Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15: 4-13
Psalm 72: 1-7, 18-19
Matthew 3:112
Dear Creator: May these words be delivered not only under your guidance, but as a living conversation from one heart to another. Amen
VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT, 2013
Christine Hemp
Since Nelson Mandela left the planet three days ago, his words have been returning to us in crisp, awe-inspiring waves—on the radio, on Facebook, in the papers, and on television. Mandela gave the world a small slice of Isaiah’s Peaceable Kingdom, creating unity where we thought it was unimaginable. His strategic dismantling of South Africa’s apartheid – most of it accomplished behind prison walls – expanded the possible in an often impossible world.
I saw Mandela once –just four months after his release from prison, on the banks of the Charles River in Boston. He waved to us from his motorcade, his smile lighting up whole day, a quarter of a million people cheering him along Storrow Drive. Just seeing his face inspired tears, adulation, and yes—awe. It’s hard not to project all our hopes and dreams on such a figure; we want him to be perfect! But Mandela was always quick say, “I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
In other words, Mandela was human. A cracked vessel just like us (what did Zorba the Greek say? “Humanity is the full catastrophe!!”) Mandela struggled with his several marriages; he acknowledged that he had neglected his families. Many of his political allies felt betrayed by some of his actions, and the governing of his country was less than perfect. But this was the same man who had befriended his prison guards, introducing them by name to his visitors; the man who later donned the green jersey of the South African rugby team (a longtime symbol of white South Africa) to the cheers of thousands of fans; and the man made it a habit not to publically denounce those who had betrayed him. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the cow and the bear shall graze, and the child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
Mandela spent nearly 30 years in the adder’s den, and he admitted that his incarceration allowed him to hone his vision, to understand his enemies. The New York Times obituary described his being asked how, after such barbarous torment, he managed to keep hatred in check. “Hating clouds the mind,” he said. “It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate.”
Leaders cannot afford to hate...For Mandela’s narrative to become clear and whole, it took being expelled—and incarcerated in a kind of wilderness—for him finally to return to that country ripped apart by hatred and lead it into a new life.
Another polarizing and unifying figure has popped up in today’s Gospel: Our friend John the Baptist. Like Mandela, he spent a long time in the wilderness. First in the cave near the Dead Sea. And then, of course, later in prison. Alone. Honing his vision. He was not exactly an appealing political candidate nor as charming as Nelson Mandela. John was probably the kind of guy who stepped too close to you when he was talking, spit coming out with over-pronounced consonants. Hair in a frenzy, eyes wide. (I imagine him rather smelly as well, with that camel hair tunic. And let's not forget the crushed insect breath.)
In the cave John had had plenty of time to think, but once he hit the River Jordon he didn’t waste time telling people to shape up. “Repent” actually means to turn in another direction, to face the world from a new-- physical--perspective. I always picture repent meaning this Everyone try it: turn whole torso to the right or the left in your seat. If you shift your body, you can feel what John was saying, can't you? Even if it's ever so subtle---it cannot be just turning the head. It has to start from the heart.
John knew this last part, yet what’s most interesting about Matthew’s Gospel is our prophet's harsh treatment of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two most powerful (and competing) political factions in Judaism at the time. (Think Tea Party meets MoveOn.org.) Can you picture them leaving the confines of Washington D.C.'s Beltway --together?--and driving out to the banks of the Potomac?
John, instead of opening his arms to say, “everyone is welcome here” he rips into a tirade and calls the Sadducees and Pharisees a brood of snakes, accusing them of being so self-satisfied about their calcified ideologies, their clerical pedigrees, and preferred-customer status they assume they're exempt from moral scrutiny—no matter what they do.
To those of us who feel cozy about our attitude toward “inclusiveness," John’s shouting isn’t exactly a kumbaya moment. But then we have to ask why the Pharisees and Sadducees are at John’s watering hole in the first place. Are they really there to be baptized themselves? It seems more likely—even more so by John's exasperation—that they are there to find out why their constituents are no longer inside the Beltway, in the Temple. Why are they outside the city walls standing in the river with Gentiles, their heads being washed by a man with honey on his beard? A guy who promises power in the physical "turning of the heart," and then announces that someone else is yet to come (who could be more emphatic than John?), someone whose sandals "I'm not worthy to carry even in my backpack pocket." Somebody Big was around the corner.
Like Mandela, John the Baptist had a vision and he was sticking to it. With a vengeance. Expelled from society, John had the distance to see through false motives and political jockeying. He’d honed his strategy in the wilderness. I imagine him fully stepping into his power as he waded into the Jordon, crowds thirsty for the baptism to release them from the tired ways of the Temple, the dead end of their respective spiritual journeys. John had a knack for seeing things others could not. And yet even he was not prepared for the radical –and inclusive—plan that Jesus would unveil.
Expulsion is a theme throughout the Old and New Testaments. Starting with Adam and Eve’s eviction from the Garden of Eden, to the Israelites hurled from their homeland to wander in the wilderness. And Jesus himself was literally thrown out of town time after time in his ministry.
Being expelled is part of our spiritual narrative here at St. Paul’s, too. It could be that someone we love dearly suddenly takes another path, and we feel left behind, disoriented and confused. Or, for the newer people in this room, maybe the temple or town you once called home no longer is, and you find yourself here, floundering for stability. Or perhaps some of us have suffered a long depression where the world contracts into a tiny pit and we're stuck in a dark cave. Or we discover that a spouse, a partner, or a friend is called to new growth and we feel utterly betrayed and rejected. Then again some of us might be rudely awakened by illness or aging. (Expelled from youth!? No way! That’s not supposed to happen…at least not yet!) I’m guessing that the very reason we are all here is because each of us has experienced some kind of wilderness. A time when possibility seems like a mirage in the desert. And we have come this river to sort it out, to ask our burning questions, to dip our heads in the water of something promised, that it might stream down our tear-stained faces.
So maybe John shows us that expulsion is necessary in order to fully recognize the peaceable kingdom at hand. Mandela was in jail for almost three decades, only to emerge a national leader and an international icon of peace. John the Baptist came out of his cave to introduce us to something so much bigger than he could ever fathom himself—even though eventually it meant he had to step down from being The One. Part of his path meant he had to let the bigger story unfold—one that would eventually take his head.
I am not a political or religious leader. Nor am I a prophet who can see the future. But as a poet it’s my job to imagine how it might feel to be so. For the more we can imagine what it’s like to be someone else—a prison guard, an injured cat, or even the hunk of maple this altar is made from—the more we can co-create with God the Peaceable Kingdom we long for. Right now. Right here. No matter how many expulsions we may have endured.
Three years ago I was asked to preach on this very Sunday. Instead of a sermon, I composed four poems for Advent, all in the voices of various characters we'd been hearing about in the Christmas story. This morning I will end this homily with a poem from that series. It’s in the voice of John the Baptist and it’s called “The Wilderness.”
JOHN THE BAPTIST
It seemed fitting, my wearing the mantle of prophesy. People touching
my itchy robe, expecting honey light to beam them over the seared stones
of suffering. I liked the desert and the terrible sun. It exposed everything--
even my own misgivings. Finally I hid in a dark cave to listen.
The walls murmured. When I finally stepped into the light, the twisted
trail was straight. Then I heard other voices— crowds had trekked
across the barren land to find me. I led them to the river. It offered up
its coolness and begged to be married with fire. So I broke
the water with my cup and poured it over head after bowed head,
shouting out imperatives. (Even before my mother saw my face
she knew I was meant to be a heart-turner.) That fat, sleepy river kept me
sane. It told me time was reflection only, past and future pressed
into that light. Now is all we have, it said. Oh, I knew that. I was good
at waving my arms, scattering vipers like a cloud of locusts. People listened.
The scary part came later when my words and gestures ignited
a different fire: It burned my sandals. I feel it now in my aching head.
I wasn’t prepared for this—lying alone in the shadows, hearing second-hand
about the lame and lepers. My question is not “Why me? but “Why him?”
________________________________________________________________________________________________
EXITS AND ENTRANCES
Christine Hemp
February 3, 2013
Readings:Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71: 1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13: Luke 4:21-30
Next Tuesday the first- through third-graders at Grant Street Elementary will performtheir own production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. As poet-in-residence at our local school, I’ve worked with these children for several years now—and they love to write. In fact, for this production they have written their own couplets, quatrains, and blank verse that weave in and out of Shakespeare’s words, taking us from the greedy, power-hungrycourt of Bad Duke Frederick to the beatific joys of Arden Forest—where, as one kid said, “love lives.”
Sometimes it’s hard to tell which words are Shakespeare’s and which are the children’s-- although it’s pretty clear in some cases. This is Emerson’s couplet from Act II:“Here we are in Arden Forest/but I feel just like a tourist”! (note the delightful slant rhyme)
One of Shakespeare’s most famous passages from “As You Like It,” however,is uttered by Jaques, a discontentedfriend of the Duke.
“All the world's a stage,” he says,
“And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts…”
Jaques always seems to see things from a remove and with no small amount wistfulness. In one of his many melancholy moments, he dismisses life as merely play-acting. That passage goes on highlight the drudgingstages of life -- all ending in death, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything.”Jaques is the only dark cloud in an otherwise very funny and happy play, another example of how Shakespeare always manages to balance the truth of dark and light.
When I asked the children what they thoughtthat speech meant, Jeannette, a second grader – said “Well, he’s saying that first you’re a kid. Then we grow up and pretty soon we become a mother! and then we become a grandmother and then we die.” Bingo. No need for Jeannette to enroll in Literature 101.
Then Porter chimed in. “But really it’s more than that” he held his arms in the air, his small palms up. “It’s very clear. Yes. First you are little. Then you grow up to be a teenager. And then a grownup. But then YOU have kids and then THEY have kids and THEY have kids… On and on and on. He waved his arm and then paused.It’s just like… a never-ending YOU.”
What struck memost – besides Porter’s utter confidence in his authority – was his grasp of what I can only describe as the Eternal. A kind of instinctual “knowing” about the connectedness of us all, the hugeness of life’s mystery, and how our life-spirit is so much more far-reachingthat we can ever intellectually“know.”
In my experience, the children—or those who have not forgotten what it is to be a child—are usually the ones who continuallyreawaken the Holy and Eternal inside us. Our adult (and often sentimental) minds tend to limit –rather than expand—who we really areand what we can do.
In this morning’s Old Testament reading, for example, Jeremiah is called by God to prophesy some uncomfortable news to people he knows will not take it easily. Jeremiahresists God, protesting with“Hey – I’m only a boy! What could I have to offer the world exactly?Plus, it’s just not the right time for me.”
To which his Creator –beyond Time—replies:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you. Do not be afraid…for I am with you.”
In other words, it seems as if God is asking us to acknowledge another kind of knowing. His knowing: of our essence, our connectedness to him, to each other, to our true and vibrant selves. For only then we can trust and accept the strange, bewildering, and seemingly ill-timed demands of this life.
Jesus faced in today’s Gospel story (in what Karen last week called his “home boy” visit back to Nazareth). Jesus’s childhood friends and neighbors weren’t too keen about his saying that Godincludeseveryone in his Kingdom—like Syrians and other outsiders. (I can hear the mumbling in the crowd: “Isn’t that Joseph’s boy??! What right has he to say such things to us who truly know him? We knew him in diapers, for heaven’s sake”)In fact Jesus’s words upset them so much they run him out of town – literally. (Their vision was not exactly an embodiment of Porter’s “never-ending You.”)
Therefore, being “known” by Godseems to be a very different thing from being “known” by our fellow mortals. Like Jesus’s childhood friends in Nazareth—and St. Paul’s crabby Corinthians arguing (about, of all things! spiritual gifts) —we, too, can be so attached to our IDEAS of ourselves— how we fit into family, our job, our church or synagogue. How we fit into “God’s Plan” –or even whenthings are supposed to happen—that we cannot seethe Arden Forest that God has planted for us. Here. Right now. Not tomorrow. Not when the dishes are done. Not when we have enough money. Not when we’ve dressed for success. Not when we finally feel holy. Not when we’ve finished writing our sermon for Sunday. Right now.
What I think God is offering us here --made clear in the stories about Jeremiah, Jesus in Nazareth, and even in Paul’s with the bickering Corinthians – is the opportunity to inhabit rather than be tourists in his Kingdom. The abundant and transformative Arden Forest is available each time we recognize that God recognizes us, that he knows our face, from even before we were born.
And when we do surrender to this “knowing,” we can occupy a place described in the lines written by third-grader Savannah for the last act of “As You Like It”:
Every beloved land shall have
A kind heart in every soul.
Every one shall
Be lifted to all heaven’s
Beautiful love secrets.”
“All heaven’s/Beautiful love secrets…” Her words sound like they came from the mouth of a Sufi mystic. Rumi? Or Hafiz perhaps?
I am hoping that Savannah will nevertake St. Paul’s advice and put away “childish things” if that means her poetry.
And I pray that Porter will never lose his understanding ofthe continuum of entrances and exits.
In praise of God’s own kind of knowing, I’d like to end with a short poem of my own I wrote just a week ago – for dear friends, a couple who have just given birth to a precariously premature baby – at 28 weeks. It’s called:
THE EARLY GUEST
Sometimes before the tablecloth is laid,
before the beef bourguignon is done, and the glasses have yet
to be polished, the doorbell rings. Oh, no! you think, it cannot be.
I thought I said six. Untying your apron, you scurry to answer,
and suddenly—framed in the entry— the one
you’ve prepared for all these months. The cry
of surprise. The embrace both familiar and strange,
her arms like thin vines, pulsing with the waiting that could not
wait. You shove aside the linens on the chair, you crumple the news
and light the fire. You offer her a drink. Her face is more
radiant than you remembered, both ancient and new
reflected in the flames of expectation. The timer
rings on the stove, the beef now overdone, but you stay by the fire
and wonder how you could have worried about the salad.
And what, exactly, was so important about that book
you had to read, those urgent messages in your box, deadlines
you once assumed were fixed? – as if there is ever a right
time for anything. To see her face is all there is. The touch
of her delicate wrist. She is no longer merely passing
through. The room you made up with fresh cotton
sheets is already her own. She has arrived. And so have you.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
TRANSFIGURED by Christine Hemp February 19, 2012
This past week I was poet-in-residence at Quilcene Elementary School. The kids were especially excited about our theme for the week: “The House of Poetry.” I told them that they could put anything they wanted in their own houses of poetry. They could fill it with magic, with any emotion they pleased, with the words that they love. We even built a preliminary house with their bodies, Cooper was the fireplace, Anastasia a comfortable chair, James was a window. Lilly was a door. Diego chose to be the cornerstone.
Jakob loved the idea that poetry—like a structure-- could contain so much feeling and so much stuff. At one point his arm shot up, “Hey Christine! There’s something else!! Our bodies are containers, too, aren’t they?” When Jakob made this connection between the living body and poetry, I invited him to come right up to the front of the class--as an illustration that he was indeed a living poem, a house of poetry himself. Everybody cheered. Then we all named things that were inside of us – “happy!” “scary” “sad” “afraid!” “tummy!” “heart!” and “breath!”
Needless to say, Jakob was transfigured right then and there, his face beaming with the light of a thousand poems.
Today’s Gospel story is one I’ve always been drawn to, mostly for its wacky turn of events. First, Jesus asks three of his disciples Peter, James, and John, to accompany him up the mountain for a private hike. I can imagine their excitement at being the “special ones,” hoping they’d make a big plan for the kingdom – maybe discussing positions for each of them in their new ministry.
But then things get really strange. Suddenly Jesus’s face and clothes turn into what we might only compare to the Aurora Borealis – “Brighter such as no one on earth could bleach them” (Who knew ancient Palestine carried Clorox?) Then out of nowhere, Moses and Elijah show up –also lit to the hilt-- discussing with Jesus events that are yet to take place. (This coming from guys who had been dead roughly 800 and 1000 years, respectively.) But their stories were familiar to the disciples: Moses and the Burning bush. Then Elijah, our friend today from 2nd Kings who left the planet in a chariot of fire—with flaming horses no less. After his ascent, his friend Elisha, witness to this event, ripped his shirt in two, as a sign of grief and also a symbol of receiving a “double share” of Elijah’s spirit to carry on the prophetic tradition.
Smack dab in the middle of Jesus’ conversation with the luminous prophets, Peter blurts nervously, “It is good for us to be here! Let’s make three houses! One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” (Some translations say “booths” which for me has always conjured a carnival scene, cotton candy at the ready. ) Peter is quickly shhhhed, however, by God’s voice booming from the darkening clouds, telling him to “LISTEN.” But I love Peter’s specific and enthusiastic outburst. First of all, he and his friends were terrified. It says as much in the Gospel. And yet Peter’s impulse –unlike James’s or John’s -- was to frame this spectacle not only with language, but a structure – both literal and figurative.
When I was in my 20’s working as a carpenter, and flush with my new vocation as a poet—probably not too much different from young Peter— I thought I had a handle on this story and wrote a poem about it. I was living in Vermont then, and one afternoon driving home from a job building a barn, the late afternoon sun came out from the clouds and hit a stand maples and white birches. Their leaves were turning gold, and it was a breathtaking moment. I was definitely seduced by my own language, but I’d like to read it to you now. It’s called, yes --
THE TRANSFIGURATION
Listen.
My eyes are listening
As I drive
The river road. Clouds hang
Like damp sheets over ripe
Cornfields and yellow woods.
My engine skips, and I
Bank for the curve.
Around the bend I am thrown
Off guard by a cluster
Of trees caught radiant in a
Sudden shock
Of light from a break
In the clouds.
My senses strain:
White birch trunks flash,
Cattails glint like swords.
I want to run my fingers
Through that flutter
Of quivering leaves, feel
The papery yellows and greens.
I want to leave the wheel,
Spread my arms,
Become this grove of
Light light light.
I want to fold it
Into an apple box and stash it
In my trunk.
But I downshift,
Hear the engine strain while
Behind me clouds darken,
Trees fade.
Well, I still kind of like this poem after all these years. Ironically, it was published in the Anglican Theological Review. In those days I interpreted Peter’s proposal as one founded in his desire to hold on to the beauty. I, too, wanted that -- Vermont maples and everything I was experiencing in the world. I was intoxicated by trying to do that with my art – my poetry. Beauty in a box.
What I didn’t see then – perhaps because I didn’t want to or just didn’t have enough life experience– is that Peter’s almost manic desire to build those little houses was not only to save the beauty, but to assuage his own fear.
Notice that we hear nothing from John or James But as I reread this Transfiguration story 30 years later—Peter appears to be doing some self-care: He wanted to comfort himself in the best way he knew how, to give language and form to an otherwise garbled and ineffable moment. Make sense out of an un-sensible situation. (Just like the poet! I knew there was a reason I have a fondness for chatty Peter).
The transfiguration story seems to reveal more than a face on fire. It was also Jesus’s way of showing the three disciples that there was going to be suffering ahead for all of them. In the end, they, too, would be radiating like Moses and Elijah, yes, but not without a bumpy road ahead. That’s a lot to take in for anyone, much less a fisherman who has left his nets for a man promising joy linked with pain.
Those of us who have experienced some suffering and grief ourselves – and none of us can get through this life without it— Peter’s desire to capture the moment is a natural impulse . We – or at least I --can fully understand his turning to something familiar when facing the unknown: The friendly sound of the clothes dryer when we’re bedridden; the mail truck out the window after death has taken someone we love; the pink rubber boots on the child in the chair next to us in the doctor’s office—appearing like jewels from the World of Normalcy—while we wait for terrifying test results. Something real. Something we can touch.
So instead of patronizing our loquacious Peter (“Oh, that Peter! Always promising things he can’t deliver! Always putting his two cents in!” A tin ear when it comes to tact!”) I find I am more like him than I thought, and I’m not embarrassed to say so.
On that mountain with Jesus, Peter, James, and John were given a glimpse through the gauzy film -- into the Bigness of Things, including the trajectory of Jesus’ life as well as their own. And the story was not all a box of beauty. (Just like our lives.) So Peter— in his utterly clumsy way— tried to fit all that that “happy!” “scary” “sad” “afraid!” “tummy!” “heart!” and “breath!” into his own HOUSE OF POETRY. And though his tongue got him into trouble (he was told again and again that he often missed the point), remember it was he who Jesus chose to be the cornerstone of our Church.
In Peter’s honor, I have written a brand new Transfiguration poem. It’s title is his name. And it’s written in his voice.
PETER
For years I’ve struggled with what happened on the hill. It wasn’t so much
the light itself, but how it spoke. Blinding radiance turning into psalm.
In a flash His figure transformed into an instrument of melody and cacophony.
As if that were not enough, two prophets pulsed and broke through the membrane
separating here and there. I kid you not— we saw past them to forever. What on earth
was I to do with this? John, disfigured by his fear, stood mute. James reached
for his knife. And me? I filled in the blanks. There are those
who ponder, and those who do their figuring aloud. (Even that first day,
when he called us from the nets? I wasn’t exactly mute.) So I proposed plan.
It seemed imperative that we stuff the Moment into some place safe.
I figured we could preserve it all for later, dread and ecstasy alike. Build a shed
for each. With a door that locks. A cornerstone to ground it. My words had barely
left my lips when the light stopped singing. Tympani broke the sky and shook us
to the bone. Our terror, bleached beyond the color wheel, could not accommodate
what was revealed: the torn seam. The reconfiguration of our lives. His life. All of life.
Afterwards, stumbling down the trail, following His easy stride, we knew
we’d left the old prefigured path. I grew quiet, my body
a container for the secret –seen and unseen –we were sworn to keep. It hung inside me,
a figurehead of hope and trepidation. When James and John looked at me,
we held our gaze. Before collapsing into sleep that night under pale and insufficient
stars, I slid my favorite tunic off and ripped the thing in two.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE KINGDOM by Christine Hemp
October 7, 2012
Readings:
Job 1:1 – 2: 1-10, Psalm 26, Hebrews 1:1-4, 2: 5-12, Mark 10: 1-16
Whew! In the Gospel for today we sure get a lot of law and policy. Pundits and commentators. Divorce and marriage! Trick questions! Moral high ground! A feast of intellectual controversy! (Who knew we’d still be arguing about the politics of marriage two thousand years later?)
The questions asked by the Pharisees— and even the disciples—oddly resemble the questions Job asks of God. And we can all relate: If we do the RIGHT THING, and get the RIGHT ANSWERS we will win! We will understand! We will be okay! We’ll “get it,” and we’ll be handed the keys to the Kingdom, whatever form we imagine that to be.
But, apparently that’s not the point.
As God eventually told Job, sometimes the questions we ask are irrelevant. And Jesus, exasperated by the fruitless verbal gymnastics in which he’s being forced to engage, finally turns away from both the Pharisees and the disciples to shine his attention on those who couldn’t care less about laws and rules and who or what might be called “right.” He turns to the children.
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus says to those who try to shoo the kids away, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them”
I picture that noisy moment – a bunch of messy kids racing up to Jesus, tripping over themselves, scrambling toward a source of love they cannot explain or justify –or even argue about; it just IS. And unlike the smoochy, sentimental way some adults treat children (Like animals, children always know when adults are phony or talking down to them) Jesus knew who they were.
Three years ago today I decided to give my local church another try. I’d attended sporadically during the time I’d lived in town. I’d heard the rector preach a couple times, but I was uncomfortable with her exuberance. Once in a Christmas sermon she’d even use the word straw instead of hay when describing the manager, a piece of minutiae that addled me there in the pew, my brows furrowed.
But that particular fall Sunday I was emerging from a spate of Job-like experiences myself: several deaths of people close to me, and an illness of my own that had required a year of treatment. During the course of these experiences, however, I’d learned some new stuff about gratitude. My illness especially had filled me with a deep tenderness– for my oncologist’s hands, for my husband’s voice reading me novels when I could not focus on a book, for the nuthatches feeding outside our window.
Therefore, after my physical healing, I hungered after form— a sanctuary that could accommodate both my gratitude AND my questions; my praise AND my doubt.
So on that first Sunday in October, I entered the doors of a small church on a hill above the bay. By this time I’d heard that the rector had been an opera singer or a performer of some kind which – being a performer myself—helped explain her bigger-than-life persona. In previous visits I’d been afraid that her outstretched hands would entrap me, so I always slipped out right after communion. I shied away from putting on what I perceived as the Tight Coat of Religious Life, an involvement that might squeeze me dry. But I loved the prayers and familiar liturgy and there was something about the FEEL of the place, the authentic way parishioners laughed and exchanged hugs during the Peace. A former boyfriend had called Episcopalians “Gods Frozen People” but I didn’t see any ice chipping off these shoulders.
The rector stepped up to preach. Oh, no, I thought, and braced myself. The sermon turned out to be about Job. She approached his dilemma as if she were speaking directly to me. I couldn’t help but remember the previous few years when I’d wailed “Why?” more than once. Fleeing a disastrous relationship, I’d arrived home only to find my mother in the throes of Alzheimer’s. And during her care my rock-solid, cheerful father succumbed to pneumonia and unexpectedly left the planet. Oh! and quickly upon the heels of seeing my father to the Other Side, one of my closest friends was felled swiftly by a heart attack.
What does Claudius say in “Hamlet?” “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” My mother would have said it differently. She would have held up her hands, palms outward, and shaken them, and said, “TOO GLOOMY!”
The rector’s sermon went right to the existential core of Job’s dilemma. After doing everything right, and suffering enough of the boils and loss of his family, he is at his wits end. More? he asks. I have stuck with you, God. Why? Why Why? Why more? I would guess that most of us here have asked God the same question.
Three months after my mother died, I was diagnosed with cancer. And so was my beloved cat of 19 years. At one point my sister said, “We’d better not tell anyone about any more or our troubles or they’ll put a mark on our door and stay away!” Once again, though, I wondered, What exactly is God asking me to do here?
And, three years ago, arms outstretched and eyes shining, the rector said, “God’s answer to Job blasts him off his ashy seat, “howling out from the eye of a mighty whirlwind. The answer isn’t about anything Job has asked!! It is all about questions God has for Job!”
During that grueling year of chemotherapy which I called the “Font of Purification” followed by months of radiation—which I dubbed “The Rays of Illumination” –I was befriended by a little grey Arabian horse, owned by a neighbor. During those days of treatment I’d stagger over to his meadow, and sit with him under the trees while he napped or grazed. His breath on my face was the breath of God.
As that dark year turned into bright spring and I began to heal, I started riding this spritely creature. And when I mounted him bareback and headed out onto the trails for the first time, I was awash in gratitude—for Buddy’s unexpected presence in my life, for the beauty of the day, for my precious body’s amazing capacity to bounce back.
I thought about all of this when the rector’s sermon took Job’s story one step further. She said that God’s reply to Job was not an answer, but more questions. She cited one of my favorite passages in the Bible: “Where were YOU when I planned the earth…measuring its length with a cord? Do YOU give the horse strength? Do you make him leap like a locust, snort like a blast of thunder?”
Buddy pranced down the trail, while rays of morning sun filtered through the cedars, particles whirling in the cone of light. Bands of sun lay across the trail and the woods smelled like skunk cabbage and balsam. He was a hot-blooded horse, and I knew at any moment he might leap sideways or spook at the smallest rustle, but was I afraid? Heck no! I’d been down in that Valley of the Shadow of Death – What was there to be afraid of now?
In fact, all the old questions and concerns of my life – professional success, intellectual prowess, even my old spiritual practices—didn’t seem to matter as I rode among the mossy logs, the sprouting ferns, the thrush’s tremolo. After shedding many of the questions that diminish life (such as “Why? Why? Why?”) I was learning (along with Buddy’s help) to say “Why not?” and YES to whatever is happening right NOW. As a result, a huge spaciousness became available to me. It was as if I were seeing the world for the first time – or we could say, with the eyes of a child—(or a horse!)
The rector lowered her voice an octave, and finished the sermon by saying that God held all things – and that he hallowed all things, both suffering AND joy. “The whole of our reality is God,” she said, dropping her hands, “and that is the answer to every question there is.”
I sat completely still. The whole room breathed.
Later, during the announcements, when I was still pondering this utterly fresh rendering of Job, the rector announced that the annual St. Francis Blessing of the Animals would take place that afternoon on the labyrinth. “At 3:00,” she said, smiling directly at me as if she knew something I did not.
I’d never ridden Buddy all the way into town. Though later that year my husband would surprise me with Buddy as a Christmas present, at that time he was still my neighbor’s horse, and I wondered if it was too far to take him – on busy roads, no less. But we made it safely and just in time.
I urged him up the sidewalk to edge of the labyrinth and slipped off his back. “Ohhhhhhhhhh! A horse!” rippled through the crowd. People leaned over their smiling dogs and cat carriers with whiskers poking through. A black lab wore a red scarf and a tiny apricot poodle curled in the lap of a woman whose hair matched her dog’s. A child flung her arms around a Jack Russell terrier and a woman held an older cat in a bundle on her lap.
“Welcome everyone!” the rector said, holding up her arms, her robe spangled with a hand-sewn chasuble, radiant as the autumn leaves on the labyrinth. I smoothed Buddy’s mane, wondering how he’d handle all this commotion, if he’d make it through the service. A woman in a Western shirt came up and handed me a program, “Handsome animal,” she said.
Immediately Buddy grabbed the bulletin and waved it up and down, pages flapping. The congregation laughed and Buddy dropped the paper in my hand.
“Let’s sing together!” the rector said, and we launched into All Things Bright and Beautiful/ All Creatures Great and Small. All Things Wise and Wonderful/The Lord God Made Them All… By the time we reached the end – this hymn my mother had sung to me as a child – my face was wet with tears. But Buddy stood happily unmoved, as if he were exactly where he was meant to be. No fidgeting, no jumping.
As I gazed around the crowd, it became clear that I was welcome here. All creatures great and small. As the rag-tag group read St. Francis’s Canticle of the Sun I understood that this was not theater. It was the real deal. These people weren’t attending out of duty – nor from some desire to prove they were Good Christians. Like the children Jesus blessed, they were here because of what they loved. In a flash I realized that there is no Tight Coat of Religious Life-- unless you shove your arms into the sleeves yourself and button it up! Nobody here was wearing one.
When it came time for the blessing, the rector used a moistened branch of rosemary to touch each and every animal with care, gently calling them by name.
“And now—“The rector dipped the rosemary into the ceramic bowl and, with quiet knowing, walked toward Buddy and me.
“What’s this marvelous horse’s name?”
“Buddy!” I said, as if he were my firstborn.
Buddy nodded and wrapped his lips around the rosemary branch, its smell prompting him to curl his lips back into a horse-laugh. More chuckles from my fellow pilgrims.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhh, Buddy,” the rector said softly, touching his forehead with her palm. “What a wonderful face you have.” Buddy nosed her other hand while a dog huffed around his legs. A child raced after a puppy. But Buddy did not flinch, nor did he raise his head or puff his nostrils. His eyes remained soft, his hoofs planted firmly on the ground.
The rector raised the branch and touched Buddy’s delicate head. “In the name of The Creator, The Redeemer and the Sanctifier, Buddy, I bless you… and oh, what a blessed soul you are…”
And Buddy sighed. Tiny beads of water clung to his forelock like jewels. His breath reminded me again that we are already in the Kingdom. It is here. Right now. No tight coats. And for all our asking and deciding arguing and doubting, sometimes just the questions themselves are the answers.
May we all learn to embrace this contradiction, and— like the children and creatures of this world who seem to wear both suffering and joy with equal grace—know that in every moment our God is lifting us into the arms of Creation, laying a hand upon our heads, and blessing us over and over without end.
Romans 15: 4-13
Psalm 72: 1-7, 18-19
Matthew 3:112
Dear Creator: May these words be delivered not only under your guidance, but as a living conversation from one heart to another. Amen
VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT, 2013
Christine Hemp
Since Nelson Mandela left the planet three days ago, his words have been returning to us in crisp, awe-inspiring waves—on the radio, on Facebook, in the papers, and on television. Mandela gave the world a small slice of Isaiah’s Peaceable Kingdom, creating unity where we thought it was unimaginable. His strategic dismantling of South Africa’s apartheid – most of it accomplished behind prison walls – expanded the possible in an often impossible world.
I saw Mandela once –just four months after his release from prison, on the banks of the Charles River in Boston. He waved to us from his motorcade, his smile lighting up whole day, a quarter of a million people cheering him along Storrow Drive. Just seeing his face inspired tears, adulation, and yes—awe. It’s hard not to project all our hopes and dreams on such a figure; we want him to be perfect! But Mandela was always quick say, “I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
In other words, Mandela was human. A cracked vessel just like us (what did Zorba the Greek say? “Humanity is the full catastrophe!!”) Mandela struggled with his several marriages; he acknowledged that he had neglected his families. Many of his political allies felt betrayed by some of his actions, and the governing of his country was less than perfect. But this was the same man who had befriended his prison guards, introducing them by name to his visitors; the man who later donned the green jersey of the South African rugby team (a longtime symbol of white South Africa) to the cheers of thousands of fans; and the man made it a habit not to publically denounce those who had betrayed him. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the cow and the bear shall graze, and the child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
Mandela spent nearly 30 years in the adder’s den, and he admitted that his incarceration allowed him to hone his vision, to understand his enemies. The New York Times obituary described his being asked how, after such barbarous torment, he managed to keep hatred in check. “Hating clouds the mind,” he said. “It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate.”
Leaders cannot afford to hate...For Mandela’s narrative to become clear and whole, it took being expelled—and incarcerated in a kind of wilderness—for him finally to return to that country ripped apart by hatred and lead it into a new life.
Another polarizing and unifying figure has popped up in today’s Gospel: Our friend John the Baptist. Like Mandela, he spent a long time in the wilderness. First in the cave near the Dead Sea. And then, of course, later in prison. Alone. Honing his vision. He was not exactly an appealing political candidate nor as charming as Nelson Mandela. John was probably the kind of guy who stepped too close to you when he was talking, spit coming out with over-pronounced consonants. Hair in a frenzy, eyes wide. (I imagine him rather smelly as well, with that camel hair tunic. And let's not forget the crushed insect breath.)
In the cave John had had plenty of time to think, but once he hit the River Jordon he didn’t waste time telling people to shape up. “Repent” actually means to turn in another direction, to face the world from a new-- physical--perspective. I always picture repent meaning this Everyone try it: turn whole torso to the right or the left in your seat. If you shift your body, you can feel what John was saying, can't you? Even if it's ever so subtle---it cannot be just turning the head. It has to start from the heart.
John knew this last part, yet what’s most interesting about Matthew’s Gospel is our prophet's harsh treatment of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two most powerful (and competing) political factions in Judaism at the time. (Think Tea Party meets MoveOn.org.) Can you picture them leaving the confines of Washington D.C.'s Beltway --together?--and driving out to the banks of the Potomac?
John, instead of opening his arms to say, “everyone is welcome here” he rips into a tirade and calls the Sadducees and Pharisees a brood of snakes, accusing them of being so self-satisfied about their calcified ideologies, their clerical pedigrees, and preferred-customer status they assume they're exempt from moral scrutiny—no matter what they do.
To those of us who feel cozy about our attitude toward “inclusiveness," John’s shouting isn’t exactly a kumbaya moment. But then we have to ask why the Pharisees and Sadducees are at John’s watering hole in the first place. Are they really there to be baptized themselves? It seems more likely—even more so by John's exasperation—that they are there to find out why their constituents are no longer inside the Beltway, in the Temple. Why are they outside the city walls standing in the river with Gentiles, their heads being washed by a man with honey on his beard? A guy who promises power in the physical "turning of the heart," and then announces that someone else is yet to come (who could be more emphatic than John?), someone whose sandals "I'm not worthy to carry even in my backpack pocket." Somebody Big was around the corner.
Like Mandela, John the Baptist had a vision and he was sticking to it. With a vengeance. Expelled from society, John had the distance to see through false motives and political jockeying. He’d honed his strategy in the wilderness. I imagine him fully stepping into his power as he waded into the Jordon, crowds thirsty for the baptism to release them from the tired ways of the Temple, the dead end of their respective spiritual journeys. John had a knack for seeing things others could not. And yet even he was not prepared for the radical –and inclusive—plan that Jesus would unveil.
Expulsion is a theme throughout the Old and New Testaments. Starting with Adam and Eve’s eviction from the Garden of Eden, to the Israelites hurled from their homeland to wander in the wilderness. And Jesus himself was literally thrown out of town time after time in his ministry.
Being expelled is part of our spiritual narrative here at St. Paul’s, too. It could be that someone we love dearly suddenly takes another path, and we feel left behind, disoriented and confused. Or, for the newer people in this room, maybe the temple or town you once called home no longer is, and you find yourself here, floundering for stability. Or perhaps some of us have suffered a long depression where the world contracts into a tiny pit and we're stuck in a dark cave. Or we discover that a spouse, a partner, or a friend is called to new growth and we feel utterly betrayed and rejected. Then again some of us might be rudely awakened by illness or aging. (Expelled from youth!? No way! That’s not supposed to happen…at least not yet!) I’m guessing that the very reason we are all here is because each of us has experienced some kind of wilderness. A time when possibility seems like a mirage in the desert. And we have come this river to sort it out, to ask our burning questions, to dip our heads in the water of something promised, that it might stream down our tear-stained faces.
So maybe John shows us that expulsion is necessary in order to fully recognize the peaceable kingdom at hand. Mandela was in jail for almost three decades, only to emerge a national leader and an international icon of peace. John the Baptist came out of his cave to introduce us to something so much bigger than he could ever fathom himself—even though eventually it meant he had to step down from being The One. Part of his path meant he had to let the bigger story unfold—one that would eventually take his head.
I am not a political or religious leader. Nor am I a prophet who can see the future. But as a poet it’s my job to imagine how it might feel to be so. For the more we can imagine what it’s like to be someone else—a prison guard, an injured cat, or even the hunk of maple this altar is made from—the more we can co-create with God the Peaceable Kingdom we long for. Right now. Right here. No matter how many expulsions we may have endured.
Three years ago I was asked to preach on this very Sunday. Instead of a sermon, I composed four poems for Advent, all in the voices of various characters we'd been hearing about in the Christmas story. This morning I will end this homily with a poem from that series. It’s in the voice of John the Baptist and it’s called “The Wilderness.”
JOHN THE BAPTIST
It seemed fitting, my wearing the mantle of prophesy. People touching
my itchy robe, expecting honey light to beam them over the seared stones
of suffering. I liked the desert and the terrible sun. It exposed everything--
even my own misgivings. Finally I hid in a dark cave to listen.
The walls murmured. When I finally stepped into the light, the twisted
trail was straight. Then I heard other voices— crowds had trekked
across the barren land to find me. I led them to the river. It offered up
its coolness and begged to be married with fire. So I broke
the water with my cup and poured it over head after bowed head,
shouting out imperatives. (Even before my mother saw my face
she knew I was meant to be a heart-turner.) That fat, sleepy river kept me
sane. It told me time was reflection only, past and future pressed
into that light. Now is all we have, it said. Oh, I knew that. I was good
at waving my arms, scattering vipers like a cloud of locusts. People listened.
The scary part came later when my words and gestures ignited
a different fire: It burned my sandals. I feel it now in my aching head.
I wasn’t prepared for this—lying alone in the shadows, hearing second-hand
about the lame and lepers. My question is not “Why me? but “Why him?”
________________________________________________________________________________________________
EXITS AND ENTRANCES
Christine Hemp
February 3, 2013
Readings:Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71: 1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13: Luke 4:21-30
Next Tuesday the first- through third-graders at Grant Street Elementary will performtheir own production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. As poet-in-residence at our local school, I’ve worked with these children for several years now—and they love to write. In fact, for this production they have written their own couplets, quatrains, and blank verse that weave in and out of Shakespeare’s words, taking us from the greedy, power-hungrycourt of Bad Duke Frederick to the beatific joys of Arden Forest—where, as one kid said, “love lives.”
Sometimes it’s hard to tell which words are Shakespeare’s and which are the children’s-- although it’s pretty clear in some cases. This is Emerson’s couplet from Act II:“Here we are in Arden Forest/but I feel just like a tourist”! (note the delightful slant rhyme)
One of Shakespeare’s most famous passages from “As You Like It,” however,is uttered by Jaques, a discontentedfriend of the Duke.
“All the world's a stage,” he says,
“And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts…”
Jaques always seems to see things from a remove and with no small amount wistfulness. In one of his many melancholy moments, he dismisses life as merely play-acting. That passage goes on highlight the drudgingstages of life -- all ending in death, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything.”Jaques is the only dark cloud in an otherwise very funny and happy play, another example of how Shakespeare always manages to balance the truth of dark and light.
When I asked the children what they thoughtthat speech meant, Jeannette, a second grader – said “Well, he’s saying that first you’re a kid. Then we grow up and pretty soon we become a mother! and then we become a grandmother and then we die.” Bingo. No need for Jeannette to enroll in Literature 101.
Then Porter chimed in. “But really it’s more than that” he held his arms in the air, his small palms up. “It’s very clear. Yes. First you are little. Then you grow up to be a teenager. And then a grownup. But then YOU have kids and then THEY have kids and THEY have kids… On and on and on. He waved his arm and then paused.It’s just like… a never-ending YOU.”
What struck memost – besides Porter’s utter confidence in his authority – was his grasp of what I can only describe as the Eternal. A kind of instinctual “knowing” about the connectedness of us all, the hugeness of life’s mystery, and how our life-spirit is so much more far-reachingthat we can ever intellectually“know.”
In my experience, the children—or those who have not forgotten what it is to be a child—are usually the ones who continuallyreawaken the Holy and Eternal inside us. Our adult (and often sentimental) minds tend to limit –rather than expand—who we really areand what we can do.
In this morning’s Old Testament reading, for example, Jeremiah is called by God to prophesy some uncomfortable news to people he knows will not take it easily. Jeremiahresists God, protesting with“Hey – I’m only a boy! What could I have to offer the world exactly?Plus, it’s just not the right time for me.”
To which his Creator –beyond Time—replies:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you. Do not be afraid…for I am with you.”
In other words, it seems as if God is asking us to acknowledge another kind of knowing. His knowing: of our essence, our connectedness to him, to each other, to our true and vibrant selves. For only then we can trust and accept the strange, bewildering, and seemingly ill-timed demands of this life.
Jesus faced in today’s Gospel story (in what Karen last week called his “home boy” visit back to Nazareth). Jesus’s childhood friends and neighbors weren’t too keen about his saying that Godincludeseveryone in his Kingdom—like Syrians and other outsiders. (I can hear the mumbling in the crowd: “Isn’t that Joseph’s boy??! What right has he to say such things to us who truly know him? We knew him in diapers, for heaven’s sake”)In fact Jesus’s words upset them so much they run him out of town – literally. (Their vision was not exactly an embodiment of Porter’s “never-ending You.”)
Therefore, being “known” by Godseems to be a very different thing from being “known” by our fellow mortals. Like Jesus’s childhood friends in Nazareth—and St. Paul’s crabby Corinthians arguing (about, of all things! spiritual gifts) —we, too, can be so attached to our IDEAS of ourselves— how we fit into family, our job, our church or synagogue. How we fit into “God’s Plan” –or even whenthings are supposed to happen—that we cannot seethe Arden Forest that God has planted for us. Here. Right now. Not tomorrow. Not when the dishes are done. Not when we have enough money. Not when we’ve dressed for success. Not when we finally feel holy. Not when we’ve finished writing our sermon for Sunday. Right now.
What I think God is offering us here --made clear in the stories about Jeremiah, Jesus in Nazareth, and even in Paul’s with the bickering Corinthians – is the opportunity to inhabit rather than be tourists in his Kingdom. The abundant and transformative Arden Forest is available each time we recognize that God recognizes us, that he knows our face, from even before we were born.
And when we do surrender to this “knowing,” we can occupy a place described in the lines written by third-grader Savannah for the last act of “As You Like It”:
Every beloved land shall have
A kind heart in every soul.
Every one shall
Be lifted to all heaven’s
Beautiful love secrets.”
“All heaven’s/Beautiful love secrets…” Her words sound like they came from the mouth of a Sufi mystic. Rumi? Or Hafiz perhaps?
I am hoping that Savannah will nevertake St. Paul’s advice and put away “childish things” if that means her poetry.
And I pray that Porter will never lose his understanding ofthe continuum of entrances and exits.
In praise of God’s own kind of knowing, I’d like to end with a short poem of my own I wrote just a week ago – for dear friends, a couple who have just given birth to a precariously premature baby – at 28 weeks. It’s called:
THE EARLY GUEST
Sometimes before the tablecloth is laid,
before the beef bourguignon is done, and the glasses have yet
to be polished, the doorbell rings. Oh, no! you think, it cannot be.
I thought I said six. Untying your apron, you scurry to answer,
and suddenly—framed in the entry— the one
you’ve prepared for all these months. The cry
of surprise. The embrace both familiar and strange,
her arms like thin vines, pulsing with the waiting that could not
wait. You shove aside the linens on the chair, you crumple the news
and light the fire. You offer her a drink. Her face is more
radiant than you remembered, both ancient and new
reflected in the flames of expectation. The timer
rings on the stove, the beef now overdone, but you stay by the fire
and wonder how you could have worried about the salad.
And what, exactly, was so important about that book
you had to read, those urgent messages in your box, deadlines
you once assumed were fixed? – as if there is ever a right
time for anything. To see her face is all there is. The touch
of her delicate wrist. She is no longer merely passing
through. The room you made up with fresh cotton
sheets is already her own. She has arrived. And so have you.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
TRANSFIGURED by Christine Hemp February 19, 2012
This past week I was poet-in-residence at Quilcene Elementary School. The kids were especially excited about our theme for the week: “The House of Poetry.” I told them that they could put anything they wanted in their own houses of poetry. They could fill it with magic, with any emotion they pleased, with the words that they love. We even built a preliminary house with their bodies, Cooper was the fireplace, Anastasia a comfortable chair, James was a window. Lilly was a door. Diego chose to be the cornerstone.
Jakob loved the idea that poetry—like a structure-- could contain so much feeling and so much stuff. At one point his arm shot up, “Hey Christine! There’s something else!! Our bodies are containers, too, aren’t they?” When Jakob made this connection between the living body and poetry, I invited him to come right up to the front of the class--as an illustration that he was indeed a living poem, a house of poetry himself. Everybody cheered. Then we all named things that were inside of us – “happy!” “scary” “sad” “afraid!” “tummy!” “heart!” and “breath!”
Needless to say, Jakob was transfigured right then and there, his face beaming with the light of a thousand poems.
Today’s Gospel story is one I’ve always been drawn to, mostly for its wacky turn of events. First, Jesus asks three of his disciples Peter, James, and John, to accompany him up the mountain for a private hike. I can imagine their excitement at being the “special ones,” hoping they’d make a big plan for the kingdom – maybe discussing positions for each of them in their new ministry.
But then things get really strange. Suddenly Jesus’s face and clothes turn into what we might only compare to the Aurora Borealis – “Brighter such as no one on earth could bleach them” (Who knew ancient Palestine carried Clorox?) Then out of nowhere, Moses and Elijah show up –also lit to the hilt-- discussing with Jesus events that are yet to take place. (This coming from guys who had been dead roughly 800 and 1000 years, respectively.) But their stories were familiar to the disciples: Moses and the Burning bush. Then Elijah, our friend today from 2nd Kings who left the planet in a chariot of fire—with flaming horses no less. After his ascent, his friend Elisha, witness to this event, ripped his shirt in two, as a sign of grief and also a symbol of receiving a “double share” of Elijah’s spirit to carry on the prophetic tradition.
Smack dab in the middle of Jesus’ conversation with the luminous prophets, Peter blurts nervously, “It is good for us to be here! Let’s make three houses! One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” (Some translations say “booths” which for me has always conjured a carnival scene, cotton candy at the ready. ) Peter is quickly shhhhed, however, by God’s voice booming from the darkening clouds, telling him to “LISTEN.” But I love Peter’s specific and enthusiastic outburst. First of all, he and his friends were terrified. It says as much in the Gospel. And yet Peter’s impulse –unlike James’s or John’s -- was to frame this spectacle not only with language, but a structure – both literal and figurative.
When I was in my 20’s working as a carpenter, and flush with my new vocation as a poet—probably not too much different from young Peter— I thought I had a handle on this story and wrote a poem about it. I was living in Vermont then, and one afternoon driving home from a job building a barn, the late afternoon sun came out from the clouds and hit a stand maples and white birches. Their leaves were turning gold, and it was a breathtaking moment. I was definitely seduced by my own language, but I’d like to read it to you now. It’s called, yes --
THE TRANSFIGURATION
Listen.
My eyes are listening
As I drive
The river road. Clouds hang
Like damp sheets over ripe
Cornfields and yellow woods.
My engine skips, and I
Bank for the curve.
Around the bend I am thrown
Off guard by a cluster
Of trees caught radiant in a
Sudden shock
Of light from a break
In the clouds.
My senses strain:
White birch trunks flash,
Cattails glint like swords.
I want to run my fingers
Through that flutter
Of quivering leaves, feel
The papery yellows and greens.
I want to leave the wheel,
Spread my arms,
Become this grove of
Light light light.
I want to fold it
Into an apple box and stash it
In my trunk.
But I downshift,
Hear the engine strain while
Behind me clouds darken,
Trees fade.
Well, I still kind of like this poem after all these years. Ironically, it was published in the Anglican Theological Review. In those days I interpreted Peter’s proposal as one founded in his desire to hold on to the beauty. I, too, wanted that -- Vermont maples and everything I was experiencing in the world. I was intoxicated by trying to do that with my art – my poetry. Beauty in a box.
What I didn’t see then – perhaps because I didn’t want to or just didn’t have enough life experience– is that Peter’s almost manic desire to build those little houses was not only to save the beauty, but to assuage his own fear.
Notice that we hear nothing from John or James But as I reread this Transfiguration story 30 years later—Peter appears to be doing some self-care: He wanted to comfort himself in the best way he knew how, to give language and form to an otherwise garbled and ineffable moment. Make sense out of an un-sensible situation. (Just like the poet! I knew there was a reason I have a fondness for chatty Peter).
The transfiguration story seems to reveal more than a face on fire. It was also Jesus’s way of showing the three disciples that there was going to be suffering ahead for all of them. In the end, they, too, would be radiating like Moses and Elijah, yes, but not without a bumpy road ahead. That’s a lot to take in for anyone, much less a fisherman who has left his nets for a man promising joy linked with pain.
Those of us who have experienced some suffering and grief ourselves – and none of us can get through this life without it— Peter’s desire to capture the moment is a natural impulse . We – or at least I --can fully understand his turning to something familiar when facing the unknown: The friendly sound of the clothes dryer when we’re bedridden; the mail truck out the window after death has taken someone we love; the pink rubber boots on the child in the chair next to us in the doctor’s office—appearing like jewels from the World of Normalcy—while we wait for terrifying test results. Something real. Something we can touch.
So instead of patronizing our loquacious Peter (“Oh, that Peter! Always promising things he can’t deliver! Always putting his two cents in!” A tin ear when it comes to tact!”) I find I am more like him than I thought, and I’m not embarrassed to say so.
On that mountain with Jesus, Peter, James, and John were given a glimpse through the gauzy film -- into the Bigness of Things, including the trajectory of Jesus’ life as well as their own. And the story was not all a box of beauty. (Just like our lives.) So Peter— in his utterly clumsy way— tried to fit all that that “happy!” “scary” “sad” “afraid!” “tummy!” “heart!” and “breath!” into his own HOUSE OF POETRY. And though his tongue got him into trouble (he was told again and again that he often missed the point), remember it was he who Jesus chose to be the cornerstone of our Church.
In Peter’s honor, I have written a brand new Transfiguration poem. It’s title is his name. And it’s written in his voice.
PETER
For years I’ve struggled with what happened on the hill. It wasn’t so much
the light itself, but how it spoke. Blinding radiance turning into psalm.
In a flash His figure transformed into an instrument of melody and cacophony.
As if that were not enough, two prophets pulsed and broke through the membrane
separating here and there. I kid you not— we saw past them to forever. What on earth
was I to do with this? John, disfigured by his fear, stood mute. James reached
for his knife. And me? I filled in the blanks. There are those
who ponder, and those who do their figuring aloud. (Even that first day,
when he called us from the nets? I wasn’t exactly mute.) So I proposed plan.
It seemed imperative that we stuff the Moment into some place safe.
I figured we could preserve it all for later, dread and ecstasy alike. Build a shed
for each. With a door that locks. A cornerstone to ground it. My words had barely
left my lips when the light stopped singing. Tympani broke the sky and shook us
to the bone. Our terror, bleached beyond the color wheel, could not accommodate
what was revealed: the torn seam. The reconfiguration of our lives. His life. All of life.
Afterwards, stumbling down the trail, following His easy stride, we knew
we’d left the old prefigured path. I grew quiet, my body
a container for the secret –seen and unseen –we were sworn to keep. It hung inside me,
a figurehead of hope and trepidation. When James and John looked at me,
we held our gaze. Before collapsing into sleep that night under pale and insufficient
stars, I slid my favorite tunic off and ripped the thing in two.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE KINGDOM by Christine Hemp
October 7, 2012
Readings:
Job 1:1 – 2: 1-10, Psalm 26, Hebrews 1:1-4, 2: 5-12, Mark 10: 1-16
Whew! In the Gospel for today we sure get a lot of law and policy. Pundits and commentators. Divorce and marriage! Trick questions! Moral high ground! A feast of intellectual controversy! (Who knew we’d still be arguing about the politics of marriage two thousand years later?)
The questions asked by the Pharisees— and even the disciples—oddly resemble the questions Job asks of God. And we can all relate: If we do the RIGHT THING, and get the RIGHT ANSWERS we will win! We will understand! We will be okay! We’ll “get it,” and we’ll be handed the keys to the Kingdom, whatever form we imagine that to be.
But, apparently that’s not the point.
As God eventually told Job, sometimes the questions we ask are irrelevant. And Jesus, exasperated by the fruitless verbal gymnastics in which he’s being forced to engage, finally turns away from both the Pharisees and the disciples to shine his attention on those who couldn’t care less about laws and rules and who or what might be called “right.” He turns to the children.
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus says to those who try to shoo the kids away, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them”
I picture that noisy moment – a bunch of messy kids racing up to Jesus, tripping over themselves, scrambling toward a source of love they cannot explain or justify –or even argue about; it just IS. And unlike the smoochy, sentimental way some adults treat children (Like animals, children always know when adults are phony or talking down to them) Jesus knew who they were.
Three years ago today I decided to give my local church another try. I’d attended sporadically during the time I’d lived in town. I’d heard the rector preach a couple times, but I was uncomfortable with her exuberance. Once in a Christmas sermon she’d even use the word straw instead of hay when describing the manager, a piece of minutiae that addled me there in the pew, my brows furrowed.
But that particular fall Sunday I was emerging from a spate of Job-like experiences myself: several deaths of people close to me, and an illness of my own that had required a year of treatment. During the course of these experiences, however, I’d learned some new stuff about gratitude. My illness especially had filled me with a deep tenderness– for my oncologist’s hands, for my husband’s voice reading me novels when I could not focus on a book, for the nuthatches feeding outside our window.
Therefore, after my physical healing, I hungered after form— a sanctuary that could accommodate both my gratitude AND my questions; my praise AND my doubt.
So on that first Sunday in October, I entered the doors of a small church on a hill above the bay. By this time I’d heard that the rector had been an opera singer or a performer of some kind which – being a performer myself—helped explain her bigger-than-life persona. In previous visits I’d been afraid that her outstretched hands would entrap me, so I always slipped out right after communion. I shied away from putting on what I perceived as the Tight Coat of Religious Life, an involvement that might squeeze me dry. But I loved the prayers and familiar liturgy and there was something about the FEEL of the place, the authentic way parishioners laughed and exchanged hugs during the Peace. A former boyfriend had called Episcopalians “Gods Frozen People” but I didn’t see any ice chipping off these shoulders.
The rector stepped up to preach. Oh, no, I thought, and braced myself. The sermon turned out to be about Job. She approached his dilemma as if she were speaking directly to me. I couldn’t help but remember the previous few years when I’d wailed “Why?” more than once. Fleeing a disastrous relationship, I’d arrived home only to find my mother in the throes of Alzheimer’s. And during her care my rock-solid, cheerful father succumbed to pneumonia and unexpectedly left the planet. Oh! and quickly upon the heels of seeing my father to the Other Side, one of my closest friends was felled swiftly by a heart attack.
What does Claudius say in “Hamlet?” “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” My mother would have said it differently. She would have held up her hands, palms outward, and shaken them, and said, “TOO GLOOMY!”
The rector’s sermon went right to the existential core of Job’s dilemma. After doing everything right, and suffering enough of the boils and loss of his family, he is at his wits end. More? he asks. I have stuck with you, God. Why? Why Why? Why more? I would guess that most of us here have asked God the same question.
Three months after my mother died, I was diagnosed with cancer. And so was my beloved cat of 19 years. At one point my sister said, “We’d better not tell anyone about any more or our troubles or they’ll put a mark on our door and stay away!” Once again, though, I wondered, What exactly is God asking me to do here?
And, three years ago, arms outstretched and eyes shining, the rector said, “God’s answer to Job blasts him off his ashy seat, “howling out from the eye of a mighty whirlwind. The answer isn’t about anything Job has asked!! It is all about questions God has for Job!”
During that grueling year of chemotherapy which I called the “Font of Purification” followed by months of radiation—which I dubbed “The Rays of Illumination” –I was befriended by a little grey Arabian horse, owned by a neighbor. During those days of treatment I’d stagger over to his meadow, and sit with him under the trees while he napped or grazed. His breath on my face was the breath of God.
As that dark year turned into bright spring and I began to heal, I started riding this spritely creature. And when I mounted him bareback and headed out onto the trails for the first time, I was awash in gratitude—for Buddy’s unexpected presence in my life, for the beauty of the day, for my precious body’s amazing capacity to bounce back.
I thought about all of this when the rector’s sermon took Job’s story one step further. She said that God’s reply to Job was not an answer, but more questions. She cited one of my favorite passages in the Bible: “Where were YOU when I planned the earth…measuring its length with a cord? Do YOU give the horse strength? Do you make him leap like a locust, snort like a blast of thunder?”
Buddy pranced down the trail, while rays of morning sun filtered through the cedars, particles whirling in the cone of light. Bands of sun lay across the trail and the woods smelled like skunk cabbage and balsam. He was a hot-blooded horse, and I knew at any moment he might leap sideways or spook at the smallest rustle, but was I afraid? Heck no! I’d been down in that Valley of the Shadow of Death – What was there to be afraid of now?
In fact, all the old questions and concerns of my life – professional success, intellectual prowess, even my old spiritual practices—didn’t seem to matter as I rode among the mossy logs, the sprouting ferns, the thrush’s tremolo. After shedding many of the questions that diminish life (such as “Why? Why? Why?”) I was learning (along with Buddy’s help) to say “Why not?” and YES to whatever is happening right NOW. As a result, a huge spaciousness became available to me. It was as if I were seeing the world for the first time – or we could say, with the eyes of a child—(or a horse!)
The rector lowered her voice an octave, and finished the sermon by saying that God held all things – and that he hallowed all things, both suffering AND joy. “The whole of our reality is God,” she said, dropping her hands, “and that is the answer to every question there is.”
I sat completely still. The whole room breathed.
Later, during the announcements, when I was still pondering this utterly fresh rendering of Job, the rector announced that the annual St. Francis Blessing of the Animals would take place that afternoon on the labyrinth. “At 3:00,” she said, smiling directly at me as if she knew something I did not.
I’d never ridden Buddy all the way into town. Though later that year my husband would surprise me with Buddy as a Christmas present, at that time he was still my neighbor’s horse, and I wondered if it was too far to take him – on busy roads, no less. But we made it safely and just in time.
I urged him up the sidewalk to edge of the labyrinth and slipped off his back. “Ohhhhhhhhhh! A horse!” rippled through the crowd. People leaned over their smiling dogs and cat carriers with whiskers poking through. A black lab wore a red scarf and a tiny apricot poodle curled in the lap of a woman whose hair matched her dog’s. A child flung her arms around a Jack Russell terrier and a woman held an older cat in a bundle on her lap.
“Welcome everyone!” the rector said, holding up her arms, her robe spangled with a hand-sewn chasuble, radiant as the autumn leaves on the labyrinth. I smoothed Buddy’s mane, wondering how he’d handle all this commotion, if he’d make it through the service. A woman in a Western shirt came up and handed me a program, “Handsome animal,” she said.
Immediately Buddy grabbed the bulletin and waved it up and down, pages flapping. The congregation laughed and Buddy dropped the paper in my hand.
“Let’s sing together!” the rector said, and we launched into All Things Bright and Beautiful/ All Creatures Great and Small. All Things Wise and Wonderful/The Lord God Made Them All… By the time we reached the end – this hymn my mother had sung to me as a child – my face was wet with tears. But Buddy stood happily unmoved, as if he were exactly where he was meant to be. No fidgeting, no jumping.
As I gazed around the crowd, it became clear that I was welcome here. All creatures great and small. As the rag-tag group read St. Francis’s Canticle of the Sun I understood that this was not theater. It was the real deal. These people weren’t attending out of duty – nor from some desire to prove they were Good Christians. Like the children Jesus blessed, they were here because of what they loved. In a flash I realized that there is no Tight Coat of Religious Life-- unless you shove your arms into the sleeves yourself and button it up! Nobody here was wearing one.
When it came time for the blessing, the rector used a moistened branch of rosemary to touch each and every animal with care, gently calling them by name.
“And now—“The rector dipped the rosemary into the ceramic bowl and, with quiet knowing, walked toward Buddy and me.
“What’s this marvelous horse’s name?”
“Buddy!” I said, as if he were my firstborn.
Buddy nodded and wrapped his lips around the rosemary branch, its smell prompting him to curl his lips back into a horse-laugh. More chuckles from my fellow pilgrims.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhh, Buddy,” the rector said softly, touching his forehead with her palm. “What a wonderful face you have.” Buddy nosed her other hand while a dog huffed around his legs. A child raced after a puppy. But Buddy did not flinch, nor did he raise his head or puff his nostrils. His eyes remained soft, his hoofs planted firmly on the ground.
The rector raised the branch and touched Buddy’s delicate head. “In the name of The Creator, The Redeemer and the Sanctifier, Buddy, I bless you… and oh, what a blessed soul you are…”
And Buddy sighed. Tiny beads of water clung to his forelock like jewels. His breath reminded me again that we are already in the Kingdom. It is here. Right now. No tight coats. And for all our asking and deciding arguing and doubting, sometimes just the questions themselves are the answers.
May we all learn to embrace this contradiction, and— like the children and creatures of this world who seem to wear both suffering and joy with equal grace—know that in every moment our God is lifting us into the arms of Creation, laying a hand upon our heads, and blessing us over and over without end.