In my reflections, if a bona fide member of the academy comments that my reflection contains either an original thought or argument, I will note it in that reflection. Also, if it is brought to my attention that what I have said is also mentioned in another source, I will also note it. My intention in these reflections is to stimulate inquiry, imagination, and broadening of horizons.- JP
Note: The most recent reflection is at the top and my first is at the bottom. You can either start at the bottom of the well and swim up or start at the top and dive in, your choice. – JP
13 Hours
Unique Experience 09/15/2016
On May 10, 1967, I had an experience, but more about that later. I have not written a reflection for quite a while, much to the dismay of my web master, because I could not distill everything that is going on into a salient piece without coming across as cliché, talking pointyish, or outrageously partisan. Silence seemed to be the best option. Then it happened, I had a dream.
Not to get to deep into my bias for Jung, dreams and the collective (un)consciousness, but we have all experienced at least one memorable dream. Or are they really astral trips? Whatever they are, they are experienced as so real as not to be easily dismissed or forgotten. So this is what I dreamt / experienced (because I might have really been there).
I was at a final for a music class. Not a final where we are seated with blue books and head phones, but around a table. There were at least six other people plus the instructor. The final was handed out, a single piece of light blue paper with four or five questions. My vision of the paper was a little foggy. The first question / instruction was to present your composition to include these four elements. I looked down. I still had my pants on so I knew it wasn’t one of those dreams where you are naked in a familiar setting. It was one of those where you know you are one half credit short of graduating and now really wish you had shown up for class more than once.
The girl who sat on the opposite side at the other end of the table asked to go first. She began to sing A Cappella. I heard words but could not tell you what they were. The melody was clean. Her voice was quietly operatic. Her volume matched the moments of the song perfectly. When she finished, we all were silent for a moment then each began to clap slowly and quietly until the applause reach a crescendo and we were all standing. When we stopped, the instructor said it was appropriate to take a break. During the break, I contemplated not only how I felt physically, but how I should express to her how I experienced what she presented. I summoned up all my courage, remember I had missed all but one of the class sessions, and asked the instructor if I could respond to her. I was given permission and this is what I said.
“On May 10th, 1967, I had an experience which has stayed with me since that day. It was in the afternoon while I was home from school on Spring break. I walked into the living room and turned on the Bendix black and white TV. I had not looked at the programing schedule. It was the Merv Griffin show and he was introducing a young singer who he had not heard before. Gloria Loring came on stage and sang a version of Going Out of My Head Over You that took my breath away. I had never been impacted by a performance in that way before or since, until today. I learned later in listening to an interview with Merv Griffin, which I also tuned into without any planning, that he had not expected what he heard and that as he was listening he moved slowly backwards towards his desk, forgot where he was and when his heels hit the step, he fell to the sitting position and stayed there with his mouth open until she finished. I remember that experience and have always treated it as a gift and not asked for or expected such a situation again. That is why I say to you today, Thank You for the gift you have given to all of us at this table. I can only speak for myself to say I have been gifted one more time with the feeling of complete wonder and joy in an experience that is unique in its feeling if not in its frequency. Thank You for searing into our being a moment which will live forever”.
As I lay in bed alternating between waking and sleeping, I kept going back to how I felt. I was, and still am, glad that I had the experience. And I also kept asking myself, from where did this originate? Was it strictly my mind that produced this experience? Was I really in that situation due to astral projection? Did some other consciousness enter my consciousness to give me the experience? I have good friends who each would say that all these are possibilities. But what do you say, they ask.
I, quite frankly, do not worry about the mechanics. I can accept that they are all possible. But that is not the issue for me. My issue is that this experience has put me face to face with the power of consciousness. It has put me face to face with the inescapable consideration of the power and reach of our consciousness. It has made me consciously aware that what ever I think, experience or choose to do, has consequences. It has reinforced for me that everything in this existence, cosmos, creation, is connected.
How would it feel to tangibly meet those people who were at that table and share our experience? That would be a continuation of this unique experience and if it happens, I’ll let you know.
Endure 05/03/2016
Last week we saw Johnny Mathis in concert, again. We also saw him last year and it was even better this time. Why? Partly because of the seats. This time we were at our season ticket location, six rows back from the orchestra pit and far enough to the side so we could see the stage manager in the wings and close enough to see the creases in the lead guitar’s tux pants. I also sat next to a gentleman who wiped his eyes as much as I did. So what else made this performance so different?
Consider that the only permanent characteristic of our existence is change and change is the one thing we all push back against. We look for what does not change and there is a facet of our existence that is permanent. That facet is endurance. Since we attended last time, a fire totally consumed Johnny Mathis’ home. It was not mentioned during the performance. Obviously it was a change in his life, but it did not lessen his performance. As I got lost in the Twelfth of Never and especially 99 Miles From LA, I was vividly struck by the quality of endurance.
Given the fact that even when we repeat an action in our lives and as much as we want it to be predictable and exactly the same as last time, it never is. There is always something, no matter how small, that is different. So if we know what we repeat will always be different to some degree, why do we go there? I believe it is to participate in endurance.
The performance I attended was one that touched many memories and gave them new life. It was a performance that brought together people who I am sure do not all agree politically or religiously. People who are all across the economic and apparel spectrum. People who shared one desire, to be lifted up and uplifted we were. The standing ovation was not the obligatory, let’s not look like an indifferent audience, it was sincere, you could feel it. We shared a moment of unity.
As contorted as it may seem, unity is the characteristic of endurance that allows endurance to endure. When unity is the perspective, no matter how different people’s actions may be, they are all taking place in one theater. All the world is a stage and we are all actors on that stage, has validity, and I am sure Shakespeare, and many others, felt compelled to express unity. The unity in the audience was an experience of agreement, of feeling good and for that moment, of not being at odds with one another.
To not be at odds with one another is the desire of us all. It starts in our tribe. It continues when we are confronted with a tribe that does not like ours and we have to make a choice. How do we act? Do we act in a way that gives up on the one theater concept or do we act in a way that eliminates the confrontation? Do we strive to treat others they way we want them to treat us? Do we attempt to burn down the theater of creation or stand for an ovation? And here’s the rub, the theater is not going away, it endures. I am going to make every effort to live in a theater that endures. How? Next up, Tony Benet.
Just keep walkin’ 01/31/2016
– Ambrose
This is the text of an email and attachment from a good friend, The Rev. Hugh Magee, who is currently living in St. Andrews, Scotland. [An aside, Hugh’s brother John, wrote the poem ‘High Flight’.] I am posting it as a reflection because Provost Auld says it better than I could. Please note that his last sentence of the transscript includes the Scottish spelling of his final thought. And for those of you of a certain age, my title for the reflection is from Linda Laurie’s record of 1957 which came to my mind when I heard of the communiqué from the Anglican(‘t) Communion.
Dear friends –
I don’t normally disseminate other people’s sermons, but in this case I am doing so for the benefit of American Episcopalians who may have been dismayed by the outcome of the recent conclave of the Primates of the Anglican Communion held in Canterbury.
You may be aware of the fact that there’s a real sense in which the Anglican Communion itself was created when Scottish bishops consecrated the first American bishop (in 1784). So there is a strong sense of connection between our two Churches expressed, for example, in the fact that the compilers of the first America Prayer Book (1789) were strongly influenced by the Scottish Liturgy of 1637. This connection, amounting to a kind of ’special relationship’, continues today.
As one whose dual nationality has led to my serving in both of these branches of the Anglican Communion, I was delighted, in my role as cathedral canon in Dundee, to hear this sermon by our Provost, Jeremy Auld. It was preached on our Patronal Festival (last Sunday) and I think is worth sharing with American friends.
So, over to you all, with love from your fellow Episcopalians in Scotland!
HUGH
Feast of The Conversion of St. Paul
Acts 26:9-23 Psalm 67 Galatians 1;11-24 Matthew 10:16-22
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together in the sight of God to affirm our union in Christ with St. Paul. Do you take this man — a man ‘small in stature, bald and bandy-legged, with a long nose and eyebrows meeting’ — as the only contemporary description puts it, do you take this man to be your lawful wedded patron saint? Do you?
Well it’s a bit of a complex question with Paul. Paul may never have been particularly likeable, even after his conversion to Christianity on the Damascus road from a life as a hard-line pharisaic persecutor of the infant Church. In his own letters he hints that he was always less impressive when actually present. It is from his letters that we can build up our picture of St.Paul. He was the apostle to the gentiles so we owe our faith to him.
Like Bonhoeffer he knew the ‘cost of discipleship’. His missionary endeavours led him into much hardship. He was no stranger to bitter disputes and moral failings within the Christian communities.
But perhaps with the present state of the Anglican Communion, his example might not be a bad one to look at. As most of you will know, just over a week ago, the Primates — that is, the chief bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and our own Primus, David Chillingworth, Bishop of our neighbouring diocese of St. Andrews, Dunkeld & Dunblane, spent the best part of the week together discussing, among other things, the issue of equal marriage or same-sex marriage. Everyone knew that it would be a difficult meeting. At one end of the spectrum, most of the Anglican churches on the African continent representing ovwr 30 million Anglicans, are firmly opposed to this and use various passages from the Bible and in particular the Old Testament, to justify their position. And it must be remembered that in many African countries it is very difficult to be a Christian, let alone a liberal one, when surrounded by fundamentalist Islam and in a culture where homosexuality carries the death penalty.
At the other end of the spectrum the Episcopal Church of the U.S. which has been solemnizing marriages between couples of the same gender for some time; Canada, which is well on the way to doing so; and although the mind of the Church has not been tested yet, probably Scotland, which has begun the process towards changing our canon on marriage.
The debate in Scotland has gone on for a long time but with a few notable exceptions, the debate has by and large been one at which people have been prepared to sit around the table and listen to opposing viewpoints, and hear people’s real experience of living with these issues.
The joy wonder of believing or not quite believing are incredibly strong emotions in Paul’s writings after his dramatic conversion. And that big mix of emotions sometimes makes life muddy and difficult. They make it actually very difficult to formulate a doctrine that will exclude, and they make it very hard to tell people what they should believe.
Together, they make a religion whose doctrine, whose creed is as wide as the arms of the God whom we hope in, trust in and who loves all of creation and which lets in the Spirit of freshness and change. No exclusion, no damnation, but only faith and hope and love.
Ours is a faith not based on the necessity of assenting to doctrine, but where we seek only to respond to the spirit of love. That is a religion that I think Jesus would be proud to own. And a religion we can be proud to own. A religion that I am proud to welcome everyone into. Because that produces a love and a hope that is more real than any list of beliefs, and especially ones that exclude, can hold.
Kelvin Holdsworth, the Provost of Glasgow Cathedral, says on his blog that people out there want to hear that message of inclusive love: “Grumpy about the Primates? Tell the world that God is love — proper love, not mealy-mouthed, compromised institutional bonds of affection but actual love itself.”
What has really upset many people, and when I say “many”, I mean MANY, is that the conclusion of these discussions was to reprimand and sanction the Episcopal Church of the U.S. for having the temerity to proceed to conduct such marriages in accordance with state law notwithstanding that each Province of the Anglican Communion is autonomous — we do not have a Pope for very good reason and the American Church has prayed, debated and prayed again before going through its own painful and lengthy canonical process to get where it has got.
On the one hand, say the Primates, we are a family of churches bound by common bonds of affection; on the other hand you, the Episcopal Church, have been very naughty and you are on the naughty step and are not allowed to come and sit at table with us. And let that be an example to any of the rest of you – Canada and Scotland take particular notice — because you try any stunt like the U.S. and you will be joining them on that naughty step whilst we decide what further punishment we can think up.
For Paul, standing up and challenging brought floggings, imprisonment and ultimately, death; but he had much to say before he was finally beheaded in Rome. And let us remember some of the beautiful passages attributed to
Paul:
“If I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
That was of course from his first letter to the Corinthians. And then, in his letter to the Galatians:
“As many of you were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
So I think Paul might have approved of the Presiding Bishop of the the Episcopal Church of the U.S. when he responded to the Primates’ majority decision, and remember he was one of them — he was there, and this was his response:
“Our commitment to be an inclusive Church is not on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of our culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all. While I understand that many disagree with us, our decision regarding marriage is based on the belief that the words of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians are true for the Church today:
‘All who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ.’”
Susan Russell, writing in The Huffington Post in response to the question response to the question of what being sanctioned meant for the Episcopal Church, said it means “we’re willing to pay ‘the cost of discipleship’ as we follow the Jesus who welcomed, blessed, included, empowered and loved absolutely everybody. It means we take seriously our call to be part of the Jesus Movement — proclaiming the Good News of God’s inclusive love to the world. It means we choose inclusion over exclusion, compassion over condemnation, and justice over judgment.”
And whatever your belief about same-sex marriage in church, I think Susan Russell hits the nail on the head. The moment we begin to exclude on issues of biblical interpretation or doctrine — I believe and think this is what Paul is saying too in these beautiful passages — we become unChristlike. Exclusion is what all religions do, and I think Christ hoped that we might be different.
Religions characteristically have beliefs that everyone in that religion agrees with. And therefore it is also characteristic that they come into conflict with other religions or denominations that disagree with those beliefs: Jews against Samaritans, Sunni against Shia, conservative against liberal. Each group convinced that their way is the right way come into conflict with other groups whose creeds and doctrines are different.
And so if we ask what is distinctive about Christianity, and our answer is ”we’re right, and everyone else is wrong’, then in fact. we are just like every other religion, because that is the answer that every other religion would give. And this communique from the primates does this, I think. I really don’t feel that sort of religion is what Jesus envisaged. As long as you have a thing, a doctrine, a belief in your religion that excludes those who hold a different view or don’t or can’t believe an aspect of doctrine, if you have a bottom line, then what you have is an entrance requirement. And there will always be people who don’t meet the criteria.
When you have that, then you are in reality just like every other religion –the only difference is the wording. And Jesus was fighting against an exclusive, doctrinal religion of the Pharisees, opening religion up to the Samaritans and the Gentiles, and the women and those who were previously excluded.
When we trot out a bottom line of belief, however low that bottom line is — is problematic because it stifles the prophetic; it excludes the radical thinker who might just be a saint in our midst. It excludes many who I would regard as faithful Christians, who feel that they fall beneath that bottom line. Who
feel they can’t go to church because of who they are. And above all, it might just exclude the Holy Spirit, the breath of life. I don’t want to be part of a religion that excludes the Spirit of freedom. I thought we were supposed to be different.
Because at the end of the day, all of the things we are talking about are matters of opinion. Whether you believe the synoptic Gospel resurrection stories to be literally true or wholly metaphorical or all things in between is generally decided in the same way you decide any other opinions — reason, experience, history, scholarship, prejudices, upbringing. And I really don’t see why a difference of opinion should exclude you from a religion that claims to faithfully represent the God of love.
But of course then the accusation that is always levelled at those of a liberal disposition is levelled right at us. It all becomes a free for all and we don’t stand for anything at all. How can we be a community of believers, if we don’t all believe the same things? Well, as I think we all discover in a year in the life of St. Paul’s Cathedral, there are different ways of believing and most of us are still here. I think one of Jesus’ aims was to break religion of the kind of tight rules and doctrinal statements apart, or rather break it open, so that no one was excluded.
And that’s why we’re going to proclaim a totally inclusive welcome very publicly with a big banner over the front door. As we shall be singing in a few moments, “All are welcome in this place”.
And so I close with a tiny poem from a fridge magnet that I have used before but which bears repeating for our patronal feast; for this us surely what it’s all about.
They drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew circle that took THEM in.
And it seems to me that if we can draw a circle of the love of Jesus as widely as that, we might even bring in the bigots and the homophobes and one day the Christian community will be as wide as God’s love, as big as the biggest heart in the world.
Brothers and Sisters, draw your cicles asa wiude as Gid’s love.
Amen.
***
The above is a transcript of a sermon delivered at The Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Dundee, on Sunday, the 24th of January, 2016 by The Very Reverend Jeremy Auld, Provost.