Out of the Depths
There’s line from the hymn we will sing today, “I will Arise and Go to Jesus,” that is so very true for me. In part it says, “If you tarry ‘till you’re better, you will never come at all.”
The fact is, we meet God out of our need, not out of our sufficiency. Out of our extremity we come. That’s my story. When my life was going nowhere, caught up in our family’s turmoil, missing class after class – only then did I take up a friend’s offer to attend a campus religious group. There, at this Wesley Foundation meeting, I caught a glimpse of a loving, forgiving God that challenged my intellect as well as my spiritual distress. Catching a fulsome vision of what God might intend for me, I kept coming back.
It is out of what is often called “rock bottom” that an addict comes to a recovery group. If there is enough desire to live, that person might catch a glimpse of an entire new way of life. But it all begins with the admission, “My name is — fill in the blank — I’m an alcoholic.” It’s the realization, too often after family has left, after the job is over, after self-respect is on empty, that one’s life is now hopelessly out of control.
This period of Lent is our opportunity to deeply consider what it is that gives life, and to choose for abundance – not in things but in connection to the Author of Life, to one another, to our deepest self.
James Baldwin tells of that afternoon, in his darkened father’s Pentecostal church, where as a young adolescent, he slowly came down the center aisle. He knelt at the communion rail and there offered himself to Jesus. As James tells it, the deal was, “Jesus knew all the secrets of my heart and would never let me find them out.”
“But he was a better man than I took him for.”
Lent is our opportunity to discover the inner secrets of our hearts, to accept that, whatever they may be, Jesus calls us into his presence – a Presence overflowing with welcome, with compassion, with forgiveness, with challenge to go deeper. Much as did that first meeting of Wesley Foundation I attended so long ago as a very lost soul. Much as the alcoholic finds at a first AA meeting.
We only have one crack at this life; my father and Jack Benny to the contrary, all of us have an expiration date. We only go around once.
As I was moving down the aisle imposing ashes with the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return, I came to my young son. As I repeated those time-worn words, there was an audible gasp. “No, not me.”
Yes, even you my dear son. Even you. So, fill your days with love. Fill your days with connection. Hold tight to those whom you love and those who love you. Hold tight to this wondrous blue-green creation spinning through the emptiness of space. Hold on.
Remember the One who brought you to this earthly feast and honor that gift. Remember the precepts that bring true happiness and joy to you and to others – and your cup will overflow with abundance.
During Lent the journey is renewed, is sustained. Our deepest longings are laid open before God. This is church as solace, church as an opportunity to live into the fullness what is intended for each one of us. This is church as challenge to discover and fulfill your unique vocation – where your talents and deepest desires intersect with the world’s greatest needs.
Take these days, to look deep within, to dare, to reach out, to delight in the splendor of God’s creation.
I wish for you, my friends, the blessing of a Holy, Renewing Lent. Amen.
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103:4-18; II Corinthians 5:20b-6-10;
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
“Out of the Depths”
Preached at St. Francis Outreach Center, San Bernardino
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
February 22, 2023
Bright Shiny Beads
Out of the fifties, I beg your pardon of an old man’s trip down a musical memory lane – on the hit parade years ago was a most infectious song: Baubles, Bangles, Bright Shiny Beads. Those old enough will remember:
“Baubles, bangles, all those bright, shiny beads
Sparkles, spangles, your heart will sing, singa-linga
Wearin’ baubles, bangles, and beads
You’ll, you’ll glitter and gleam so
You’re gonna make somebody dream so…”
Sung by the Kirby Stone Four, this single made its way onto the top Hot 100 in 1958.
Initial attraction helps, but baubles, bangles, sparkles and spangles isn’t much of a guarantee for choosing a lifetime soul mate. What counts is the inner sparkle. The spangles of a vibrant soul.
One of the commercials for on-line senior dating shows a well-preserved, perfectly coifed older woman saying that she wouldn’t even know where to begin to start dating again at her age. The announcer says, just go to our service, open it up and start looking. Then shown in the ad, the woman is looking through pictures of handsome older men.
Crazy. Let’s see…the first two could be child molesters, then an ax murderer…maybe the next three are deadbeats and finally an income tax dodger. Or maybe a war criminal. It’s like my friend who was on her third husband or boyfriend. I asked where did you meet these guys. “In a bar,” she replied. Hmmmm…something wrong with the selection process here, ya think?
Today we celebrate some spiritual baubles and bright shiny beads. At least that is how, upon the mountain several of Jesus’ followers glimpsed him. Dazzling, sparkling, Christ of the Bright Shining Mount of Transfiguration.
Most commentary focuses on Jesus and his appearance in that episode, but one writer suggests that the focus might better be held on those accompanying him. It may be that the critical transformation is in them, their luminosity.
Irenaeus writes, “The glory of God is a man, a woman, fully alive.”
Let’s consider that this life changing moment which takes place in Jesus’ companions might be what is critical. What they perceived of the Risen Christ is inserted back into the story by the gospel writers. This written by those who themselves had been transfigured.
And what had they perceived? In Jesus, the presence of the totality of God’s revelation was at hand – God’s will for all creation. This is what Moses and Elijah were all about – the embodiment of Torah-Truth. In this bright shining moment, the power of both Torah and Gospel are present.
“Same Truth, More Light,” just as last Sunday.
That is the divine will for all creation, that we become fully alive, fully available to one another, fully available to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst. Fully in harmony with our place in the cosmos.
One of my friends thinks all this is too hopeful. Too illusory. It’s delusional — that too often, we preachers are living in an unrealistic fantasy world of the “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” Preaching a gospel of fluff. And if it’s about being a glass-half-full person, then I plead “guilty.”
But from the witness of Christ through scripture and the blessing of the community of faith, from time to time, in moments, we do catch a glimpse of Holy Delight, Utmost Fulfillment. Love Incarnate.
One of my favorite authors, John Updike in his series of novels about Harry Angstrom, nicknamed “Rabbit,” follows his rise from late adolescence to become a modestly successful, respectable suburban businessman in the fifties. Though Rabbit has all the amenities and outward signs of success, he is most alone. In his emotional isolation, he is granted only a few moments of complete satisfaction, moments he might identify as a glimpse of the Holy:
For Rabbit, it is a perfect golf shot right down the fairway, the soft, round curve of a woman’s bottom, a successful business deal inked and signed.
These moments of sheer delight, of perfection, when we’re fully alive, when we inwardly sparkle, are indeed fleeting, but somehow make it all worthwhile.
You know them, a lover’s lingering embrace, the smell of Jai’s meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy – (actually, we make it together). The satisfaction of having made another’s day brighter, of working with dedicated team members on a project not one of us could have possibly done alone; a hymn that stirs the soul; the joy of giving to a cause at the moment of need.
And if you doubt the importance of those soft curves and that lingering embrace, go back and re-read the Song of Songs. It’s the one your Sunday School teacher might have skipped over, the one that might be up for being banned in some school libraries.
Various, fleeting glimpses of God’s Goodness, moments of vibrant Life – Life Abundant, if you will.
Recently, I saw a film that especially speaks to those of us who are getting on in years, especially us men who too often have lived rigidly prescribed, structured and baren unemotional lives.
The main character, Mr. Rodney Williams, played by Bill Nighy – definitely an award-winning performance — is a mid-level functionary in the government bureaucracy of the City of London. He is most unapproachable. Those who work under him are terrified of what his disposition might be on any given morning.
One afternoon, he is told by his doctor that his tests have come back and the news is not good. The cancer has spread and he has maybe six or nine months left to live at the most.
He is found that night sitting alone in the darkened living room by his son and daughter-in-law as they return from their work. As they prepare to rush upstairs and busy themselves with dinner and reading the paper, he hesitantly asks, “Could you sit awhile.” Of course, they can’t. They never have.
They are too busy, leaving the old man alone in the dark, most alone, as he relives various pivotal moments in his mind. His wife is long since deceased, he really has no friendships at work or anywhere else to speak of.
Dinner that evening is an emotional disaster, everyone walking on eggshells – completely disconnected from one another.
Eventually, he is able to share his diagnosis with one young woman who had worked at a desk adjacent to his, Miss Margaret Harris, played by Aimee Lou Wood. She has moved on to another job but he has looked her up. Enter also three women have been imploring his Office of Parks forever to turn an old abandoned trash-strewn parcel of land in their neighborhood into a park.
Mr. Williams becomes alive, maybe for the first time in his life, opening up emotionally to this young woman and also taking on the cause of this neighborhood park. He is now a man with a mission.
Go, see that film. And take lots of Kleenex with you and someone who cares for you.
This is a Gift of Life that is celebrated in this film. It is a perfect moment of spiritual renewal, of godly joy and deep pathos. This is the sparkle and bright shiny that radiated from Jesus, that radiated from all his followers infected with Transfiguration.
Too optimistic? Delusional? Unrealistic? I think not! It doesn’t mean that there is not tragedy. It does not mean that we do not suffer the evil of these days.
Yet in the midst of it all, we are granted fleeting glimpses of the Holy, available from time to time if we’re fortunate to behold them. If we’re paying attention.
It’s hearing the first cry of your newborn child. It’s that a life partner said, “YES.” It’s those Northern Lights flashing across the sky on a frigid winter night in Alaska. It’s unexpected flowers. The radiance of a smile. The greeting of an old friend. It’s that “you passed your Greek exam – by the skin of your teeth, Forney.”
In an instant, all is Transfigured – Jesus and we, the Church, however slowly. To our surprise, we find ourselves standing on Holy Ground. The message itself is Holy Luminosity. All is changed. Most of all, we ourselves.
What’s the alternative? I’ll tell you what’s the alternative. It’s no future. To live without hope, we end up like Jim Jones and his People’s Temple followers out in the jungle of Guyana drinking the Kool-Aid – a nihilistic, embittered end of self-destruction. Hell.
We can end up as zombies worshipping the so-called free market as wage slaves – in a winner-take-all dead-end future. Yes, the Former Guy was right about one thing, the system is “rigged.” If your parents were poor, chances are overwhelming that you, too, will die in poverty. Or die a “death of despair” – addiction, alcoholic liver failure or suicide. At a relatively young age. The youngest I buried was only nineteen years old. That rat-race existence will suck your soul out of your being if you let it. That’s what alcohol did to him.
Dante in his epic poem, The Inferno, describes the furthest reaches of Hell not as a place of flames but as a frozen, baren wasteland — a place where all souls, in icy rigidity are utterly cut off from one another. Utterly alone. That’s the Hell of NOT living.
Go see the movie. By the way, the Laemmle Theater needs your support if you live near Claremont. The bling will be in your soul. That’s the “fully alive” God intends.
This Transfiguration Sunday, the gift awaiting all are those inner bright shiny beads. Beats the Hell out of “despondent” and “down in the dumps.”
As we live connected to others, to our deepest selves, to our Maker, we become the ones who glitter and gleam so. As we live for others, we’re the bright shiny beads. We, surrounded in the splendor of those fully alive, are the Glory of God. True and Transfigured.
With the approach of Ash Wednesday, let us prepare to enter a Holy Lent. A time of reflection and renewal. And go see the movie, “Living!” And take a moment to “sit awhile” with someone who needs you. Amen.
February 19, 2023, Epiphany Last
Transfiguration Sunday
“Bright Shiny Beads”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 2; Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9
Your Luminosity
There’s the story of a police officer coming upon a somewhat inebriated man crawling around on his hands and knees late at night. As the man continues searching for something under a street corner lamppost, the officer asks him what he might be hunting for, as the fellow continues to feel around the sidewalk. “I seem to have lost my keys,” the man responds. “And this is where you might have lost them?” the officer inquires. “No,” responds the man. “But this is where the light is.”
In dark times, how desperately we seek the light. We seek for any sign of hope to be illuminated – any wisdom. That is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered the nation in the thirties when massive unemployment held the nation in its grip. Fear of destitution and hunger was palpable.
More often that darkness is more personal, existential – like the day a letter arrived at my house that began, “Greetings.”
Within weeks my comfortable life had been uprooted and I was thrown in with a bunch of strangers in a drafty and poorly maintained barracks somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana. The lavatory was a mess with most of the toilets not working or overflowing.
After doing my business there, I arrived back to my bunk to discover most of my stuff had been stolen by my upstanding bunkmates. Watch, wallet, changes – all gone. About the only thing left besides my underwear and some other clothes was my Bible. This was the copy of J.B. Phillips “New Testament” our campus ministry Wesley Foundation had given me before departing. About the only thing of value left!
Despondent, I wandered over to the nearby Post Exchange, PX, for short. I was going to drown my dejection in a big bottle of Coke and some doughnuts or whatever.
To make matters worse, I had just begun dating a wonderful woman I had met at a church conference in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was in love. Her bouncy walk, this cute petite blond, her shy smile – well, you get the picture.
So I come in through the front door, and what do I hear? Andy Williams crooning “Can’t Get Used to Loosing You.” Instantly, I was a mess. I quickly left so no one would notice that I had dissolved in tears. No Coke. No doughnuts.
Back on my bunk, I opened J.B. Phillips translation to a favorite passage from II Corinthians 6.
“Ever dying, here we are alive. Called nobodies, yet we are ever in the public eye. Though we have nothing with which to bless ourselves, yet we bless many others with true riches. Called poor, yet we possess everything worth having.”[1]
That passage, in an instant, restored my soul. Here in my darkest moment was light. I had no idea as to how this might work out, but here seemed to be a bright ray of hope and encouragement.
This is where the light was — and from that group back home who I knew carried me in their hearts, held me in prayer. Here was more light.
And finally, from a blizzard of letters that arrived from that wonderful woman came enough light for me to make it through the two years of my stint with the U.S. Army.
And now I’m married to that woman, no longer blond. We did have a talk about truth in advertising after marriage when it was revealed that I had actually married a brunette. Oh well, I guess I also was not quite as advertised either. Over the years, we’ve made accommodations, and some things just weren’t that important.
But I digress. While the future remained uncertain and hidden behind a glass darkly, I was waking to this bright light of Gospel hope. I knew for certain that whatever befell me in the days and weeks to come, I would carry on.
More light.
I discovered that when Christopher was accepted at Yale, that the school’s motto was similar to that of Harvard’s, which is “Veritas” – Truth. The Yale sweatshirt proclaims, “Lux et veritas” — with the snarky comment, “Same truth, more light.”
When I was finally discharged, the United Methodist pastor who had married us, told us that he wanted us to come work at his church as a couple, to be sort of the dorm parents for the women college students who lived next to the church and ran the tutorial programs. That facility had previously been a boarding house for young Swedish girls from the old country until they got jobs or found husbands – the church having originally been the Swedish Methodist Church.
That neighborhood in the early nineteen hundreds had been heavily Scandinavian and Finnish. Now all those young women from the Old Country had either found husbands, moved to rest homes or were no longer among the living.
Jai and I were soon immersed in the civil rights struggles and antiwar movement of the sixties. For the first time I was living in a community not majority white. It was an education. Fortunately, that pastor, Terry, was the best mentor I could have hoped for. Every Sunday, his sermons rang with the call for social justice. They shed light on the despair in our neighborhood. Our small church spearheaded building over one million dollars of low-income housing there. We drove kids to museums and the beach in two old ratty VW buses. Every afternoon we had a tutoring program for the younger ones. Another United Methodist pastor, Alex, helped people find jobs through the Downtown Service Bureau that he ran at First Church. That church also lots more light in our neighborhood.
One week Pastor Terry told everyone to keep the coming Saturday free. We were all driving to Delano to meet the founder of a farmworker’s movement, Cesar Chavez.
Light was flooding into my being, and maybe in some measure I was gaining a little bit of luminosity myself.
Within just weeks of that trip, Jai and I had boycott organizers from Delano living with us. This was the time of the Safeway Grape Boycott. When I headed to the grocery store, it wasn’t with a list from Jai, but a picket sign.
Same Gospel Truth. More Light!
Another aphorism of Abraham Lincoln comes to mine: “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” We were about building the New Jerusalem, right there in the barrio of Los Angeles.
Another couple in the church organized the construction of a “vest-pocket park.” For quite a few Saturdays Toni and Larry with a group of neighbors and local gang members cleared three empty lots of trash and weeds. Our councilman Tom Bradley found the funds for swings, a merry-go-round, benches and landscaping and other amenities.
Lots of light for the mothers who could now bring their kids there to play where they could watch them. As for the gangs, they made sure nobody-but-nobody messed with that park.
Out of all this activism, a neighborhood council of residents was formed, Pico-Union Neighborhood Council. Every evening at our headquarters on Venice Boulevard ESL classes were in session. In the afternoon, activities for the children. Out of that building residents helped design our low-income, section 8 housing for the neighborhood along with six or seven interns from UCLA. And in the room in the back, off the alley, our English architect, Jon Mutlow seemed to always be tinkering on an old MG that was perpetually in a state of descompuesto, various parts strewn about the floor.
When the church really is the church, we are Light. We are Salt. We illuminate it all. We season it all.
Recently, my friend Lydia Lopez passed into immortality. All during this time she had been one of the sparkplugs across town in Lincoln Heights at Epiphany Episcopal Church.
Out of the basement of that church La Raza Newspaper was assembled and printed, the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War was born.
She was a major figure of that incredible time of Hispanic activism in East Los Angeles. Out of that parish came many of the Latino and Latina leaders in Los Angeles political life.
Lydia was the first person of Mexican-American descent to serve on a grand jury in Los Angeles. It was her activism that resulted in there being Metro stations in the communities of East Los Angeles. Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta often made the Church of the Epiphany their base of operations when in L.A.
Recently, when every Friday I would drive Lydia into our interfaith peace group on Wilshire, it was like having a living history lesson in my car. Afterward, when we had time, it was off to Home Boys Café that Fr. Greg Boyle had begun, Phiippe’s or El Cholo.
Her infectious laugh and telling of those stories were the brilliant light of truth and solidarity. In her, La Causa shown brilliantly. She radiated Light. Lydia, ¡Presente!
And so here we are, all a bit more decrepit. The church in many places is in tatters. Some have fallen by the wayside; we only remember their names. Yet their luminosity continues to brighten the way forward.
Through the power of a good example, light brings even more luminosity. Each of us in Christ is a splinter of that Light – of the same Light brought into being through that primordial first command, “Let there be Light.”
It’s what drives and lightens the way for those working on House of Hope. It is what brightens the room when a shut-in is visited. It is the radiance of a smile that greets a new visitor.
That luminosity is the Love Light we share at St. Francis. And wherever — we’re going to let it shine. Folks, YOU are the Light of the World. I have it on good authority. Amen
[1] The New Testament in Modern English, J.B Phillips 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. II Cor. 6:9-10.
February 5, 2023, 5 Epiphany
“Your Luminosity”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission
Isaiah 58:1-9a; Psalm 112:1-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-12; Matthew 5:13-20
Eternal Life or Sheer Cussedness: You Choose
One of my favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln is, “People are about as happy as they decide to be.” Unless there is some mental illness or great tragedy, most people, left to their own devices, will volunteer for “happy.”
But there’s a subset of folks with whom life and others have dealt badly. They wake up miserable and go to bed miserable.
Like our neighbor when I was a small boy growing up in Compton. Back when I was in the first and second grades, when we boys would be roller-skating out on the sidewalk on our block, she’d come out and turn on the sprinklers and yell at us. A wonderful and uplifting next door neighbor, indeed. Enough to ruin your entire day.
She seemed to hate everyone. Her husband had left, she made her teenage son sleep out in the garage. I won’t add any sexist, piggy male commentary as to why he may have left. My lips are sealed, sort of.
One of my favorite cities is San Francisco. Did I ever mention that if you pay your church pledge, say your prayers and don’t fool around on your significant other, when you die, that’s where you go?
Anyway, a news blurb from that city of the Golden Gate caught my attention this week. A shopkeeper of an art gallery was arrested for hosing down a homeless woman sleeping on the sidewalk outside his business. The same look of disinterested distain on his face as officer Derek Chauvin had as he knelt on George Floyd’s neck. Assault and battery. Just out of sheer cussedness, and exasperation, I suppose.
Didn’t his mother, didn’t his father, teach him any better than this? I suppose not.
Yes, I know that they are, like most urban centers, overwhelmed by destitute folks, the mentally ill and drug-addicted. I confess to being dismayed having to walk around people camped out on the street as I make my way to a favorite bookstore or restaurant.
But as my mom always said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” Such disorder does unsettle the spirit. But is cussedness the answer?
Left to our own devices and anger, that’s too often where we can end up. Out there on the sidewalk of life along with Mrs. Blocker turning on the sprinklers and yelling at passersby, hosing down the homeless.
There is a better way. It’s engaged compassion. It begins with the simple words, “Blessed are…”
As the Deuteronomist proclaimed, “I set before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life…”[1] As Lincoln said…our choice. Same as the sign to our church preschool: “Misery is optional.”
Genuine communities of faith are about thriving, about a more excellent way, a way that scripture calls, “Eternal Life.” It’s there for the taking, set before us day after day. Grace upon grace.
Eternal Life is not something one might enter into at death. Such understanding is completely unscriptural. Eternal Life is a quality of life that Christ offers now. It is sheer blessedness. Brim full and overflowing. The first followers of Jesus experienced this infectious quality as highly contagious. They got it from Jesus. More contagious than measles. They transmitted it to one another. First the twelve and then others.
Even those “persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” theirs is everything that matters. Ask John Lewis. Ask Rosa Parks. Ask Dr. King. These are they who entered into Eternal Life long before they were dead. These are the sort that bring life to all they do.
“Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called children of God.” Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
The Beatitudes are not some sort of checklist for the religiously compulsive. They reflect a quality of life that emanates from those who have accepted Jesus’ offer of blessing, who daily strive to walk that talk. It just oozes out of the pores of their being.
These ARE the merciful. These ARE the ones who open their hearts to the poor, the hungry, the addicted and those in prison. They are living Beatitudes. They reek of compassion, of a yearning for justice.
The narcissist will never understand these people.
When the Former Guy visited the cemeteries of the WW II fallen in France, and at Arlington, he wondered why they would have made that ultimate sacrifice, ‘What’s in it for them?” he mused to the aide accompanying him. In his book they were “suckers.”
Probably, also those German farmers who got caught hiding Jews during Hitler’s bloody reign. “What’s in it for them?” They were shot, or worse. Our neighbor, Mrs. Blocker, would have found such unabashed generosity abhorrent. Also, the Former Guy.
I find that I become close to this quality of life – Life Abundant – when I am willing to be vulnerable to the “Least of These.” When I allow them into my heart. Indeed, we ignore and dismiss the marginalized to the peril of our souls. Something essential in us dies…way before death claims us in the end.
Out of such vulnerability comes a life of Shalom – a wish for wholeness and wellbeing for all around, no exceptions, for the entire creation…Life Eternal.
Recently, as my friend’s wife has passed from life to death, I’ve become acutely aware of the gift of comfort our hospice nurses and health staff bring to the terminally ill. I remember what a godsend they were to my family when my mother-in-law, who lived with us the last eight or so years of her life, was in her final days
I’m thinking of the health staff who care for the addicted. Sam Quinones, in his latest book on the opioid crisis, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, relates the story of one young addicted mother.[2]
Starla had overdosed on fentanyl while walking the streets. When her boyfriend/pimp finally noticed that she very sick, he, out of fear, had waited several hours to call 911.[3]
Now she was in the hospital, seriously brain damaged, and several months pregnant. The nurses at Sacred Heart, who cared for her, brought flowers to her room, curtains, a radio so she could listen to music. When an attendant would come in to bathe her, often, all she could do was to follow that person with her eyes.[4]
No family or friends visited. The last few days of that winter, Starla had walked the streets barefooted in the snow and ice. When her mother Maude did finally show up, she was aghast at the appearance of her daughter, “Her feet looked like she had walked them off of her.”[5]
As Starla’s tummy grew with the developing baby inside, nurses took turns sitting by her bedside. Day after day. As one nurse exclaimed to the author, “I’ve been a nurse for forty-two years in maternity, and I had never taken care of a patient like this.”[6]
On January 18, 2013 Starla gave birth by C-section, several weeks prematurely, to a daughter who “came into the world with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and affected by the drugs the staff gave her mother to prevent clotting.”
The nursing staff and hospital chaplain “cried in awe of the child and mother who tossed and turned but could not speak. ‘It was like our family survived and had a baby,’ Ellen Stanly, the morning supervisor, cried.”
The work didn’t stop there. By then the ward was now filled with other addicted mothers and newborns.
I’ve known some of these nurses, the work schedules are inhuman. Their gift of caring is drawn from a deep spiritual well. These people are living Beatitudes.
Philips Brooks, that great Episcopal preacher of the eighteen hundreds somewhere said of such spirituality, “We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.” That is the story of this nursing staff.
Through prayer, deep desire and the touch of God, we gently, slowly, live into this Spirit.
When I made known my last wishes to friends and family, people asked, “Have you written this stuff down?” “Does Jai know?”
Our future daughter-in-law sent back the most loving response. While she wished that she and Christopher wouldn’t have to refer to this request anytime soon, she did tell me that I had three things to do first — tasks I could not possibly accomplish alone — before I departed:
- Marry her and Christopher.
- Attend Christopher’s PhD graduation at Yale.
- Be available for some grandkids to be crawling around on my lap.
Love that woman. Alexis is certainly a living Beatitude. Christopher did most fine in discovering her. Wedding date: October 7 of this year.
I also have two addiction treatment facilities to begin – definitely operations which no one person could conceivably accomplish solely. I pray Phillips Brooks is right – that my being will grow into and through the Spirit of this work.
This is the spirituality of the Beatitudes. It’s not a check list for the religiously compulsive. Not a way of earning one’s way into heaven – or San Francisco, for that matter.
This is the spirituality that grounds those nurses at Sacred Heart – sustains those hospice nurses who attended my mother-in-law and the staff of our health center at Pilgrim Place.
Let us pray that this very same Spirit touches us daily. A free gift, available to all – even Mrs. Blocker and the Former Guy. “Blessed are those who…”
Amen
[1] Deuteronomy 30, RSV.
2 Sam Quinones, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021).
3 op cit., 75.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid, 76.
January 29, 2023, 4 Epiphany
“Eternal Life or Sheer Cussedness: You Choose”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission
Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-3; Matthew 5:1-12
Jesus Called the 12 and then Called Others
As we finished watching Washington Week on a Friday night, we flipped the channel to catch another recorded program and found ourselves in the middle of the fourteenth failing ballot of Kevin McCarthy’s quixotic journey to the speakership of the House of Representatives.
Glued to the screen we sat through a failed motion to adjourn and I remember commenting that these folks couldn’t even organize a bathroom break, and they’re going to run the country!?
The next thing, the camera zooms to McCarthy rushing to the podium waving a red card. Now someone’s going to change their vote. Within short order, having failed to adjourn, the House proceeded to a fifteenth vote. The holdouts, the Never Kevin folks, having had their demands met, had agreed to vote present, allowing the speaker to finally be elected with 215 votes. He was sworn in and in turn swore in en masse the rest of the body.
We had a government – of sorts.
I wondered what sort of reign this speaker might exercise given the extreme demands the Never Keven cabal had exacted from him to bring their support, or at least their acquiescence. Would anything get done in this 218th Congress?
What sort of acolytes would Speaker McCarthy be choosing to head committees? How many months would this tribe exhaust in investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop? Impeaching Dr. Fauci? Yeah, I know he’s retired…they know. Doesn’t matter. The COVID-19 vaccine was all a nefarious plot of some sort. That’s why we have to investigate, investigate, and impeach! And while we’re at it, let’s get those awful FBI thugs on the hotseat, too. And the 87,000 IRS agents who will be beating down your doors at three in the morning. Will we descend into the madness of Marjorie Taylor Green and the QAnon Crazies?
OR…OR…
I was not much of a Reagan fan, but at least his conservativism had a smile. His was not the politics of resentment and vengeance. He found places of compromise to get things done.
The stark contrast to the melee on the floor of Congress was the gathering of Mitch McConnell and President Biden, along with the governors of Ohio and Kentucky and some other leaders of those states – all to celebrate an accomplishment for the American people.
The bridge over the Ohio River that spans the two states has needed replacement for many years. Obama tried to get the funding and failed. Now, after many years, this deteriorated span was going to be addressed. There were smiles, complements and handshakes to go all around. This photo op was the classic win-win situation. Out of the cesspool of our hyper-partisan politics, everyone came up smelling like a rose.
Over the politics of darkness, the light of cooperation and mutual interest broke through the dark clouds of bitter partisanship.
There were many points where I took strenuous issue with Reaganism. His abandonment of the mentally ill in California was despicable. When it came to the “least of these,” one pundit asserted, “The spirit of Marie Antoinette infuses the administration of Ronald Reagan.”[1]
In spite of this, Reagan was progressive on immigration. He believed that immigrants made the nation stronger. He chose them to become Americans. He bristled at the idea of a border wall. “You don’t build a nine-foot fence along the border between two friendly nations.” An earlier draft contained his thought, “We cannot erect a Berlin Wall across our southern border…We are talking here not just about statistics but human beings, families, and hopes and dreams for a better life.”[2]
This was the spirit that infused that meeting between President Biden and Mitch McConnell at the Brent Spence Bridge across the Ohio River.
Jesus was the messenger of Possibility and Flourishing – ever God’s will for humankind. This is a “we” operation. He needed a team, those who would commit to following him on the Way to a New Creation.
“As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their net and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John…”
He called the twelve and then called others – saints alive — and now he’s calling you and me.
Yes, it was Reagan’s disastrous foreign policy in the Central American countries which have brought about the massive flood of refugees, yet as blindly naive as Reagan was to the results of his policies, there was a spark of decency that allowed him to see these refugees as simple human beings, their hopes and dreams.
That is our mission as Jesus’ disciples. And none of us are in his class — we all bring our blind spots and sins of omission. I bring these up because, we are cut of no different cloth than those politicians we disparage. The main difference, they are often in positions where they can do far more damage than we mortals. We do share the same humanity. The same instincts for good and the same blind failings. Yet in God, all shall be blessed. Even my old nemesis, Tricky Dick.
Jesus calls them, calls us, to a vision as old as the prophets of yore, to the promise of Isaiah. All “living in a land of deep darkness, arise. Your light has come. You have seen a great light; on you it has shined.”
We are only here for a brief period. The gift of grace is the Light of Christ we shine unto those around, including oneself. The Light they offer to us.
Last Sunday evening we gave thanks for a great bearer of this same Light, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He walked the talk. This is the sort of disciple Christ raises up.
And you and me, to boot. Cut from the same cloth of frail humanity.
Death, more than anything focuses both mind and spirit. Brings to the forefront my need, our need, for this Light
Lately, I’ve been spending time with a good friend whose wife is in hospice. That, and finishing a novel about an incredible priest facing death among the people she has served, I find myself a bit weepy. But it’s a good weepy. It’s real.
We will gather in a little bit this morning to acknowledge the gift of life and joy a cherished wife, Blanca, brought to her family. In her way, she walked the talk.
This circle is given to the precious moment of sharing cherished memories of her time among us. A time to give thanks to the Author of all life who has brought us to this time and place. It doesn’t get any better than this. Beats the hell out of watching old sit-coms or moping around in the darkness by oneself.
The blessing of discipleship is the blessing of community. Whatever life dishes out, we don’t have to endure alone and in silence. We have a community in Christ to share it all. And be sustained. This is the bread of life that is offered every Sunday at Christ’s altar. This is the cup of blessing – it is to be in a community of blessing.
As imperfect as our politicians are, as we are, there are divine moments of flourishing. Joe and Mitch were at that bridge the other day because of something they received along their faith journey. That same spark enabled Reagan to see the humanity of those destitute at our southern border.
It enables us to look across a prayer circle and see the precious humanity in each one at this altar.
“Sent them out to witness, two by two,” and now sends us out to testify to the goodness we have known in his company. Two by two. It’s real. Believe me. Amen.
[1] Nicole Hemmer, Partisans: The Conservaive Revolutinaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s (New York: Basic Books, 2022), 39.
[2] Op cit., 37.
January 22, 2023, The Epiphany
“Jesus Called the 12 and then Called Others”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission
Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1, 5-13; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23
