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December 31, 2004
Waking The Dead
In a couple of important ancient-history posts that came to my attention in the past month or so, John O’Keefe (at TheOoze) and Diana Baldwin (at ginkworld) write about the morbidity of the many congregations they visit. Their posts date from more than a year ago, so it’s possible that they have seen a dramatic reversal in church vitality — possible, but (from what I can tell) not likely.
Having come to the end of Kyle’s directed-study course on “emerging church,” I have built up a backlog of portentous advice on this general topic. Since I hate to waste a good backlog, I’ll unleash some of it online. My garrulousness does not constitute a warrant that I speak with particular authority. It just means that I’m advancing to the age that provokes people who should know better to talk and write on topics about which they don’t know enough.
But before I start, does anyone ever encounter pundit-consultants on church growth who say, “That’s not my kind of congregation at all — in fact they drive me crazy — but they provide a sterling example of one way that churches can thrive”? It’s all too easy to find hucksters who pitch a do-it-my-way gospel, whose favored one-size-fits-all approach defies he accumulated experience of generations in the church. I particularly respect a church consultant who can support the vitality of a congregation that’s not doing things his or her favored way.
That digression becomes relevant as I ponder, in discussion with Kyle, what point there might be to calling any congregations “emergent.” Pedantic as I am, I’ve insisted that the lexicography of “emergence” matters for an understanding of why one would apply the label in the first place (though usage will, over the long run, determine what it does mean). In a nutshell, I tend to think it most useful to identify as “emergent” those ecclesiastical tendencies that resemble emergent phenomena in nature (to this extent, “emergent church” can fairly be said to amount to Roland Allen’s Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes That Hinder It in postmodern dress).
What about congregational life bears any resemblance whatever to emergence? I’ll try to write about that tomorrow, but in the meantime, go to the experts.
Posted by AKMA at 11:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Where The Heart Is
It’s after midnight, Eastern Standard Time — soon enough for me to wish everyone in Blogaria a happy new year.
There’s much left over from last year for us to work toward ameliorating, even remedying, while in so working we are free from our bondage to the past’s limitations on our capacity for goodness and generosity. We can do better, and by grace, I trust we will. Thank you so much for the grace and charity you all show.
Posted by AKMA at 11:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
So Do I
From the New Yorker. . . .
Posted by AKMA at 11:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
There Goes My Secret
My friend Steve Himmer takes the opportunity this morning to reveal the arcane method by which I compose my best sermons. Luckily for me, Steve didn’t figure out what those giant multi-colored concrete letters spelled — or the jig would have been up.
At least David didn’t disclose any of my secrets. I’ll say this, though: No more Saturday-afternoon garden party invitations for Steve!
Posted by AKMA at 08:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 30, 2004
Amateur Design Geekery
Today Micah and I have spent the day fiddling with Seabury’s website. Our working space is at this site, which we’ll delete in a few weeks, when we go live with the final version of the new page.
The point of the exercise — not completely realized yet — is to get Seabury’s site into an easily configurable, easily up-dated, standards-compliant framework. We’ll use the categories feature from MT to organize the navigation links (as Dorothea showed us to do in her design for the Disseminary site). It will make life so much easier than editing a miscellany of inconsistent Dreamweaver pages with needless navigation Java.
Posted by AKMA at 02:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 29, 2004
Glencoe
Hey, Gary! We were there too, a couple of years ago. . . .
Thinking of you and family, especially around Cameron’s birthday (and Sawyer’s, and Ruairi’s)!
Posted by AKMA at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 28, 2004
Breaking News
About a week or ten days ago, Pippa started a new venture in experimental hydroponics: an avocado pit plantation. It began humbly enough — just two pits, one of which was a pretty poor excuse for an avocado from the outset, in two jam-jars on the kitchen counter. As you can see, her small-time start has blossomed into a modest industrial installation, soon to rival Del Monte or Monsanto or Archer Daniels Midland. In a few years, she’ll be holding the Super Bowl guacamole market hostage.
We’ll keep everyone apprised of the progress of the various pits. So far, three are cracking, and the one sad specimen (lower left) is not showing any prospect of vigor. The time to invest is now!
(Perhaps one can use avocados to power electrical devices, too.)
Posted by AKMA at 10:29 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 27, 2004
Strong Response, Weak Software
I think I remember with whom I was chatting the other day — I think I remember, but I won’t guess for the record — but one of my friends was trying to wrestle some appropriately-paginated footnotes out of Microsoft Word. I remember thinking, years and years ago, that I couldn’t believe that MSFT couldn’t make Word perform this simple task effectively; over the years, I’ve seen countless student papers and journal submissions whose footnotes were offset by a page in a way characteristic of Word. If my friend’s colorfully-expressed testimony provides reliable evidence, Microsoft still ships an expensive word processor that misplaces footnotes.
I don’t use Word, so I can’t speak from experience as a user, but as a reader and editor, I find that absolutely infuriating. There may well be a workaround, but users shouldn’’t have to figure that out. Word processors exist in order (among their very most brain-dead basic tasks) to place footnotes at the bottom of the page to which the notes pertain. If Microsoft can’t make the global standard word processor perform that function adequately, they should stop development on every other feature until they get that right.
Posted by AKMA at 03:18 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Attention, Trevor and Pippa
Someone has taken the color-arranged spine premise of organizing books to an extreme (via Maggi Dawn). . . .
Posted by AKMA at 08:25 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 26, 2004
Writing Better, More
The other day at the library book sale, I spotted a title that seemed to belong among my useful books about writing, Jefferson D. Bates’s Writing With Precision.
I only just looked it over yesterday, and saw with delight that Bates’s first principle of more effective writing is, “Prefer the active voice.” (Seabury students will moan inwardly as they read that advice.) He goes from that to advocate using strong, vivid verbs rather than inert “nominalized” forms, hewing to specific rather than vague expressions, and keeping related sentence elements near one another. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I still plump for Joseph Williams’s Style as my premier book on writing, but every reinforcement is welcome in the battle against empty, flaccid prose. Bates adds a section on outlining (absent from my second-hand copy, darn it, since I need someone to help me cultivate my outlining discipline) and exercises-and-answers that illustrate his principles of writing. Well done, more than worth the fifty cents I spent for it, and refreshing encouragement for my approach to writing.
Posted by AKMA at 04:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Moderate Comments
When I reinstalled Moveable Type in the aftermath of the November Random Thought Meltdown, I was looking forward to the comment-handling capacities of the new version of MT. Even without Blacklist, which I expect I’ll install someday but haven’t gotten to yet, MT 3 promised to be a great deal more manageable realtive to unwelcome commercial comments than was MT 2. I’ve found my expectations amply fulfilled; it’s indescribably easier to find, select, and delete unwelcome comments.
There’s a cost, of course; the intervention of comment moderation probably damps the willingness of some visitors to leave comments (that was certainly what people said when SixApart introduced TypeKey), and I understand that. We’ve already seen visitors leave duplicate comments, since they weren’t sure that their original comment had been recorded. Moreover, I’m sure it’s frustrating to write a comment, only to see it disappear into a pending-moderation void. I wish I could conveniently pre-approve the regulars, so my friends could post directly, without awaiting moderation (presumably they could register with TypeKey, but let’s assume that they’ve already considered and declined that option). Commercial comment-bots would soon develop the capacity to spoof approved identities, anyway.
Short of a comprehensive solution to DigID problems (on which David has a cogent side-commentary at Worthwhile), we’re left with more or less satisfactory half-measures. So far, the frustrations that accompany comment-moderation don’t outweigh the ease with which the new version of MT fends off unwelcome commenters.
Posted by AKMA at 03:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 25, 2004
Merry Christmas
We slept well, rose late, enjoyed a pancake breakfast (apart from Margaret, whose gluten-free pancakes turned out disastrously), and eventually turned our attention to the packages surrounding the tree.
Beatrice started the gift portion of the day by tugging a stuffed critter from its wrapping. Plenty of warm clothes, a mechanical walking dinosaur (“for collectors not for children”!), a back-scratcher that Nate deployed as a universal prosthesis, Duke outerwear, and a relaxing day for all.
Merry Christmas!
Posted by AKMA at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 24, 2004
Dave Supports Seeded Search
In Today’s Scripting News, Dave Winer speaks up in behalf of the seeded-search capacity that I’ve been lobbying (and link-voting?) for. When so prominent and influential a voice in the developer community gets on the train, perhaps it will begin moving sooner. . . .
Posted by AKMA at 10:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Best — Oh, Dear
Evidently my membership in the union of “bibliobloggers” entangles me in Ed Cook’s idea that we share our personal “best of 2004”s. Here we go:
Best Fiction: Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson — though it’s probably the only fiction published in 20004 that I’ve read at all
Best non-fiction: Oddly, I’m not sure I read any “copyright-2004” non-fiction — apart, that is, from the collections of essays in which my writings appeared this year, which seems a bit of a cheat.
(This exercise reveals to me how little my reading patterns depend on what’s just been published.)
Best Film: The Incredibles wins, but I haven’t seen most of the movies that other people think rank among the year’s best.
Best TV programme: We don’t watch TV, sorry.
Best album: I think Blueberry Boat, with Get Up and A Grand Don’t Come For Free (as below). And I forgot to mention below My Endless Numbered Days, which still knocks me out (thanks, Simon!).
Best single: Tough call, among “Naked As We Came” (Iron & wine), “Such Great Heights” and “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” (the Postal Service), and “Straight Street” (Fiery Furnaces).
Best gig: I think I didn’t get to any gigs other than Open Mike night at Kafein.
Most missed: The time I might have spent reading, going to movies, and attending gigs?
Posted by AKMA at 10:31 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Holiday Story
Once upon a time, there was a family getting ready for their Christmas celebrations. . . .
You know most of the background and circumstances; most recently, Margaret and I went to the emergency room at the local hospital so that they could do something about Margaret’s anxiety which, in the aftermath of her nuclear therapy, had grown and abounded to the point that Wednesday night was sleep-wrecked, and Thursday morning panicky and emotionally fragile. We put in phone calls to her doctors, but they were evidently busy — busy, can you imagine that, two days before Christmas? — and when we finally got through to one, he firmly suggested that we go the ER route to get the anxiety treatment we needed (as Margaret’s recent thyroid radiation put too many variables in play for over-the-phone assessment).
So we spent the afternoon and early evening in cubicle 8 of the ER, dealing with very earnest residents and crisis docs, and we came away with a prescription for short-term anti-anxiety meds (our original target) and urgent invitations to drop in again if anxiety was getting out of hand, perhaps even to drop in for a short stay and observation. Margaret politely declined the latter invitation, but we have their number and will be sure to contact them should occasion arise.
Everything’s in hand for now, and we’re very, very thankful for concerned friends, for an attentive medical team, for family solidarity that makes it possible for our young’uns to help one another, for the marvels of modern pharmaceutical technology, and for an unfathomable grace that reveals itself even in grim times.
Posted by AKMA at 10:23 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 23, 2004
You Must Remember This
I loved telegrams. One reason I never liked Federal Express (over and above the underplanned executives who needed overnight service on jobs that could have been done for a quarter the expense if someone had placed the order a few days earlier) was its displacement of real, exciting, exotic telegrams. Always the yellow paper, please, with all caps, no punctuation. That’s the same message a Carnegie might receive, or a Hepburn or Valentino!
So when I point to the link for Retro-Gram, which offers free emailed telegrams or moderately-priced mailed telegram replicas, it’s because nothing will ever replace the thrill of a uniformed courier knocking at your door, saying, “Telegram for Adam. . . .”
Posted by AKMA at 10:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Top Whatever
I’m glad that I’m not the only one who’s wondered how Mike Skinner lost a sheath of bills amounting to a thousand pounds in a slot in his television. The reviewer at Pitchfork and I agree that it’s a terrific album (even if Pippa doesn’t like it), and I could understand if it were a check for £1000, but it sounds from the songs as though the sum really was in cash. Anyway, I thought that A Grand Don’t Come For Free was a terrific disc. Likewise the Fiery Furnaces’ Blueberry Boats and the Postal Service’s Give Up. I wasn’t swept away as many were by Franz Ferdinand, and don’t quite see the appeal of Morrissey (so You Are The Quarry drifted past me without making much of an impression). L liked what I heard of Modest Mouse’s Good News For People Who Like Bad News, but I haven’t listened to it thoroughly (same with A Ghost Is Born). I’m supposed to like both How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb and Around The Sun, but I haven’t had enough time with them for them to grow on me.
Here, Tom Coates’s brilliant insight into the future of recorded music applies: there just isn’t enough time to listen, when you can listen to almost anything you want. I try to listen broadly to the recorded music I’ve collected, rather than focusing on this or that album; if a track or an album doesn’t win attention-share pretty promptly, it goes into a random shuffle with tens of thousands of other selections. That marks a fundamental change from a time in which a broadcast medium could focus my attention on a relatively few tracks repeatedly for an interval, where I could not choose to listen to just-any track at almost any time, where there was (indeed) no function for listening to random tracks — any track one listened to had been selected in one way or another.
The ecology of musical performance (and other modes, if they’re paying attention) has changed in a tremendously important way. It’s not clear what that entails — does music now have to be catchy in order to survive? What agency, whose ears, will help sort the vast ocean of recorded music into attention-worthy work and disposable work (and for whom)? (Nate and Si help me, but not everyone has teenage sons) — but in this new ecology, some dinosaurs will perish, and making laws to keep obsolescent institutions and practices alive in a new media environment will not work any better than would laws to keep polar bears alive on Mercury.
Posted by AKMA at 10:59 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 22, 2004
Top Five
Bob Carlton has been gently soliciting my participation in his “top five” posts for 2004 project, but I’ve been putting it off (by way of avoiding it altogether — looks like he’s offline for a while, so maybe this is too late). Then yesterday Tripp prodded me to post my top five, and as I wrote back about why I was resisting, I realized how dreadfully self-important I sounded: “I don’t think of my blogs as ‘better’ or ‘best,’ as though they were singles off a series of albums” — thus, as if I were a stuffy rocker whose Art couldn’t be sold by single downloads (though it can be broadcast in singles).
Anyway, I — chastened, humbled — have been trying to figure out which would count as my Top Five. Part of the problem, for me, is that I don’t remember the last year all that well! My final candidates aren’t especially “spiritual,” though they hold some lessons for emergent congregations, I suppose. Counting down from Number Five, I guess they’d be:
Number five might be the post that triggered a complex of ideas that will turn into my Winslow lecture next spring.
Then, for number four, I nominate “Why churches should have websites,” which at the time seemed to me to be just repeating stuff that Jordon et al. had been saying all along, but which caught a lot of attention anyway. If it helped people tune in to the value of putting up even a minimal web presence, then so much the better.
I’ll make number three my response to seeing The Passion of the Christ (and the follow-up “Passion and Postmodernism”).
Number two would be the Lessig Read-a-thon, which was covered by Doug Kaye’s IT Conversations, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and eventually turned into a series here, here whose fruits can most simply be retrieved via the Internet Archive.
And the obvious number one would be the InfoHighwayman series, recounting my [mis]adventures with wireless security law in Nantucket. It all begins here, and continues here, here, here, and here (with the image of the newspaper story here).
There were a bunch of sermons this past year — I don’t have the perspective to pick and cchoose among them for “best”-ness, but I’ll see about making a compendium post later.
Posted by AKMA at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 21, 2004
Should Be, But Not Part Two
Should be finishing up those papers, but instead I’m making digital Christmas cards with the TYPEFlake greeting-card designer. That, and playing “Christmas Is All Around,” by Billy Mack, on iTunes — Halley recommended Love, Actually last year (and just re-commended it), so Margaret and I watched it last week, and enjoyed it immensely. Now, through the wonders of online music purchasing, Margaret can’t seem to get that tune out of her head.
Posted by AKMA at 09:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Arresting Developments
While I was pioneering through Montana, Jonathan rejoined the Macintosh cosmos, and Liz founded a Social Computing Lab at RIT. Cheers to both, and open offers to lend such assistance as may be helpful (I do think that a Social Computing Lab would benefit from the participation of an online theologian. . .).
And since Nate doesn’t blog, I’ll take this opportunity to link to pages identifying him as a singer with Rochester’s Kairos choral ensemble, and as a friend of Zach’s (for this one, you’ll have to scroll down a ways, but there’s a picture of Nate as a reward).
And Helenann Macleod Hartley, a friend from her days as an exchange student at Princeton Theological Seminary, has a blog of her own (after a long time starring as a supporting player at Mark Goodacre’s blog). Huzzah! Helenann links to news about the sixth Harry Potter novel, bringing a cheer from Pippa (whom Helenann may remember), which reminded me that Micah “The Piano Man” Jackson pointed me to the Classical Greek translation of the first Harry novel, which in turn led me to the translator’s website. All quite wonderful — and they tempt me to teach Greek via Harry Potter. . . .
Posted by AKMA at 04:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Meet Bob
Our family has developed an odd holiday custom.
Six years ago, when we first moved to Evanston, we bought a Christmas tree. Nate and Si (mostly Nate) called this tree “Bob,” partly because they’re whimsical guys, and partly because it annoyed Pippa. Pippa felt that the tree shouldn’t have to endure the indignity of being named Bob; our Christmas tree should be permitted to stand with its intrinsic anonymous grandeur, or at least bear a more noble monicker. The boys’ usage prevailed, though, and all season we called the tree Bob.
The next year, the Pippa insisted that the tree not be named Bob — which insured that Nate and Si emphatically perpetuated the custom. Pippa’s monitory protestations bore a tinge of intra-sibling humor, and that year her objections seemed more a game than an actual claim on behalf of the beleaguered tree.
Beginning with the third year in Evanston, Pippa referred to the tree as Bob all season. Thus are traditions born.
Today, Pippa and I rolled down to the vacant lot next door to Reconciler, and bought this year’s Bob. He’ll move from the garage into our living room on Christmas Eve, occupying the space that till then will have been occupied by our piano, destined shortly to move to Heather’s place, via Micah’s mediation.
Posted by AKMA at 03:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 20, 2004
Home. Bed.
Made it home intact, if a little shaky. Margaret says it’s a virus, not a mischosen entree. I’m going to go to sleep now.
[Looks like I’m not the only one. My sympathies to Jeneane and Jane.]
Posted by AKMA at 10:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
My Trip From Montana Back To Chicago
It was a dark and stormy night, at least in my innards. Something seems to have disagreed with me, and I spent much of the night awake and in a greater or lesser state of discomfort. I was so queasy that I couldn’t eat the cinnamon roll I had brought back from the pot luck, or even — gasp! — drink coffee. I tried to sit absolutely still for the morning, watching SportsCenter over and over at the Youngs’ home while Todd handled some parish business. He then drove me in to Butte for my return trip. I hadn’t remembered that the ride was so bumpy and curvy. . . .
I managed a Coke at the airport, and a cup of coffee and granola bar during my flight to Salt Lake City. Although we landed in broad daylight, the valley has filled with low-hanging clouds and snow, so our approach afforded no view of socks or anything else. It did convey the sense that we were landing in a vast sea of fluffy white foam.
Change in SLC for O’Hare, and I’m just an hour or so away from greeting my beloved, greatly-missed Margaret. I predict that I will not stay up late tonight.
Posted by AKMA at 09:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
My Trip to Montana, Part Three
I had it easy the rest of the trip; Todd had Sunday services well in hand, so I sat with Joelene (that’s with her proper “e”) through the morning masses in Sheridan and, a mere twenty miles away, Virginia City. This is the same Virginia City that provided the setting for Bonanza, so now you know that I’ve been there. I don’t know if St. Paul’s Episcopal Church appeared in the TV series, but if it didn’t, it was their loss.
I’d be willing to bet, if I were permitted to bet, that Lorne Greene never used the windshield of his carriage as a device to protect him from low-flying magpies, as we did. Well, not Lorne Greene’s carriage, but the Youngs’ car. One moment I saw a big lump of gray flapping its wings toward the car, and the next I heard a loud whomp and saw feathers going all over the place — luckily (for us — I don’t think the bird cared much any more by that point) only on the exterior of the windshield. We held a learned ornithological debate over what sort of bird it might have been (I lobbied for “quail,” because the underside of the bird, at which I got an especially close look, reminded me of the quail etchings and engravings that my grandfather made), but the indigenous population felt sure it was a magpie, and their word was good enough for me. No damage to the car, but the magpie probably did not have the opportunity to fly into any other vehicles.
Meanwhile, Joelene had arranged for someone to meet us at Virginia City bearing electrical tape, so after the service, I shifted into my boy-electrical-engineer mode and splice together the cell-phone cord, and patched the computer cord, both successfully.
Rev. Ref preached at both services on the text in which the angel instructs Joseph to name the baby Jesus, in order to fulfill a prophecy that he would be called Emmanuel. He did a fine job, even with his New Testament professor sitting in the front row; I, at least, didn’t heckle him the way a certain not-to-be-identified spouse did. Todd stumped me with a question in the middle of the sermon, but then when he asked a question to which I did know the answer, he wouldn’t call on me.
Two masses and an electrical repair did not bring our day’s accomplishments to an end, though. We returned to Sheridan, ate some delicious leftover lasagna, did some odds and ends, and then hopped back into the car to take part in the Lessons and Carols service at St. Paul’s. That very well-attended service (including Fr. Ed, who claimed he was only there for the food) was followed by a lively pot luck dinner, pitching tips for Cece from a retired Little League coach (me), and another drive back to Sheridan. No further collisions.
Posted by AKMA at 09:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
My Trip to Montana, Part Two
I woke up Saturday morning a little stiff, but well-rested and comfortable. Bobbie, my host, filled me with coffee, banana, and fresh-baked bagels, and I set out bright and early to ride with Rev Ref, Mrs Ref, the Kid, and Rev Ref’s mom, on the two-hour drive from Sheridan to St. Peter’s Cathedral, Helena.
You may say, “A two-hour drive cooped up in a small car?” You may, but you would be overlooking the entertainment value of observing all the towns (read: “wide spots in the road”) we passed through, and the rippling ridges and peaks of the Rockies among which Todd piloted the coupe. We encountered favorable driving conditions, got to the cathedral on time, and we all helped Todd get ordained.
No one stomped out during my sermon, even though I made fun of the bishop a little, and Todd seemed satisfied that his preacher had done OK. I’ll append the sermon in the extended part of this post. I received from Todd my second new-priest’s-first-blessing (Andrea Mysen blessed me after her ordination, too), so bolstered by their sanctity, I have no excuse for my on-going impiety.
The service was not short, and the festive reception was also leisurely, and the trip back to Sheridan was no shorter than the trip from Sheridan to Helena had been, so we were pretty tired when we got back to the rectory. Todd showed me and his mom around the church in Sheridan (we wouldn’t be worshipping there Sunday, since the furnace has quit; sunday worship in Sheridan took place in the parish hall). Joelene (not “Jolene,” print shop!) fixed an artichoke lasagna that couldn’t be beat while we watched the CNN special about The Two Marys, and Fr. Ed, the Roman Catholic priest who lives next door, stopped in to congratulate Todd. We then staggered off to our various rooms to rest up for a very full day of church on Sunday.
But before I turned in, I went to plug my cell phone into the outlet, and discovered that Bobbie’s cat had chewed through the cord in several places, and had taken a nip out of my computer’s power cord for afters. This left us with a challenge for Sunday. . . .
St. Peter’s Cathedral, Helena, Montana
The Ordination of Todd Young to the Presbyterate
Num 11:16-17, 24-25b/Ps 43/1 Peter 5:1-4/Matt 9:35-38
December 18, 2004
Jesus said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
+
We can’t fool God – not for a minute. We can’t persuade God that our solemn faces and outlandish attire make this a moment of dignity and greatness; God knows our foibles and our mortal silliness much too well to see our ceremonies as the grand occasion we pretend them to be. This whole afternoon is a vast joke that we play on ourselves (and on Todd). The glorious hymns, the majestic gestures, the generous hospitality – these are the stage dressing for an elaborate prank at our expense. It’s a little naughty of us, pulling this farce on a new priest, but I reckon it’s a divine mischievousness, a sign to the world of our God’s unfathomable oddity. In other words, this afternoon we hold up a symbol of our peculiarity, embodied in Todd’s ordination to the sacred priesthood as a fool set apart for the joy of serving a broken body to broken hearts in a broken world.
In this, God’s love and humor are revealed to us: we dress up our clergy in funny clothes and we make them sit in a separate part of the church, but God pours out a spirit of priesthood on all people, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the full knowledge of the Son of God. Make no mistake: we all are children of God, and coheirs with Christ, inheritors of a holy kingdom. There’s nothing so special about Mr. Young (I know that after years of working with him at Seabury); not so special as to make him deserve this fancy uniform, at least. The pomp and circumstance of this pageant are all part of a holy giddiness about today’s festival afternoon. Maybe this is even an example of what St. Paul said about the way that the members we think are less honorable get dressed up with greater honor.
At the heart of this elaborate comedy, though, there lies the truth of our thankful celebration as we recognize one more volunteer for the demanding work of serving God’s people, one more laborer for God’s harvest. There’s a sort of vaudevillian excess here, but the extravagance of our liturgy this afternoon signals the joy in heaven that Todd has committed himself, body and soul, to the consuming work of the pastoral ministry. Moreover, we rejoice because we believe in Todd, because we trust that he’ll be among us as a co-worker, an example of Christian life, helping all of the rest of us to live more truly as servants of Jesus, as servants to one another.
Todd’s offering of his life to God’s service gives us ample reason to dress up, to sing and celebrate. As Jesus reminds us in today’s lesson from St. Matthew’s Gospel, the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few; today, God has answered our prayers for a hard-working laborer by calling Todd to work among us.
So I hope, Todd, that you can see this ordination service with a double vision: on one hand, as a somewhat absurd carnival overstatement of our delight and of your importance, yet also as an understatement of our trust and affection for you. You need to be able to see the absurdity in order to remember that you are, after all, only an earthen vessel, the off-scouring of the earth, the less honorable member dressed up with greater dignity. You are flesh and bone, with all the limitations that flesh imposes, and it is always somewhat absurd to dress up mere flesh in the glorious vestments of heavenly honor.
Nonetheless, we need also to remember the deep justification for this ceremony and ritual. We need to remember that, although Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light, yet they are still a yoke and still a burden. We need to remember that the vocation of ministry entails long hours, heart-breaking compassion, soul-wearying negotiation and administration, and the capacity to endure endless tedious jokes about clergy who work only one day a week. We have seen Todd through years of concentrated study and extensive pastoral practice, but after all the years of academic instruction and spiritual formation, Todd, like every minister, is likely to see his heartfelt outreach miscarry, his wisest advice ignored in favor of glib slogans from some internet Nostradamus.
And in certain respects, I think that’s all for the better. Our neighbors around us tend to make idols of their experts, whether those experts be economists, medical professionals, politicians, or management consultants. We who preach the Word of God can’t afford to be idolized; that kind of uncritical adulation falsifies the very message we proclaim. Better that we be ignored by spiritual consumers who desire only instant painless fixes, than that we hawk a quick & easy gospel to a broader, shallower audience. We are called to an apostolate that pleases God, not mass audiences, and we are called to a ministry that reaches for people’s truest hearts, not their shallowest desires. Instead of polishing a sales pitch calculated to win ever-bigger congregations, we ordain you this afternoon with continuing in the way of Christ, illustrating for eager hearts the certain way of Christ in an uncertain and obscure situation. As St. Matthew described the vocation of discipleship for us today, Todd, we appeal to you to heal the sick, show compassion to those in distress, to preach the gospel of God’s kingdom.
Todd, in the power of the Spirit, heal the sick. Where hearts are broken, offer Christ’s consoling love. Where bodies falter and fail, call forth every spiritual strength that can compensate for, and even overcome, physical weakness. Don’t let laudable humility or frail doubt quench the powerful spirit of renewal and restoration that God is always more ready to offer than we are to exercise. Heal the sick, Todd, for such power is given by the Spirit of grace that your diocese and your congregations discern in you.
In all circumstances, Todd, exercise your ministry with the fullness of compassion. In conflict and at ease, among the privileged and the poor, exercise always the holy compassion that your friends have long seen at work in your heart. When a cynical world demands, “What’s in it for me,” we have the precious opportunity to show that working in the name of God’s love for the least of our sisters and brothers is a far greater reward than any material benefit our neighbors can bargain for. Each member of Christ Church and of St. Paul’s, or of the Diocese of Montana, or even the skeptical self-interested scoffer requires from us the kind of loving compassion that our Lord taught us – compassion that stretches us beyond the impulses of mortal expectation toward immortal grace.
Todd, preach the good news of God’s kingdom. No positive report of polls and elections, no promising stock market, no optimistic armistice or legislation may prevail over the news that God’s rule, God’s way is our only path for truth and hope and life. Here we have no city, for our citizenship belongs not in Sheridan or Helena or Washington or Canterbury, but we are citizens of a heavenly city, whose foundations we now see but dimly. With every word, and every deed, Todd, build up our sense of what our heavenly citizenship requires; wherever principalities and powers set themselves over the claims of our Creator, our Savior, or the Spirit of Truth, proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, whom we humans persecuted and who has interceded to save us from our folly, whose name alone God has exalted above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess him to be our Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Make your life transparent to reveal your love for the greatness and the grandeur and the surpassing significance of the gospel.
Day in and day out, your ministry will reflect that power and that glory exactly as much as your integrity is manifest to all who know you. In the face of temptations strong and trials fierce, do not ever compromise your integrity. God’s grace is not always obvious in all circumstances; if you sell off your integrity in exchange for some more-or-less commendable purpose, you’ll have to rely on horse-trading, vote-counting, and influence-peddling just like any common shill. Though the path to God’s light and truth lie through the valley of shadow and gloom, yet with your integrity intact, no storm of controversy can shake your soul, and the God of righteousness and truth will be with you. Only integrity will sustain your ministry over the long haul, through honest mistakes and careless lapses; only integrity will keep alive, will keep brilliantly luminous the radiance of God’s truth within the mortal flesh that veils our holy preaching.
That’s why I propose that it’s fitting that this afternoon’s liturgy take the form of a sober-faced farce: our divine Author structures the plot line of our vocation on earth as a narrative fraught with tragedy and drama, but tending always toward the blessed, grace-filled ending that makes for comedy. The message of our salvation is good news, and it is good news specifically to those who are infirm, who are suffering, who are at their wits’ end; therefore we are called to heal, to show compassion, and always to make known in this vale of poverty and distress the powerful Word that wrests joy from sorrow, vigor from disease, victory from suffering. In other words, God’s light and truth come to the world incognito, behind a veil, and it is our obligation – an obligation for all of us, but especially Todd’s duty as a priest of the gospel – to make the radiant light of the good news shine out brilliantly from behind that veil. This world knows the truth only in a disguise, so that our charade this afternoon is precisely the proper way to honor God and to recognize Todd as a chosen steward of God’s mysteries: the foolishness of our parades and our solemnities hints at the unsurpassable glory of God’s way, and marks this, our oddly-dressed brother, as an ambassador of the Lord whom we long to see in glory, but whom we encounter every day in rags.
Todd, my brother in Christ, our friend and our teacher, our servant and our leader: as a presbyter myself and a witness of the sufferings of the Body of Christ, I urge you to tend the flock of God that is in your charge with integrity; heal the sick; comfort those in distress; preach the Gospel. God grant us the clarity of insight always to support and strengthen you in your work; and God grant you the wisdom, the compassion, and the unwavering faith that will shine heaven’s light among all people, a beacon for those who do not yet know the gospel, and a source of warmth and clarity for us who know you from this moment on as a priest in Christ’s church – so that when the chief Shepherd appears, you will bring with you crowd of joyous witnesses, congregants and colleagues, receiving at his hands a crown of glory that never fades away.
Amen.
Posted by AKMA at 09:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
My Trip To Montana, Part One
If you can read this entry, I will have returned safely to Chicago after an exciting, educational cultural exchange trip to rural Montana. If you can’t read this entry, contact Margaret and tell her to post the travel entries that are waiting on my iBook.
Friday, Margaret dropped me off at the Delta terminal at O’Hare, itself an exciting new experience (since we’re steadfast United fliers). My flight took me from Chicago to Salt Lake City, and hence to Butte, Montana. Everything went just fine, except that my flight from SLC to Butte arrived a little late (as both Margaret and Rev. Ref firmly assured me. I didn’t notice; I was happy to get to Butte safely, where you will look in vain for a geological butte (although there’s a gigantic pit, a sort of reverse butte).
As my flight from Chicago drifted in toward Salt Lake City, I spotted the home neighborhood of Leta, Jon, Chuck, and dooce. I could tell because, as this photo demonstrates, I saw a single yellow sock on the sidewalk. If you can’t see the yellow sock, you aren’t using enough investigative imagination; a self-proclaimed journalist expounded details of Mary of Nazareth’s life that rested on much less evidence than I offer here — and she was on CNN, the home of Crossfire!
So anyway, I got to Butte satisfactorily; Todd drove me the hour from Butte to Sheridan, and handed me over to a delightful neighbor who sheltered me (in a suite equipped with a bearskin and a first-paperback-edition copy of I, Robot) and fed me breakfast during my visit. I turned in early, and slept like a top.
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December 17, 2004
On My Way
The good news is that I have a complete sermon that I’m adequately comfortable with, so tomorrow’s service won’t include long, embarrassing pauses, “ummmm”s, aimless digressions, and a wild-eyed, sweaty, manic worship leader — at least, I won’t be doing that. I won’t speak for Todd or the Bishop.
In a few minutes, I’ll head for the airport, whence I fly to Salt Lake City, the land of dooce, and from there on to Montana. By the time I get back from Montana, I’ll be permitted to sleep upstairs again. You should know that Margaret is feeling fine, apart from the awkwardness of being aware of how long one’s sitting how close to whom. We won’t know for a while whether the treatment has had its desired effect.
And I gather from the Ref that Montana is not the nodal point of broadband connectivity, so I may not be posting much till I get back on Monday. No great loss to the world, but I’ll come back with pictures and stories and probably a backlog of random thoughts waiting to be posted, including (I hope) some observations on the questions people have been asking me about ethics and anarchism.
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December 16, 2004
Explains A Lot
Our household has included a lot of Tintin reading over the years, and at least one Tintin t-shirt that’s been passed down from brother to brother to sister. Thus far, I had never stopped to consider the topic of this research paper. I had wondered why our dog Beatrice resembled Milou/Snowy so much in every way except intelligence, and what might have been done about Captain Haddock’s alcoholism, but Tintin’s stature and sexuality never caught my attention.
I draw no conclusion from the correlation of this research to the fact that both Trevor and James use Tintin as buddy icons for their AIM clients.
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Good Morning
Well, I wouldn’t want to sleep downstairs in the study every night, but I did get my rest, and I’m not irradiated, and I’ll be so bold as to give my sweetheart a bear hug this morning.
Yesterday’s treatment was more anticlimactic than uncomfortable. Evidently, the doctor brought the large-ish pill out to her in a lead-lined container that she carried in a lead-lined box, as though it were a scene out of a James Bond movie. Right now, the biggest hitch — apart from having to keep our distance — is that we won’t really know for a few months whether Margaret’s thyroid has given up (as it’s supposed to) or whether she’ll need another go-round of radioactive iodine. (That substance, with the safeguards Margaret has described to me, reminds me not only of James Bond. It further call to mind the original Edmond O’Brien version of D.O.A., in which somebody slips the hero a dose of the mysterious “luminous poison,” “that has no antidote and is 100% fatal within the week.” I wish I had a screen shot of the postscript to the movie that explains that luminous poison really exists! Except in Margaret’s case, of course, the radioactive iodine is doesn’t really glow, and will have salutary effects on her health.)
So Margaret’s feeling just fine, and Dr. de Villa is feeling better too, unless his desire to watch Dr. Phil implies a dangerous decay in his capacity to form good judgments. Don’t tell Dr. Rageboy.
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December 15, 2004
A Dozen Or So Students
If you add up Seabury students who have taken Greek with those who have expressed an interest in taking Greek next year if they can, and throw in my son who has taken Intro Greek twice, I can think of about twelve students who should be delighted by this link.
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My Glowing Bride
This morning, as I write, Margaret is at the local hospital. She’s receiving treatment for her Graves Disease, which was diagnosed a couple of years ago and which has not abated after continuous heavy anti-thyroid; she ingested seventeen millicuries of some radioactive iodine, which is supposed to circulate to her thyroid and stop it dead. Once her thyroid has shut down, she’ll take thyroid hormone supplements to provide the stuff that she no longer produces (or in her present condition, over-produces) on her own.
It’s not a huge medical endeavor, but it’s more dramatic and significant than taking a couple of aspirin. She’s not supposed to spend too much time in close proximity to anyone, not even her spouse. For the next three days, we’re instructed not to hug, sit close, sleep in the same bed, or kiss. Just when we’re reunited at the end of the semester!
It’s all for the good in the long run, but if you have prayers or candles or whatever left over after remembering Joey’s dad, please bear Margaret in mind. I’d take a picture of her, but I’m afraid that the radiation would corrode the sensor in my digital camera, and all the film in the house seems to be fogged. . . . .
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