Henri, Vincent, and Compassion

Henri giving Chris a cross from El Salvador

In celebration of this month’s fifth anniversary of my blog, the last entry of January and every Wednesday of February I’ve provided the most visited post of each year. For 2015, that would be Progressive vs. “Biblical” Christianity.

My friend, Nouwen biographer Michael Ford, invited me to write this piece about Henri Nouwen for a retreat he is leading on the spiritual writer this week.  It so happens that details of my own spiritual formation course on Nouwen September 22-25, 2016 were posted last week. It tends to fill up, so register early!

When Henri Nouwen proposed a course on “The Life and Ministry of Vincent van Gogh” at Yale Divinity School for the spring semester of 1977, his fellow academics were stymied, expressing concern: “But he was an artist.” “Wasn’t he crazy?” “Didn’t he kill himself?”

I took that seminar and it was my last formal course with Henri, though our friendship would continue through the rest of his life. We viewed photos and prints of van Gogh’s paintings, read his voluminous Letters to Theo (his patron brother), and biographical materials. A limit of a dozen or so students allowed an intimate, conversational format.

Many parallels drew Henri to Vincent. They preferred using only their first names. They were from Holland. Both were prolific. They shared compassion for the poor, the outcast, the marginalized, and the underprivileged. They each exercised unconventional ministries. Both were problematic as well as prophetic for the church. Either could be intense. And both were extremely lonely.

I did not know that Vincent had begun as a conventional Calvinist minister to the coal miners of the Borinage, and that his ministry scandalized the church because he did not keep a “professional” distance—descending into the mines with them, chatting with them at their kitchen tables, giving them his possessions, including his own bed to a sick woman.

This led to his dismissal from his pulpit by the church hierarchy and a long idle period trying to discern, “What next?” He decided to take up painting, hoping that his work would offer the same consolation that the Christian faith once did, even as Henri’s books about our very human challenges consoled his readers.

Unlike Vincent, who only sold two paintings in his lifetime, Henri’s books soon touched millions, either directly or indirectly through their influence on Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant pastors and lay leaders throughout the world.

Henri’s classes helped countless students discern their true vocations, not just in ministry, but determining what kind of minister they were called to be. As the final paper for that course I wrote a fictional story about a woman in transition, ministered by two versions of van Gogh’s Madame Roulin and Her Baby, which I spent time contemplating, first in Philadelphia and then in New York City.

Writing that story was the most fulfilling paper I produced in all three years of seminary, because it brought together compassion (my required muse) and creativity, as well as my callings as a writer and minister.

I am grateful to Henri and Vincent for their spiritual guidance. Vincent once wrote that Jesus was an artist whose medium was human flesh. Both Henri and Vincent followed in his footsteps as soul artists.

A reading for this week of Lent:

“Woman, Behold Your Son. Son, Behold Your Mother.”

Click on their names to find other posts that refer to Vincent van Gogh or Henri Nouwen.

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Donations of $100 or more either at once or over 2016 will receive a signed gift copy of my book, Henri’s Mantle: 100 Meditations on Nouwen’s Legacy.

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Crosses

In celebration of this month’s fifth anniversary of my blog, the last entry of January and every Wednesday of February I’m providing links to the most visited posts of each year. For 2014, that would be My Loneliness Led Me to God and virtually tied for second, Does a Corporation Have a Soul? and “I Had No Idea Your Blog Was Gay.”

During a visit to New York City, a gay seminarian and I enjoyed becoming acquainted as we walked through Central Park together. It was mid-November and dead brown leaves crunched beneath our feet at the same time others stubbornly clung to branches overhead, caressed by a cool, but not cold, breeze. A dip in the road led to a small, wooden bridge over a small brook. From this place, looking round, no visible sign revealed that we were in the heart of a city. It was on this bridge, leaning on opposite handrails, facing one another, that my new friend told me a touching story.

When he was a child, he began, his first trip from home occurred when his parents sent him to a church camp somewhere in the midst of a forest. He was frightened and lonely. He missed his family terribly. A manifestation of his feelings over the separation came one night as he dreamt that his father, walking to church, had fallen beneath the wheels of an oncoming car.

The other kids all seemed to have been there before and knew one another, and he did not feel included. He felt particularly vulnerable, and he believed they sensed his vulnerability. We know that kids can be cruel to one another. We are tempted by traditional theology to conclude that this suggests some innate human corruption, but I believe cruelty is something we learn, not something with which we are born. At one point they taunted him, throwing pine cones at him from the roof of one of the cabins. He ran away, crying, and hid himself in a small corner of his cabin.

A storm broke outside, and the darkness of heavy clouds and oncoming night accentuated the boy’s inner turmoil. An older boy, a camp counselor, came looking for him. When he found the younger boy, he seemed to understand and feel his pain, loneliness, and sense of not belonging. And he comforted him. He held him in his arms for a while, and his strength lessened the younger boy’s fear. He found him a chocolate bar, then reunited him with his campmates. The rain had since stopped, and they were gathered around a campfire. The older boy and the younger boy sat together.

The next day was the final day of camp. His parents came to take him home. As he prepared to depart, the older boy came to say good-bye. He handed the younger boy a cross that he had fashioned for him, held together with string where the carved sticks crossed, which could be hung by another string tied at the top. There was tenderness in the older boy’s gesture.

Now, hearing my new friend tell the story, I intuited something more between them than would have met his parents’ eyes. A spark between the younger and older boy, a spark of tenderness, of compassion, of love. Love that at once was eros and agape and philia.

My friend sighed. “That cross is my most valuable possession, and even if I were to lose it, it would still be here within me,” he said, pointing to his chest, passionate tears coming to his eyes. We held one another on the bridge, and I felt the presence of the other boy in our long hug. He probably did not know how profoundly he had touched the young boy who would become this seminarian. For in the older boy’s touch, the younger boy had not only experienced the affirming touch of another boy: he had also felt Jesus’ touch. His occasion for telling this story to me had come in the context of explaining the importance of Jesus in his faith, something he was unwilling to sacrifice in the radical enclave of New York’s Union Seminary.

When he later showed me the cross, I felt as if I were handling an icon or relic of a saint that had crossed my friend’s path.

Upon my return home, I opened the box of a similar relic of a saint that had crossed a friend’s path. It too is a small cross, but of silver metal with elaborate etching on it. It too had been given out of love and friendship at a church camp. But it had been passed from a younger man to an older one.

The older man was a Methodist minister I met when I was a student at Yale Divinity School eighteen years before. He was married, and had gone through years of Freudian psychotherapy at the hands of psychiatrists who believed his homosexuality was a “fear of castration.” Essentially I told him that was bunk. Eventually, I knew his own experience would lead him to the same conclusion. He intuited that too, and our few conversations arose from his heartfelt wish to accept that he was gay.

To show his appreciation one day, he handed me a gift. I opened the small box and found the beautiful silver cross. He explained its significance. As one of the leaders of a church camp, one of the teenaged men had taken a liking to him—a liking that apparently included eros and agape and philia, though that was never explicitly expressed. My friend said that it made him feel so good to be loved by another man! At the same time, it frightened him. On the final day of camp, the young man had given him this cross to express his deep feelings for the minister.

I protested, “Surely you want to keep this cross, given its meaning in your life!” I don’t remember exactly how he responded, but I believe he gave it to me both because he knew that I would honor its value and because passing it on to me signified the important bonding we had enjoyed as we shared what it meant to be gay, to be Christian, to be men.

When crosses were first devised out of the cruelty that human hearts have learned, who would’ve imagined that God could have transformed such a cruel machine into an icon of love between an older and a younger boy, and between a younger and an older man? Or that such a cause for suffering could create communion among all kinds of Christians?

Of course the cross would have no power for other than cruelty were it not for Jesus. His touch could heal—even cruelty. And as we touch one another as the Body of Christ, I mean, really touch, with eros and agape and philia—we too will heal our hearts and one another’s hearts of their cruelty. And love—eros and agape and philia—will allow, enable, and offer us communion.

A longer version of this was first published in February 1991 as one of my monthly columns for the More Light Update, edited by James D. Anderson. The Union Seminary student became a well-known documentary filmmaker.

A reading for this week of Lent:

“Today You Will Be with Me in Paradise.”

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you! Gifts of $100 or more either at once or over 2016 will receive a signed gift copy of one of my books.

Copyright © 1991 and 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Spiritual Baggage

In celebration of this month’s fifth anniversary of my blog, the last entry of January and every Wednesday of February I’m providing a link to the most visited post of each year. For 2013, that would be Jesus: Introvert or Extrovert? with a close second, What I Don’t Believe, What I Do Believe.

Please imagine you see before you my roller travel bag…

What you see is the baggage I usually carry with me on a speaking trip—at least, the visible baggage. As you can see, this is a piece of carry-on luggage, which is the sure sign of a frequent flier! I happen to agree that there are two kinds of luggage, carry-on luggage and lost luggage.

Now I didn’t pack this for a trip, but rather, to make some points about spiritual baggage. So let’s see what’s inside, quite literally unpacking our metaphor.

First we find another bag hidden inside. This represents hidden spiritual baggage we carry with us even when we claim to be traveling light as progressive Christians. We may discover hidden dogma: hidden expectations, latent prejudices, unintended biases, beliefs that don’t play well with others.

This may not be from any malevolent intent. The hidden baggage may just be part of our mystery as complex individuals. We stumble when we fail to acknowledge the mystery—that there are things about ourselves or our belief systems and our spiritual communities that are still being unveiled.

What have we here? My mother’s purse! We have unexpected spiritual baggage. How many of us have said we were not going to be like our mothers or our fathers only to recognize a bit of their behaviors or their attitudes in ours? This is true spiritually as well. Unconsciously we incorporate in our souls a bit of the souls of those who shaped us, our spiritual ancestry.

And if we have suffered spiritual abuse, we may spiritually abuse others—that is, force our spiritual views on others. This can be a problem whether we are spiritually traditional or progressive.

If we have been encouraged to think independently about our faith, we are more likely to encourage others in their declarations of spiritual independence. Providentially for me, my mother’s purse represents a woman who read widely, regardless of religious viewpoint, while affirming her own faith.

Look here! A pair of jeans, 31-inch waist. Now, how can I say this in a way that’s nice to myself. I am too full to fit into this pair of jeans! Sometimes in our spiritual baggage we find things that don’t fit us anymore: we’ve become too full, too open to fit into such narrow spiritual clothing. Perhaps we’ve simply outgrown it. Now that doesn’t mean we are superior to someone who would fit this pair of jeans. It just means we’re in a different place.

And what’s this? An extra-large t-shirt! Now this is just the opposite. I’d get lost in this. My spirituality may be a little more compact than it used to be. Maybe I’ve been losing some spiritual weight that held me down, or exercising my spiritual muscles so my soul is leaner and stronger. So I don’t need quite so much room or space or dogma anymore.

And here’s a makeup kit! Oh yes, what we might use to paint a smile on our faces even when we felt down, or put drops in our eyes to give us that misty-eyed expression when we wanted to look devotional or penitential or serious. As we learn more and more that the spiritual life is not about artificial highs or lows, we can leave this item behind.

Here’s something that’s harder to give up: a sorcerer’s hat! This is the hat Mickey Mouse wore in the animated film Fantasia as the sorcerer’s apprentice. It represents magical thinking.

  

Many of us have associated magic and superstition for so long with spirituality, that this is very difficult to let go of. Even today, if my car doesn’t start, I may offer a little incantation to God to make it go. But I no longer believe that’s how God works in the world. It’s up to me to have the car serviced, or fix the car myself (fat chance!), to take care of the car so that it will work when I need it.

So it is with the spiritual life. Though there are moments of grace that almost feel like magic, the spiritual life requires prayerful maintenance. We need spiritual mechanics (spiritual guides) and soul manuals (sacred texts and inspirational books). And we need spiritual communities to support us in our soul repair and development and customizing.

What you will not find in my bag is the “sword of truth” or the “armor of God.” I discovered long ago that God has no interest in bloody crusades, burning inquisitions, or violent jihads. To me, God is not manifest in violence but in vulnerability, not so much evident in victory as in compassion.

But look here! Now I have more room for clothes that fit, sacred texts and books that guide, and room for gifts for others. Because when we talk about spiritual baggage, what we really mean is excess baggage, baggage that doesn’t work for us any more, that burdens us, leaving little or no room for new spiritual habits or insights.

The less we carry, the farther we can go. In the spiritual life, there are two kinds of baggage: carry-on and lost. Less is often more in the spiritual life.

Jesus advised, “It is more difficult for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.” To soften the meaning of his “hard saying” about the rich, it has been explained that the “eye of a needle” referred to a particular gate through the city walls of Jerusalem which was so low and narrow, camels had to be relieved of their baggage to enter. Though this interpretation is not considered valid by biblical scholars, the metaphor works for the purpose of this post.

We still need carry-on spiritual luggage: those insights that have helped us along the way, the vision that helps us put the puzzling jigsaw pieces of our lives together in a framework of meaning. Admittedly, some of the pieces don’t quite fit together. They overlap or fit awkwardly. But we’ve done our personal best. And we have a spiritual community to help.

Many readers of this blog observe Lent, a period of fasting, or letting go of something. This Christian season, which begins today, may be an opportunity to consider the spiritual baggage we need to lose as well as that which we need to “carry-on.”

Related posts:

Shoveling Manure

“Bad Theology”

Readings for Ash Wednesday (today):

The Soul Feels Its Worth

Cosmic Dust

A reading for this first week of Lent:

“Forgive Them for They Know Not What They Do”

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2005 and 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

The Racial-Ethnic Oscar

In celebration of this month’s fifth anniversary of my blog, last week and the Wednesdays of February I’m providing a link to the most visited post of each year. For 2012, that would be: The Magic Kingdom (also the most visited post of all five years), with A Pragmatic Guide to Prayer coming in second.

In the controversy over the lack of black nominees for Oscars, one Academy member facetiously asked if we were now to have an ethnic category “for your consideration.” I doubt very much that the man who asked the question is racist; after all, he has a black adopted daughter and black grandchildren.

But what he missed entirely is that there is already a racial-ethnic category at play in the making of films, let alone the Academy Awards: Caucasians are favored in every category, from audiences to those who get to do the films, which to me is the crux of the problem, not just that other racial-ethnic groups are thereby excluded from consideration for awards.

Affirmative action has often been misunderstood to mean that unqualified people should get a job over qualified people. Affirmative action, rather, is better understood as providing opportunities for equally qualified applicants who are underrepresented in the industry they wish to enter.

Equal rights have also been twisted by dominant cultures to mean “special rights.” How many times have I had to argue with even the most open churchgoers that LGBT people, in seeking equal rights, were not requesting “special rights,” but the rights afforded every other citizen of our country, including the right to marry. That so many legislators and judges are now trying to curtail that right under the guise of defending religious freedom is reminiscent of the many ways the dominant white culture has tried to undermine civil rights and voting rights of African Americans.

I’m also surprised that many people have difficulty with stronger sentences for hate crimes. A crime is a crime is a crime, they think, when refusing to consider how a hate crime is a crime intended to harm and intimidate a whole segment of our citizenry, not to mention that hate crimes are characteristically far more brutal and wounding.

LGBT people have made tremendous strides in a historically relative short period because we had the advantage of being part of every family, neighborhood, congregation, congressional district, and political party. While African-Americans are yet to be fully integrated (i.e., welcomed), LGBT people began “integrated” even when not always welcomed. Knowing LGBT people personally as well as seeing us in film and on television helped our culture understand who we are.

When my mother visited me in Philadelphia in 1976, I took her to several plays, including one at the historic Academy of Music that featured Billy Dee Williams as a fiery Martin Luther King Jr. I was stunned to discover we were among a handful of white people in the packed theater. Why weren’t more white people interested?

Better was seeing The Color Purple at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood years later. For the first time, I saw a theater filled with black people and mostly white gay people, given the black and lesbian themes of the film.

Not just in the South where I live now, but in every city I’ve lived or travelled, it’s still true that 11 a.m. Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week, so Christians can’t really get on our high horse—even progressive Christians—and preach what we don’t practice.

And Washington and Wall Street and corporate offices, whose whitewashed tombs house overwhelmingly white and male power structures, cannot effectively legislate, invest in, or inspire a diversity they do not represent.

So I welcome Hollywood’s agonizing over what it can do to remind us “black lives matter.” This is a step toward recognizing the diversity that makes a country great.

Blog readings for Black History month in the U.S. (February):

 “Colored on TV”

Keep the Dream Alive!

Bayard Rustin Speaks

Knowing Your Place

Where Have All the Black Men Gone?

Black Lives Matter

Other relevant posts:

Redeemed from the Pit

Love Force

The Scariest Book I’ve Read

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.