every mass shooting in the U.S. pushes people throughout the world into believing everyone in America is a gun toting violent lunatic.  We know that is not so.  I hope this helps others realize that what many public figures are saying about Muslims just isn’t so.

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, I believe Muslims are my sisters and brothers in God.

Rockland and Galilee

Rockland, Maine is my Galilee.  Judy and I had been married a few months when we arrived there, in a beat up VW and basically penniless.  We were expecting our first child and, as they say, unencumbered by the thought process.  We rode up Route One from Massachusetts and ran out of gas in Rockland, looked around, and said, “Let’s live here.”  It was October of 1972.

We didn’t know a soul.  We found a small apartment and began looking for work.  There was a serious recession and people were reluctant to hire someone they didn’t know.  I was flummoxed when in job interviews I was asked, “Who is your father?”

Judy’s idea was that we go to church so we could meet people.  I was nervous but agreed.  We found St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.  I was in the process of reading the bible for the first time and curious.  So it began.  They took us in and welcomed us.  In a year Bishop Wolf made a visitation and I was baptized, along with my son, confirmed, and received Holy Communion for the first time.  Everything changed.

Jesus was walking along by the shore of Lake Galilee.  He saw Peter and said, “Follow me.”  He, too, seemed unencumbered by the thought process, dropped everything and changed course.  So it began and soon everything changed.

It was our plan to return to Maine after seminary and serve a parish.  But fate took us on a detour to North Carolina then to New Jersey then to Louisiana then to Maryland.  And it was toward the end of the time in Maryland that I began to long for the beginnings, for the intensity and the calling I first received in Maine.  Peter also heard this message from Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday.  Jesus said to her, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’  (Matthew 28:10)

On Saturday, August 15^th, Judy and I returned to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Rockland, Maine.  The occasion was a celebration of new ministry and welcoming a new rector.  It was like returning to Galilee.  Memories flooded back as we sat in the pew on the same side we used when we had our first encounters there.  As they liturgy moved through the renewal of baptismal vows using water in the font, I looked with astonishment at that font and was aware that was where I came alive in Christ.  When we received communion, Judy and I knelt at the same rail side by side just like when we first began the journey.

We were in Rockland, Maine and I was back in Galilee, where Jesus first called me.  Forty years later, the memories were more than just recollections.  They were reanimated as I stood in the place where so many significant spiritual milestones occurred.  Rockland is a good place for me.  I can never forget what began there and who I met there.  His voice and call have changed over the years.  And when I need reminding or renewing, Galilee is just down the road.

A New Perspective on Pentecost

This coming Sunday, May 24, we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost.  Many churches see this as a sort of birthday of the church and a reminder of its core mission.  The parish I now serve will have an unusual Pentecost this year.

St. Philip’s in Wiscasset is a small parish that has experienced decline in membership and resources over the past decade.  We now number around thirty on a good Sunday, which includes a dozen children.  We have been meeting as a vestry and parish to talk about our future viability. 

One of the most significant aspects of St. Philip’s ministry is its outreach to the poor.  Around 150 people receive food each week from our Help Yourself Shelf food pantry.  We have a Bargain Basement where many items can be purchased for pennies on the dollar of their actual value when new.  It is also our policy to provide items at no cost for any family which has experienced a disastrous loss such as a fire.

St. Philip’s was also instrumental in starting a ministry called Feed Our Scholars.  This program collects funds which are used to purchase food from the food bank.  This food is then sorted and delivered to the local schools, where it is used each Friday to fill the backpacks of students on the free or reduced school lunch program.  For most of these students, this meal is their most significant one of the day.  One in four children in Maine is food insecure.  These are students whose families will need the food to make it through the weekend.

Now, back to Pentecost this year.  A local organization is sponsoring a half marathon on Sunday morning.  They have solicited volunteers and have promised St. Philip’s that if we can provide twelve volunteers, they will donate $1,000 to the Feed Our Scholars Program.  The parish considers this ministry so important and the need for funds so great that we have people lined up for Sunday morning.  With our Sunday attendance diminished by twelve or more, we decided that there would be too few in church to enable us to have a service for Pentecost.  So the vestry decided to move our Pentecost service to Saturday at 5 pm.

With barely enough financial resources to keep our doors open, the parish has a heart that cares for others.  When an opportunity arises for helping the poor, they choose that option over their own worship preferences.  As we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church, this is a case study in a parish that is seeking to carry on its ministry even in the face of small numbers and profound financial challenges.  I see the Holy Spirit at work among us.

Pentecost blessings on us all.

FeedOurScholars 

Time and Work

This Lent I am using a resource provided by the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Mass.  Today’s meditation was on time and priorities.  When work was mentioned, it took me with it to a reflection on my life and work.  The speaker talked about time in five categories: stop, pray, work, play and love.  I realized that when I was working as a rector full time, I allowed my work to consume the disproportionately largest part of my time.  I even convinced myself that I was tending to the other areas within my life’s time as sub categories of work.  I stopped, but it was on a retreat whose time and cost was borne by the church.  I would pray, but on church time and fully justified.  I would play, but most often with church people and in the context of a church program.  I loved others and most of those others were members of the parish.  After all, isn’t one of the job descriptions of a rector: “a professional lover of the people of God.”

Now time is reordering itself in a new stage of life and a new context.  Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and we had the church service.  But I am also taking time to pray at home on my own time.  Not work related.  In two weeks I will make a silent retreat at Holy Cross in West Park, NY.  But this year it is on my own dime and for no particular “professional” purpose.  I hope to listen to what God is saying about my life now in my new setting and circumstances, much of which are not necessarily focused on parish life.  Not work related.  This morning Judy and I “walked” across the river, using our new snow shoes.  The woods were white and silent and the snow was many feet deep with a new half foot of powder overnight.  This play is spiritual in nature, and “in nature”.  Not work related.  And the relationships of my life are spreading across new boundaries of community, family, history and geography.  Not work related.

I realized only too well how aptly the SSJE meditation applied to my life of work.  “Many of us have a disordered relationship to time and work, and work drives us and consumes our time in ways that we experience as unhealthy and unwholesome.”

Although I am coming to this new awareness in the context of “retirement” I know it needn’t have waited.  I could have been better at balancing out the life and time God has given me.  That balance can mitigate against unnecessary burnout.  We clergy often think of our work as so very essential that no excess of it can be a source of complaint since it is all so very holy.  But holiness includes wholeness and that holistic way of living inevitably involves limits, boundaries and balance in addition to self forgetting and passionate commitment.  I wish I knew then what I know now.  But all we have is now.

A Mindfulness with a New Name

With Heather Cook’s indictment comes an awakened mindfulness and concern.  Her problems and its consequences have brought me to question and reexamine my own behavior.  I have a history of using alcohol.  It has been a help when I was shy about dancing or going out.  As someone who is socially insecure, I have used alcohol to bolster my courage at a party.  I also enjoy a drink at home before dinner.  And of course, there is beer and the Super Bowl.

Heather has been the occasion for me to reexamine these patterns.  And she has also brought up the many ways that alcohol has been a less than healthy dynamic in my experience of the Episcopal Church.

I learned about sipping sherry in seminary.  I discovered that social drinking was required at most of my interviews for positions in the church.

The first clergy conference I attended as an ordained person was in North Carolina.  The conference was entirely funded by a gift to the diocese at no cost to the clergy or parishes.  We arrived to be welcomed by an open bar serving hard liquor.  We all acted like we were at an all you can eat buffet trying to get our money’s worth.  At dinner there was a large bottle of wine at each table.  Out came the shrimp.  Then they served the prime rib.  Then we enjoyed the dessert, drinking all the while.  Then they lowered the lights and the bishop addressed us.  Many of us slid down in our seats and either fell asleep or passed out.

Fast forward one year to the next conference.  No open bar.  There was wine on the table.  The shrimp was served, followed by dessert.  No prime rib.  Then the bishop spoke.  He reminded us we misbehaved the prior conference and these were his steps to address our adolescent behavior.  In an ironic way, it was my first experience of being called to accountability by my bishop regarding alcohol use.

In Louisiana the Mardi Gras traditions were occasions for liberal partaking of alcohol.  So much so that some took it upon themselves to fast from alcohol (and sex) during Lent.  It certainly put extra drama into the Great Alleluia of the Easter Vigil.  But it also made people mindful of the role alcohol played in their lives.

Over the years, I have led vestry retreats where nearly every attendee brought a bottle of hard stuff for the social hour.  I have been at conventions where the afternoon session ended as people nearly stampeded to the bar, and others met in small groups in hotel rooms for drinks before dinner.  And I have supported serving wine before dinner at midweek Lenten Series Programs.

When Heather’s tragedy began to sink in, I was discomforted.  I was angry at her irresponsibility and its consequences.  I was angry at the Nominating Committee and the Standing Committee and the Diocesan Bishop and now the Presiding Bishop.  I was one of those who voted for her at the electing convention.  But I refused to accept any responsibility and kept putting it elsewhere.

Yet she has been the occasion for me to ask myself some hard questions.  What do I drink and why?  When do I assume I am OK to drive and is that assessment correct when I am the one making it and I have been drinking?  Am I dependent on alcohol?  So initially I just stopped drinking altogether.  I was going to prove that I was OK.  And I was.   But was this like the many diets that have never become new lifestyles?  And was it even necessary?

Now I am mindful when I drink.  What am I doing and why?  It is still a source of pleasure and socialization.  But is has a darker side I dare not ignore.  Drinking at home in the evening when I’ve no place to go is one thing.  Drinking at a party or a restaurant when I have to drive home is another.  And am I drinking because I want to or because I need to or because I feel pressured to?

I was recently instituted as the Priest in Charge of a parish in Maine.  The event included a luncheon after church.  The bishop’s guidelines stipulated that since people would have driven some distance to the event and had to drive home, no alcohol was to be served.  I consider this good leadership.

On Saturday coming we will host an afternoon open house for the parish and for a House Blessing.  As we put together the shopping list, we considered wine and decided not to serve any.  We saw this as our first opportunity post Heather to make decisions about alcohol and church.  And I will let people know why we made this decision.

I will continue to use alcohol.  But Heather has made me mindful of this substance and its consequences.  In most cases it will be OK.  But sometimes its risks just won’t be worth it.  As the Apostle Paul wrote, “If eating meat sacrificed to an idol causes another to stumble, I won’t eat meat again.”   

This is the new mindfulness and awareness in my life, and if I had to give it a name, it would be . . . 

Heather