Aug 22 | Retreat Diary: Friday (The Last Day)

HOLY READING

From Widening the Horizons: I still have a serious problem with this “king” designation that the pastor in the story named! I had never heard of these three designations, and yet the way Gerkin spoke about it implied that he was very familiar with it. I find it a very odd characterization. Although the church and civil authority have often been very tightly wedded, it’s not usually made this explicit in my experience.

While hierarchies should be treated with some suspicion at times, I think the reason I’m Anglican is that I see some aspects of usefulness in terms of religious instruction and administration. We live in an era where people are less and less likely to know what Christianity is about. There is already a power imbalance, especially when people come into Christianity with absolutely no religious instruction. The best thing to do in that situation is be aware of it and structure things accordingly in order to best empower the new faithful. This is an era that demands educated leaders. Christianity may not be monolithic, but it seems to me that there are some things that can honestly be called true to the foundation of the faith and some that can’t, and sometimes those that can’t are just plain heretical – prosperity Gospel teaching comes readily to mind.

As Gerkin writes about hierarchy in his own book he makes a brilliant point! He writes that hierarchy today has largely moved to the workplace. I do see this as changing over time, though. Loyalty has not become a fair expectation anymore, not just because young people move from job to job but because there is increasingly less to hold us to those jobs (if they’re jobs at all and not unpaid internships).

I believe human beings seek out some form of hierarchy everywhere they go. “Everyone’s gotta serve somebody.” The question is, where will we seek it out? Will it be the church, the workplace, or simply the brands we allow to dictate our lifestyles and even morality? Perhaps we crave it. The challenge for us, then, is how to use it subversively, like Paul did. I think nowadays using it explicitly at all can be subversive, simply because we of the postmodern era are so desperate to appear empowered and unattached. I think the only way to really challenge it is to accept it in the most selective way possible. I’m a Christian – Jesus is my Lord. By saying that, the others who seek to have a claim on my identity are shut out.

Gerkin says that, when we become pastors/priests, instead of focussing so heavily on the king/pastor/prophet role, we should think of ourselves primarily as interpreters. This made me smile like crazy! This is a gift that I believe I have, and at the very least it is a great passion of mine – to balance the values of society against the Christian story and see the parallels and the places where things come up short. The most exciting part about parish ministry (or something like it) for me is the chance (and, really, the core duty) to relate culture back to the story, and vice-versa. This was probably the biggest thing I missed in CPE. Although I did have a chance to do it sometimes, it was not something I did every day – sometimes not even every week! You are expected to adapt your conversation to the person with whom you sit – a beautiful and necessary thing, to be sure, but different in many ways. There were many times that I didn’t talk about God at all. One thing I am looking forward to as a priest is the chance to frame things in God-language, which is something I would do as a parish priest and a theology professor. If I did decide to become a chaplain, I think I’d have to be very serious about writing to balance these things out.

:)

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I just remembered this great conversation I had with a friend who is also on the discernment path. As we talked about the ways that we felt God was made most explicitly manifest in our lives, she finally said, “You know, people always talk about trying to figure out the meaning of life, and I never understood that. I know the meaning of life. It’s love, mate.”

I’ll never forget that – mostly because I really think it’s true! I honestly can’t think of a better answer, and it’s hard for me to think of a retort. Now I’m sure someone smarter than me probably has one…but I think to say “The meaning of life is love” is to leave things open enough to encompass a hell of a lot. If you feel like you’ve never experienced love, then it seems clear to me that your life’s work is to find it and cultivate it in others. We’re not talking about romantic love, but a selflessness that wishes only for the betterment of the other, that believes wholeheartedly in the blessedness and worthiness of the other, and in the idea that the world is made better through the presence of the other. This is a love that pours out, that empties itself – a kenosis. If there’s no kenosis, there’s no love. It should not be an unhealthy self-denial, but a joyful act of complementarity: a recognition of one’s truest self as being found in communion with others.

I really don’t think a pronouncement like this closes off further questions about the meaning of life either. There are many many questions that arise from this pronouncement, and they should be pursued…for love! A lover always seeks to better know and understand the beloved.

***

From The Sacred Mirror: The ninth reading was the Emmaus story. I’ve always adored how Luke’s Jesus is always known in the breaking of bread with others. In this story, Jesus gives the gift of word and sacrament to the people he meets on the road. Only when both – word and sacrament – have occurred do the two people know who Jesus is. You can’t have one without the other, and neither can take precedence.

Herbie beautifully writes that if we only see Jesus as someone who once lived and now provides us with a code of conduct, or bread and wine as universal symbols with which to remember him, then we are believing in a ghost. To do the work of Christ is to show the world the wounded hands and feet.

This is why I choose to remain in the faith of my childhood, my ethnic faith of Anglicanism. For me, none of the church’s mission matters if we do nothing more than remember what has happened in the past, and if those memories are all very personal ones, of personal sins being forgiven. I can only be spurred on to lay down my whole being if Christ is truly present – and to all. I believe the Eucharist is a symbol of the entire universe being brought into balance through the willful sacrifice of one who came among us to inextricably entwine joy with sadness, beauty with degradation, death with life. It is not about my personal sins, or even just sins full stop. It’s about the limitation of every created thing being hallowed and transformed – not once in the past and never again but right here, right now, again and again forever. If it is not this, it seems more like a game of pretend.

NOTE: Please understand I do not write this to make those whose interpretations are different feel less or say that they’re wrong. This is my own interpretation of what I have received from my tradition – which also contains a wealth of different interpretations held in tension. I have other beliefs that are much closer to a more Protestant way of thinking, but in terms of the Eucharist I’m pretty Anglo-Catholic. Do forgive me.:)

Herbie writes – again beautifully – that the Eucharist is “the physical means of grace which comes to our physical being. Both are the developing places of God. Here is encounter. Without this eating and drinking we die.” (100)

The final story is Paul’s encounter with Jesus. Nothing – including the indivisibility of word and sacrament – can occur without personal acceptance as well as communal acceptance. The community is where we find ourselves and begin, but I think true allegiance only occurs with personal encounter and difficult questions. They must be balanced. On the one hand, I’ll always remember several years ago, a newly baptized friend of mine said she thought the most important task of the church was evangelism. She was so enthusiastic to tell everyone she knew about how church changed her life. Then, life got in the way, and she stayed away from church for a very long time. She accepted that personal conversion, but her sense of community did not last past a certain point, and now she seems shy to return. On the other hand, there are those who grow up in the church but never have a personal encounter, and so they leave at a certain point and don’t come back. That would have been me, if I hadn’t fallen off my own horse, so to speak.

There is no way to disentangle ourselves. In some ways human beings really are burdened. We flourish best when we are connected with others, but if we have no private inner life we cannot live honestly and will eventually come to a crisis point. We are aware of our separation and our need for community, and focus on one exclusively to our detriment.

***

SO:

Who am I and what do I hope to do with my one wild and precious life?

I have written all throughout this book that “Love is the answer.”

But what does that mean?

“Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself.”

Could anything be so simple and yet so difficult? It’s been easy to say and think I love God, but sometimes my actions betray other alliances. Of course these are struggles we all share.

When my CPE supervisor prayed for me, he mentioned Moses and the burning bush. Two of my fellow students mentioned fire, and another sang of Jesus walking on the water, which I’ve always interpreted to be chaos. I love that story – there’s nothing to fear, because Jesus is walking on top of chaos, and into hostile Gentile territory yet.

I want to follow, to dedicate my life, so much that sometimes it hurts.

For the last two days as I’ve said my rosary, my refrain has been, “Tread quietly, the red heart beats.” This is a new special phrase that to me means, “Be still and know that I am God.” It works with the image of the Sacred Heart that I know in my own soul so well. The heart beats and we must still ourselves to hear it. I feel I heard it when I stood on the hill today. I went up there today after cleaning up my room and seeing some deer outside my window.

I suddenly had this crazy revelation! Whenever someone mentions the deer tattoo on my sternum, I say, “That’s me.” In a sense, I saw myself out the window today, feeding on wet greens, nourished by recent rain. I finally found that piece of myself – the deer longing for flowing streams. I have to remember that this is who I am: it keeps me humble.

During one individual supervision, my supervisor asked me if I knew who I was. I said, “I don’t know…but I know who I belong to.” That was enough for me then – and it could still be enough, but I think God wants me to stay curious.

I feel like I do know a little better who I am, but the work is never done, because of course I will change.

Who am I now?

I am a daughter, a wife, a friend, a cousin, a child of God.

I have a calling: a palm and heart full of fire.

I have a restless heart that only finds rest in God.

I am of a people that is close to the earth, and panentheistic.

I am an artist, and my art and the art of others are the surest portals for me to be in God’s presence.

I am a deep thinker and theologian, learning not only for pleasure but as an act of worship.

I am beloved – and for no reason of merit. I am beloved because I was created to be loved, as we all are.

The meaning of my life is love, and my life will sing love, if I let it.

Amen. Alleluia.

-Clarity