This letter comes from my good friend, Fr. Jean-Monique Bruno. I met Fr. Bruno and his wife Marise almost exactly ten years ago. Fluent in French, Creole, Spanish and English, he has had a long ministry in both Haiti and the DR, and has many friends in the US and the Caribbean. He is Haitian, but has served in Santo Domingo in the DR for the last 12 years. He continues to carry on a ministry in the Haiti through Bethlehem Ministry which has a large school, a clinic, and an agricultural project in the northeastern Haitian town of Terrier Rouge. J-M, Marise, and our mutual friends, Berry and Peter Rice, spent almost 3 weeks together in Turkey in 2001, a real bonding experience. I have also worked with Fr. Bruno on several mission trips to the DR. In November, I spent several days with him in Terrier Rouge. This letter came today, and describes his recent trip from Terrier Rouge to Port au Prince.....Terrier Rouge, Haiti, 19 January 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Interesting Article from Cambridge England
To see ourselves as others see us: Mike Good takes a sideways look at his membership of a ‘dying’ church
The well-known phrase in my title is the second line of the final stanza in Robbie Burns’ To a Louse, a poem which came to him one Sunday morning as he sat behind a well-dressed young lady in church and noticed a head louse roaming through the fancy bows and ribbons of her hat; for it is the supposedly lousy Church of England that I wish to consider here.
The well-known phrase in my title is the second line of the final stanza in Robbie Burns’ To a Louse, a poem which came to him one Sunday morning as he sat behind a well-dressed young lady in church and noticed a head louse roaming through the fancy bows and ribbons of her hat; for it is the supposedly lousy Church of England that I wish to consider here.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Ordinary Time... Ho Hum?
All Saints Church, River Ridge 06 06 09
Dear Friends in Christ,
In the first volume of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, known as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the world of Narnia is under the spell of the White Witch, who keeps Narnia in a perpetual state of winter. It is as if life and time are stopped in its track. One of the inhabitants of Narnia described this state as “always winter, but never Christmas.” With Trinity Sunday past us, we move into the long season which we enumerate as the “X Sunday after Pentecost.” The color for this season is Green. In the Roman tradition, this season (as well as the Sundays after the Epiphany), is called “Ordinary Time.” This season occupies about half the year. About half way through, I start longing for some variety as we get with Advent/Christmas and Lent/Holy Week/Easter, but to no avail. I start to feel like the poor resident of Narnia under the spell of the White Witch, saying “always Pentecost, but never Advent.” Fortunately, for us, eventually the endless sea of green does end.
Despite the apparent sameness of the season, there is an inner dynamic at work here which is at once subtle and at the same time powerful. Sameness is sometimes comfortable, it is a known quantity. Yet sameness can also be deadly and stifling. This was the case in Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles. The White Witch has all of Narnia in suspended animation. It is the sameness of a prison. It is the sameness of oppression. For decades, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and China experienced the oppression of communist totalitarianism. There was a kind of bland sameness which was immediately apparent to visitors. In my student days in Germany, I visited Berlin several times. The contrast between the two sides of the Wall was stark. Not because East Berlin was poorer (it was), or that there were still ruins from WWII (there were still many), was it so stark, it was that all the new stuff was the same. Oppression killed creativity, diversity and individuality. In the West there was color, in the East all was gray, except the occasional remnant of pre-war life. Yet in a world created by the living God, oppression and its enforced sameness do not have the last word. In Narnia the spell of the White Witch is broken when “Aslan is on the move.” Aslan is the redemptive Christ figure. In Eastern and Central Europe, poetry, literature, the churches, and labor organizations could not ultimately be suppressed. When the forces of Soviet oppression lightened, the entire edifice collapsed and new life, creativity, and freedom came to the fore.
In the New Testament worldview, the world is currently under the spell of the “prince of this world.” Yet the New Testament tells us that the Kingdom (or Rule) of God is breaking into this world of sameness and oppression. Most of the parables of Jesus are precisely about this point. And it is these parables and stories that we hear about in the long and endless “green season.” It is the growth and ultimate victory of this Kingdom of God in our midst that we talk about in this season. The green is about the verdant dynamic of growth. This Sunday’s Gospel about the miraculous growth of seeds, and the parable of the mustard seed are parables of the Kingdom. It is the nature of the Kingdom – that this Reign of God is near us, in our midst and in us. May we enjoy the dynamic of the Kingdom in this long season of “ordinary time” which is in no way ordinary, for where God is planting and giving growth it is always extraordinary!
Dear Friends in Christ,
In the first volume of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, known as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the world of Narnia is under the spell of the White Witch, who keeps Narnia in a perpetual state of winter. It is as if life and time are stopped in its track. One of the inhabitants of Narnia described this state as “always winter, but never Christmas.” With Trinity Sunday past us, we move into the long season which we enumerate as the “X Sunday after Pentecost.” The color for this season is Green. In the Roman tradition, this season (as well as the Sundays after the Epiphany), is called “Ordinary Time.” This season occupies about half the year. About half way through, I start longing for some variety as we get with Advent/Christmas and Lent/Holy Week/Easter, but to no avail. I start to feel like the poor resident of Narnia under the spell of the White Witch, saying “always Pentecost, but never Advent.” Fortunately, for us, eventually the endless sea of green does end.
Despite the apparent sameness of the season, there is an inner dynamic at work here which is at once subtle and at the same time powerful. Sameness is sometimes comfortable, it is a known quantity. Yet sameness can also be deadly and stifling. This was the case in Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles. The White Witch has all of Narnia in suspended animation. It is the sameness of a prison. It is the sameness of oppression. For decades, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and China experienced the oppression of communist totalitarianism. There was a kind of bland sameness which was immediately apparent to visitors. In my student days in Germany, I visited Berlin several times. The contrast between the two sides of the Wall was stark. Not because East Berlin was poorer (it was), or that there were still ruins from WWII (there were still many), was it so stark, it was that all the new stuff was the same. Oppression killed creativity, diversity and individuality. In the West there was color, in the East all was gray, except the occasional remnant of pre-war life. Yet in a world created by the living God, oppression and its enforced sameness do not have the last word. In Narnia the spell of the White Witch is broken when “Aslan is on the move.” Aslan is the redemptive Christ figure. In Eastern and Central Europe, poetry, literature, the churches, and labor organizations could not ultimately be suppressed. When the forces of Soviet oppression lightened, the entire edifice collapsed and new life, creativity, and freedom came to the fore.
In the New Testament worldview, the world is currently under the spell of the “prince of this world.” Yet the New Testament tells us that the Kingdom (or Rule) of God is breaking into this world of sameness and oppression. Most of the parables of Jesus are precisely about this point. And it is these parables and stories that we hear about in the long and endless “green season.” It is the growth and ultimate victory of this Kingdom of God in our midst that we talk about in this season. The green is about the verdant dynamic of growth. This Sunday’s Gospel about the miraculous growth of seeds, and the parable of the mustard seed are parables of the Kingdom. It is the nature of the Kingdom – that this Reign of God is near us, in our midst and in us. May we enjoy the dynamic of the Kingdom in this long season of “ordinary time” which is in no way ordinary, for where God is planting and giving growth it is always extraordinary!
Monday, May 25, 2009
Götterdämmerung and Pentecost
All Saints Church, River Ridge, La. 05 25 09
Dear Friends in Christ,
A few weeks ago, I was privileged to be in New York at the Metropolitan Opera to see the last performance of the Otto Schenk production of Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), the final opera of the Ring Cycle. At close to six hours, it is considered to be the longest opera in existence. This particular production is very conservative, using traditional scenery, costuming and staging. (The Met, in general, is a quite conservative opera company in this regard and eschews those avant garde productions now so common in Europe – which our friend Jim Wyrick and other opera critics refer to as “Euro-trash.”) The Ring Cycle (and Wagner in general) is often reviled as being intensely boring and much too long. One issue is that Wagner deals with great mythological, philosophical, and theological themes, while most operas are about lighter subjects. My experience with this opera was very positive. Each of the 3800 seats in the house was filled, and all the people I saw were on the edge of their seats for the entire six hour performance. What is so compelling about this?
In the Ring Cycle, Wagner presents a version of the Nordic myth of the Ring of the Nibelungen, in which, much like in Greek mythology, gods, goddesses, and humans interact in complex and often devious ways. The gods and goddesses often have far less integrity than the humans. The climax of the Ring Cycle is the collapse and destruction of Valhalla in the last act of Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). Here the whole world of Pagan deities is destroyed and the fate of the world is placed in the hands of humanity, and an unknown future. The answer to this future comes in Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, which is much later than the Ring Cycle. Here he picks up these themes by depicting the triumph of Christian love and the Eucharist over Pagan intrigue. What Wagner presents in elaborate allegory, the Bible presents with splendid reality.
Sunday is Pentecost. Pentecost celebrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, through the Son, to transform the world. Pentecost is often thought of as the Birthday of the Church. It is beginning of the undoing of and transcending of the curses associated with Genesis 3-11. This undoing begins with of the curse of languages and tribes and nations which are depicted in the Tower of Babel story. Human pride, as an affront to God, is displayed in the building of the tower. God destroys this tower, multiplies languages, and divides humanity into competing tribes and nations. This is seen as the judgment of God against human pride. The gift at Pentecost is the answer to this. Without undoing the beauty of the diversity of peoples and languages, the Holy Spirit transcends this curse and allows mutual comprehension of the message of salvation. Each person hears the Good News in his or her own language. The book of Acts then follows this as a new community is formed out of peoples from every tribe, family and nation. The many Valhallas of competing gods and goddesses collapse as the church’s message of salvation in Christ spreads from Jerusalem, to Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the world. The Pentecostal gift of the Spirit undoes and transforms the stains of sin into a new life of Love and Communion. May the Valhallas of our many contemporary gods and goddesses, collapse as the transformative power of the Holy Spirit breaks in among us in new and powerful ways.
Dear Friends in Christ,
A few weeks ago, I was privileged to be in New York at the Metropolitan Opera to see the last performance of the Otto Schenk production of Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), the final opera of the Ring Cycle. At close to six hours, it is considered to be the longest opera in existence. This particular production is very conservative, using traditional scenery, costuming and staging. (The Met, in general, is a quite conservative opera company in this regard and eschews those avant garde productions now so common in Europe – which our friend Jim Wyrick and other opera critics refer to as “Euro-trash.”) The Ring Cycle (and Wagner in general) is often reviled as being intensely boring and much too long. One issue is that Wagner deals with great mythological, philosophical, and theological themes, while most operas are about lighter subjects. My experience with this opera was very positive. Each of the 3800 seats in the house was filled, and all the people I saw were on the edge of their seats for the entire six hour performance. What is so compelling about this?
In the Ring Cycle, Wagner presents a version of the Nordic myth of the Ring of the Nibelungen, in which, much like in Greek mythology, gods, goddesses, and humans interact in complex and often devious ways. The gods and goddesses often have far less integrity than the humans. The climax of the Ring Cycle is the collapse and destruction of Valhalla in the last act of Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). Here the whole world of Pagan deities is destroyed and the fate of the world is placed in the hands of humanity, and an unknown future. The answer to this future comes in Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, which is much later than the Ring Cycle. Here he picks up these themes by depicting the triumph of Christian love and the Eucharist over Pagan intrigue. What Wagner presents in elaborate allegory, the Bible presents with splendid reality.
Sunday is Pentecost. Pentecost celebrates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, through the Son, to transform the world. Pentecost is often thought of as the Birthday of the Church. It is beginning of the undoing of and transcending of the curses associated with Genesis 3-11. This undoing begins with of the curse of languages and tribes and nations which are depicted in the Tower of Babel story. Human pride, as an affront to God, is displayed in the building of the tower. God destroys this tower, multiplies languages, and divides humanity into competing tribes and nations. This is seen as the judgment of God against human pride. The gift at Pentecost is the answer to this. Without undoing the beauty of the diversity of peoples and languages, the Holy Spirit transcends this curse and allows mutual comprehension of the message of salvation. Each person hears the Good News in his or her own language. The book of Acts then follows this as a new community is formed out of peoples from every tribe, family and nation. The many Valhallas of competing gods and goddesses collapse as the church’s message of salvation in Christ spreads from Jerusalem, to Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the world. The Pentecostal gift of the Spirit undoes and transforms the stains of sin into a new life of Love and Communion. May the Valhallas of our many contemporary gods and goddesses, collapse as the transformative power of the Holy Spirit breaks in among us in new and powerful ways.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Thanksgiving to Whom?
All Saints Church, River Ridge, La. 11 17 08
Dear Friends in Christ,
A common phenomenon among most peoples in the world and their religious traditions is a harvest festival. Among the Israelites, two big harvest festivals were appointed, namely Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkoth (Festival of Booths). These commemorated the first harvest in the late spring and the great fall harvest. Although these appear to have begun as agricultural festivals, they soon took on theological meaning in the Torah. Pentecost commemorated the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai (interestingly for Christians it is the giving of the Holy Spirit). Sukkoth commemorated the wanderings in the wilderness and the provision of manna by God. Jews and Christians have been nervous about having feast days solely associated with agriculture because of their pagan associations. It is not the earth or the grain goddesses to whom we pray, but God who created and sustains the world.
Hence, Christians (like their Jewish forbearers) do not have explicitly agricultural festivals on our calendars, yet in most Christian cultures civil authorities appoint one, such as Harvest Home in England. In the United States, our government has established Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. It has its antecedent in the Plymouth colony and similar commemorations in Virginia and elsewhere. Again, in spite of food and produce brought to church, it is not a feast of thanksgiving to the gods of produce, but to the Creator, who provides and sustains us.
The bookend to Thanksgiving is a commemoration in the spring of the year called the Rogation Days (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Ascension Day), in which prayers are said and processions conducted to bless the fields, that there may be a fruitful harvest. Today, Rogation Sunday is often observed as a kind of liturgical Earth Day, where we pray for all involved in agriculture, environment and industry, that we may sustainably be stewards of God gifts.
In the coming week, as we commemorate Thanksgiving, let us give thanks for family and friends that have gathered and for all God has given to us in Creation and God’s continuous care for all that God has made. May we also give thanks for the redemptive acts of God in Christ and throughout our lives.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Fidelio and Apocalyptic
All Saints Church, River Ridge, La. 11 10 08
Dear Friends in Christ,
The other day, I was listening to the radio and they happened to play one of my favorite pieces of music (from my favorite opera), and I was totally overcome by its power and beauty. The piece is the Prisoners’ Chorus, “O welche Lust” (Oh, what joy), from Act I of Beethoven’s Fidelio. It is a powerful piece where a large group of political prisoners are briefly released from the dungeon to experience a beautiful day in a beautiful garden, before going back down into the dungeon. The burst of joy is palpable because of the glimpse of freedom and of fresh air. Freedom is seen as coming from God. It is the hope that is whispered in the ear in the darkness of the dungeon. For Beethoven, the opera and these prisoners were a kind of paradigm for all unjustly imprisoned. The stirring music and beautiful singing reinforces its power. In the Christian tradition, art, music, beauty connect in an interesting way with Christian apocalyptic – a theme in this part of the church year.
Having grown up in a practical Modernist mindset, many of us see art or music or beauty as peripheral aspects of our lives. They are viewed as a kind of luxury and impractical. In schools (including at St. Martin’s) these are referred to as “enrichment” subjects. Yet, as N.T. Wright, the Anglican theologian and current Bishop of Durham notes, beauty as expressed in art or music is a way of experiencing aspects of the in-breaking of the Kingdom (or Reign) of God. Apocalyptic visions of God, of the new heaven and earth, of the peaceable kingdom, all contain visions of incredible and unspeakable beauty. When the artist or musician or architect or gardener creates a piece or place of beauty it is not merely “nice,” it has a kind of spiritual power to move us and transform us. This power which beauty can exert over us is because it taps into something very deep in our souls. Our souls yearn for the in-breaking of the kingdom. It is not coincidental that our ancestors built great churches of incredible beauty and artistry, and produced amazing pieces of music. It not that they had more money than we have, probably much less, it is rather that they saw art as a way of expressing their spiritual values, and this was worth considerable sacrifice.
The genius in Beethoven’s Prisoners’ Chorus is the contrast which the prisoners experience in the bright and fresh daylight from their confinement in the dark and dank dungeon. This leads them to this burst of joy. It is my prayer that when we experience beauty in art, music, nature, architecture, or (perhaps) in church – that we experience in it a brief glimpse of the unspeakable beauty of that coming Kingdom. It is a Kingdom which the biblical writers can only describe with the most exuberant and lavish imagery. We pray for this Kingdom each time we say the Lord’s Prayer, “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Dear Friends in Christ,
The other day, I was listening to the radio and they happened to play one of my favorite pieces of music (from my favorite opera), and I was totally overcome by its power and beauty. The piece is the Prisoners’ Chorus, “O welche Lust” (Oh, what joy), from Act I of Beethoven’s Fidelio. It is a powerful piece where a large group of political prisoners are briefly released from the dungeon to experience a beautiful day in a beautiful garden, before going back down into the dungeon. The burst of joy is palpable because of the glimpse of freedom and of fresh air. Freedom is seen as coming from God. It is the hope that is whispered in the ear in the darkness of the dungeon. For Beethoven, the opera and these prisoners were a kind of paradigm for all unjustly imprisoned. The stirring music and beautiful singing reinforces its power. In the Christian tradition, art, music, beauty connect in an interesting way with Christian apocalyptic – a theme in this part of the church year.
Having grown up in a practical Modernist mindset, many of us see art or music or beauty as peripheral aspects of our lives. They are viewed as a kind of luxury and impractical. In schools (including at St. Martin’s) these are referred to as “enrichment” subjects. Yet, as N.T. Wright, the Anglican theologian and current Bishop of Durham notes, beauty as expressed in art or music is a way of experiencing aspects of the in-breaking of the Kingdom (or Reign) of God. Apocalyptic visions of God, of the new heaven and earth, of the peaceable kingdom, all contain visions of incredible and unspeakable beauty. When the artist or musician or architect or gardener creates a piece or place of beauty it is not merely “nice,” it has a kind of spiritual power to move us and transform us. This power which beauty can exert over us is because it taps into something very deep in our souls. Our souls yearn for the in-breaking of the kingdom. It is not coincidental that our ancestors built great churches of incredible beauty and artistry, and produced amazing pieces of music. It not that they had more money than we have, probably much less, it is rather that they saw art as a way of expressing their spiritual values, and this was worth considerable sacrifice.
The genius in Beethoven’s Prisoners’ Chorus is the contrast which the prisoners experience in the bright and fresh daylight from their confinement in the dark and dank dungeon. This leads them to this burst of joy. It is my prayer that when we experience beauty in art, music, nature, architecture, or (perhaps) in church – that we experience in it a brief glimpse of the unspeakable beauty of that coming Kingdom. It is a Kingdom which the biblical writers can only describe with the most exuberant and lavish imagery. We pray for this Kingdom each time we say the Lord’s Prayer, “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Monday, November 3, 2008
Apocalypticism
Dear Friends in Christ,
In the 1830s, there emerged a new and highly influential teaching about our Lord’s Second Coming. It was promulgated by an Anglo-Irish ex-Anglican clergyman named J.N. Darby. He preached for several decades in Ireland, Britain and America. His peculiar doctrine was the “rapture.” This teaching was based on the Epistle for the coming Sunday, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, which describes the coming of our Lord and uses the phrase, “meet the Lord in the air.” This text was interpreted by Darby to mean that at our Lord’s coming, believers would be snatched out of their current lives and whisked away to heaven, while the earth descends into chaos, violence and destruction. Various “rapture” schemas are presented by countless groups from the Millenarian movements of the 19th century, to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists groups, American revivalists and fundamentalists, and various Pentecostal groups. All stem from this innovative eschatology of J.N. Darby. In recent years the most prominent examples of this teaching are the “Left Behind” series, Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” and John Hagee. This view has become so dominant that persons who have no connection with these traditions picture the Coming of our Lord in this way.
Among the innovations in this teaching were that there is a complete discontinuity between the world in which we live (which God created and into which our Lord came in his incarnation), and the world to come. This teaching claims that this world is bound for destruction and our aim is to escape it and await rescue (by the rapture) from it. Traditional Christianity would view this as a kind of latter-day Gnosticism, an anti-creation and anti-incarnation teaching.
The troubling thing about this teaching (besides being wrong) is that it encourages a kind of escapism from this world. This view discourages people from bettering human structures and engaging in building a world on kingdom principles – in anticipation of the breaking in of Christ’s kingdom. Rather, this eschatological perspective expects conditions in the world and society to worsen and welcomes evidence to prove this view. War in the Middle East is particularly welcomed as further evidence that Christ is near. Among some who hold this view, active social engagement for the betterment of the world and even peace movements are considered counter to God’s will.
Anglicanism and other forms of catholic Christianity have always fostered social engagement and promoted of social reform and social welfare as part of the Christian mandate to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). Not only individuals are to be brought into relationship to Christ, but “nations” including social structures are to be brought into line with kingdom principles.
As we engage these apocalyptic texts in the coming weeks, let us see how they engage us in our world.
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