The Church and World Re-Imagined

A recent editorial about our new nuclear arms race, “The World Can Still Be Destroyed in a Flash,” on the 75^th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings reminded me of my post on August 13, 2014.

Last week’s anniversaries of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reminded me of a deeply moving visit to a church that had faced a difficult transition.

Nearly 30 years ago I led workshops for a congregation in the state of Oregon. The next day, the pastor who was hosting me took me to “his” church—not the congregation he pastored, but the one he attended when he just wanted to be on the receiving end of ministry. As we drove through the hamlets and villages of the state, he told me how this church experienced a crisis when its sanctuary burned down to the ground and they had to decide what to do—whether to rebuild or buy another property.

My new friend continued his story as we drove into what appeared to be a motel and parked in its parking lot. The church decided, he said, to practice what it preached, and instead of building some grand new sanctuary with the insurance money, to purchase this motel instead. Services were conducted in what had been the motel’s large lobby, and its rooms were made available to the homeless.

As if that were not enough, the speaker that day was a survivor of Hiroshima, it being the 40^th anniversary of the bomb being dropped on his city. Some of you may know that Hiroshima was not so much a military target as a spiritual target, intended to strike a demoralizing blow to the Empire of Japan.

As the gentle, elderly man rose to speak, I was mindful that my father, en route to Japan during WW II, was said to have been saved from actual combat by the dropping of the bomb. Eventually my father saw the devastation of Nagasaki firsthand, debarking from his troop ship in its harbor. Soon, as part of the occupying forces, he was welcomed into one family’s life in another part of the country, to whom my family sent packages of goods long after his return to California. At the same time, a Japanese-American family down the street from us, who became friends, had been among those sent to a so-called “relocation center” during the war.

The dignified survivor stood behind the pulpit. He carefully pulled his notes from the pocket of his suit jacket, and unfolded the silk scarves in which they were wrapped. The effect was that of unveiling the Holy Grail.

He spoke of being a child in school when the blast occurred; of hearing planes overhead and taking cover; of being burned by the flash and bloodied by flying glass, yet having somehow survived radiation poisoning. He described losing family and friends, either immediately or eventually. He told us of the physical devastation to the city and to his own body.

Yet he did not speak of recrimination. He spoke of redemption. Having seen the horror of war, he had devoted his life to peace. And that was his gospel to us that morning. Peace. Peace on earth, good will toward all. In that former motel lobby, I both saw and heard the gospel of peace and redemption.

Click here to see the original post with additional relevant links.

I will be leading a virtual, at-home retreat open to the public for Columbia Seminary’s Spiritual Formation Program September 17-19, 2020 entitled An Open Receptive Place: Henri Nouwen’s Spirituality. You are invited!

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Au Revoir, Notre Dame de Paris

A replica of a Notre Dame

gargoyle watches over us 

at night. 

Here I use “au revoir” in the sense, “goodbye until we meet again,” as it literally means “to the seeing again.” I believe in Notre Dame’s resurrection, thanks to the commitment of the people of France to rebuild after the fire that devastated it weeks ago.

Until then, we will carry it in our hearts.

The first time I visited the cathedral, we had a very personal encounter. A close friend of mine in Los Angeles asked me on behalf of his father, struggling with cancer, to light a candle and say a prayer there before the Blessed Virgin for whom “Our Lady” is named. I was only too happy to do that.

When I happened to turn on the news while putting away groceries and learned of the fire, my legs wobbled, my heart sank, and tears came. My voice quavered when I later told Wade, who was working from home. On Facebook I wrote that it was the first time since 9/11 that I “lost it” watching the burning of a building, though, in that case, it was not so much the building as it was the loss of human life and the loss of life as we knew it that overwhelmed me.

My first long fiction piece, an unpublished novella titled Tommy that I wrote in college, described the great loss congregants experienced when their church burned down. I based it on my childhood experience of a fire in my home church, Vanowen Baptist. I had witnessed firsthand how emotional my mom and dad and other church members became, though it only damaged and did not destroy the structure. There is something very personal about a church.

In the dialogue between minister/journalist Bill Moyers and mythologist Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, Moyers observes, “There are women today who say that the spirit of the Goddess has been in exile for five thousand years, since the—”

Campbell interrupts, “You can’t go that far back, five thousand years. She was a very potent figure in Hellenistic times in the Mediterranean, and she came back with the Virgin in the Roman Catholic tradition. You don’t have a tradition with the Goddess celebrated any more beautifully and marvelously than in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century French cathedrals, every one of which is called Notre Dame” [p 170].

While male gods have been associated with aggression, Campbell suggests, the Goddess is about compassion, which he declares as “the beginning of humanity” [p 174]. In a related context, Campbell says:

The spirit is really the bouquet of life. It is not something breathed into life, it comes out of life. This is one of the glorious things about the mother-goddess religions, where the world is the body of the Goddess, divine in itself, and divinity isn’t something ruling over and above a fallen nature. There was something of this spirit in the medieval cult of the Virgin, out of which all the beautiful thirteenth-century French cathedrals arose. However, our story of the Fall in the Garden sees nature as corrupt; and that myth corrupts the whole world for us [p 99].

In the chapter, “The Gift of the Goddess,” Campbell explains:

From mere animal-like carnality, one may pass through a spiritual death and become reborn. The second birth is of an exalted, spiritually informed incarnation. And the Goddess is the one who brings this about. The second birth is through a spiritual mother. Notre Dame de Paris, Notre Dame de Chartres [which Campbell described as his “parish church”]—our Mother Church. We are reborn spiritually by entering and leaving a church [p 179].

It is after this last point that Moyers reminds Campbell that the Council of Ephesus proclaimed Mary as the Mother of God in 411, and Campbell explains that this had been argued long before in the church, adding, “there is a story that when the council was in session, discussing this point, the people of Ephesus formed picket lines and shouted in praise of Mary, ‘The Goddess, the Goddess, of course she’s the Goddess’” [p 180].

Campbell continues, “Jesus took over what is really the Goddess’ role in coming down in compassion. But when the Virgin acquiesces in being the vessel of the incarnation, she has herself already affected the redemption. It has become more and more apparent that the Virgin is equivalent in her suffering to the suffering of her son. In the Catholic Church now I think she is called the ‘co-savior’” [p 180].

Any of us who have contemplated Mary near the cross, or a Pietà of Mary holding her dead son, or witnessed any grieving mother who has lost a child, can bear witness to the intensity of such compassion, a word which Campbell defines as “shared suffering.”

To repeat Campbell’s maxim, “Our Mother Church. We are reborn spiritually by entering and leaving a church.”

No wonder emotions run high when we witness the burning of a church, whether Notre Dame de Paris, or Vanowen Baptist, or the black churches arsoned here in the South.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: https://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Risking the Brokenness of the Body, Part 2

The chapel at Mount Calvary Retreat House overlooking Santa Barbara

When I was finishing my first book, Uncommon Calling, I took my typewriter and my manuscript to Mount Calvary for two weeks. Here I worked on the final chapter, recounting the painful defeat of efforts to obtain ordination of gays and lesbians in my denomination and describing the meaning of that defeat for me.

As I wrote, I found deeply buried grief and pain and anger resurrected within me. Also, the knowledge that I had yet to find a publisher for my book haunted me. I wondered if anyone even wanted to hear my story. I took my many feelings into my prayer life during my working retreat, praying for understanding, for resolution, and for healing from these overpowering and painful feelings.

I began to look more intently at the crucifixes on the walls in Mount Calvary, especially the one carved of wood in the chapel. Monasticism has deeply influenced my spiritual life, but I had formerly maintained a Reformed dislike for the contemplation of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Those who contemplate it are likely to duplicate it, it had seemed to me. And I offered hearty Protestant applause to those who avoided crosses and lived “Easter lives,” or, better yet, to those who took action that removed the crosses of others so that they might live out the resurrection.

Reviewing and editing my manuscript, my book seemed to me to be filled with crosses for myself and others. I had enjoyed my life, my ministry, and even the church. Why did the cross overshadow my joy? Perhaps I had avoided contemplating crucifixes because I had witnessed too many crucifixions of lesbian and gay Christians in the church.

During one morning’s Eucharist, as Christ’s body was broken and Christ’s blood was spilled again, I looked toward the figure of Jesus on the cross above the sacrament. What I witnessed at that moment may prove offensive to some: instead of simply seeing a limp and lifeless body, I saw One who was relaxed. The goodness of the crucifixion dawned on me. Jesus surrendered his will to God’s. He trusted God.

I thought of my own spiritual need to relax, trust God, to be loving rather than controlling. If God can make sense out of Jesus’ suffering and render him the victor, then gay Christians may take hope that our suffering is not in vain. We can fulfill our prophetic ministry, no matter what others may do to us. Our crucifixion is their last resort, not God’s.

Every closet and every church needs a crucifix. It’s time for lesbian and gay Christians to contemplate Christ’s suffering, for it reminds us that God suffers with us. It’s time for Protestants to get those bodies back on our pretty, empty crosses, for it will link us to the suffering of those who are being crucified today. It’s time for all Christians to take seriously that the church as the Body of Christ must continually risk the brokenness of that body to do what is right.

I believe that Jesus on the cross calls lesbian and gay Christians to risk the brokenness of our bodies, in order to fulfill a prophetic ministry with the church. I believe that Jesus on the cross calls the church to risk the brokenness of its body to fulfill its pastoral ministry with gays and lesbians. Our Christian faith assures us that, no matter how difficult it will be, fulfilling these calls leads to resurrection.

This and last week’s posts are excerpts from the chapter “Risking the Brokenness of the Body” from my 1990 book Come Home! Reclaiming Spirituality and Community as Gay Men and Lesbians, published by Harper & Row, with added chapters in its 1998 Second Edition, published by Chi Rho Press. These excerpts fit well the themes of the present season of Lent. Today, of course, I would add transgender, intersex, and bisexual people.

West Hollywood Presbyterian Church on retreat at Mount Calvary Retreat House
(See if you can find me!)

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Copyright © 1990, 1998 and 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Ash Wednesday

“Rend your hearts and not your garments.” Joel 2:13

“We are so damn proud of our humility!” The mother of my childhood best friend said this, though not to me. She had muttered it under her breath at church one Sunday in my mother’s presence, and my mother mentioned it approvingly in a family conversation. I’ve forgotten the context, but there are so many churchly occasions for which it would be appropriate that it doesn’t really matter.

Today many of us will attend, even lead, Ash Wednesday services. Pious sentiment will be running high, a flash flood in the spiritual desert. It will make us feel good to feel so humble. Some of us will have the opportunity to proudly display ashes on our foreheads. People will speak in hushed, gloomy, somber tones as clear evidence of their reverence. Oh, how godly we will be!

I wonder if a more godly sign of penitence for Christians might be to rip up and burn our books of church polity. It could be a way of saying that, as useful an instrument as each may be, they are merely a human attempt to order God’s grace, which spills all over the place like rain and sunlight on the just and the unjust.

Some of us will respond that church rules and laws are good things, they just need reforming. I would think the prophet Joel considered the heart a good thing, too, but he heard God calling us to rend it, to tear it asunder, to demonstrate our repentance. Rending church polities might remind us that we need to repent of our order that has denied the supposed disorderly access to Jesus. Jesus didn’t get along too well with the religious lawyers of his day, who brokered the grace of God according to their own polity, the Law of Moses.

May your grace surprise us with its resistance to pride and prejudice.

I had planned to offer this today long before last week’s debacle of the United Methodist Church continuing its anti-gay policies in its own church polity. I have been grateful to work alongside so many United Methodists on progressive issues, from demonstrating at the Nevada nuclear test site and travelling to Central America in witness of justice and peace to editing Open Hands, a magazine for congregations welcoming of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, founded by the Methodist Reconciling Congregation program. I grieve with them today and all LGBT-positive people in every religious tradition and denomination whose polities attempt to refuse the grace of God to LGBT people.

This meditation is found on pages 222-223 of my 2001 book, Reformation of the Heart, daily meditations for Advent, Epiphany, Lent and Holy Week. Please use today’s post as you wish, as is advised of every post on this blog. Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, which remembers Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness after his baptism, undergoing temptations. For a creative variation of this biblical story, see last week’s post.

P.S. My friend Chris Iosso was inspired by this post to write one of his own that “connects the dots” of so many issues plaguing our world: http://justiceunbound.org/carousel/lent-and-unrelenting-brutality/

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 2001 and 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Compassion for Those We Envy

Icarus flies too close to the sun.

This post marks the eighth anniversary of beginning this blog. Thanks for reading!

You may know that the story of how I come to have a book is sometimes as important to me as the book itself. Cindy is part of our extended family, and every Christmas she gives me a few books that are appropriate to my interests. Given her limited resources, she finds them in bargain book shops, gently used or seemingly unread, slightly damaged or simply unwanted.

This year she gave me Thoughts on Virtue: Thoughts and Reflections from History’s Great Thinkers, Philip Larkin Collected Poems, Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable (whose cover boasts a handsome, hunky Icarus in midair), and the Dalai Lama’s An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life. The latter’s only wound seems to have been water damage that made the book’s jacket stick to the first pages.

The Dalai Lama is a favorite of mine, so that’s the book I’ve been reading. As is his wont, his teachings begin almost too simply before delving deep into the murky waters of human nature, though he might argue with such a phrase suggesting essence or identity that is unchanging.

Soon I came across a description of contemplation that answers many of its critics:

We must know how to pace ourselves down to the snail’s pace of profound contemplation while also ensuring that we do not forget our neighbor’s problem or that of the fish swimming in polluted oceans many thousands of miles away. [p54]

In this simple way, he reminds us that, though focus is a gift of a meditative way of life, it is always held in context with the bigger picture of a neighbor’s need or our environment’s plight. His “snail’s pace” made me think of a snail I wrote of in the introduction to the third section of my book of prayers, Coming Out to God:

A snail stretched its full length in a strenuous assault, climbing the tall picture window. Inside, those of us on retreat discussed our vision of the future church. A sadness had slipped into some hearts, as often happens the final day of a retreat. The common purpose, camaraderie, and caring intimacy that are experienced at such gatherings inevitably lead one to wonder, Why can’t it always be like this? Our visions of hope for the church painfully reminded us of our place—or lack thereof—in the present church, intensifying our letdown. Yes, we were on the downhill side of our mountaintop experience. Yet the slowly ascending snail, apparently unintimidated by the long vertical climb, offered hope for progress.  [p119]

When reading a sacred text, many of us know that meditating on a line or phrase or thought that disturbs us may be as helpful as reflecting on one that is pleasing. And so I soon found my “disturbing” text in the Dalai Lama’s elaboration of compassion:

It is not difficult for us to develop sympathy for a child in the hospital or an acquaintance mourning the death of a spouse. We must start to consider how to keep our hearts open toward those we would normally envy, those who enjoy fine lifestyles and wealth. [p105]

For me, that’s a tough one! The Psalmist had no qualms complaining to God:

For I was envious of the arrogant;

            I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

For they have no pain;

            their bodies are sound and sleek.

They are not in trouble as others are;

            they are not plagued like other people. …

Therefore the people turn and praise them,

            and find no fault in them. …

Such are the wicked;

            always at ease, they increase in riches.

All in vain I have kept my heart clean

            and washed my hands in innocence.

 [Psalm 73:3-5, 10, 12-13  NRSV]

Anyone who knows me knows also that I can’t exactly claim that I have always “kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.” But still, without impugning them as “evil,” why do professional athletes and performers, celebrities and CEOs live so well, while “do-gooders” scrape by?

Funny thing is, when I started writing this post, parenthetically referring to the depiction of a beautiful and handsome Icarus in the sky on the cover of Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable, I hadn’t yet thought that this could be an illustration of keeping “our hearts open toward those we would normally envy.” The myth of Icarus is that he flew too close to the sun, melting the wax on the wings that held him in flight. Many of those we envy “fly too close to the sun.”

“How the mighty have fallen,” cried David in a psalm of lament at the opening of 2 Samuel upon hearing of the killings of Saul and his son Jonathan. David had earlier resisted killing Saul when he found him sleeping, despite the humiliation, threats and attacks he had endured from him. The “ideal” king showed compassion.

Even for those who don’t suffer such a comeuppance as Icarus or Saul, the Dalai Lama believes we must hold open our compassion for all who share the human condition:

There is a certain irrationality in responding to injustice or harm with hostility. Our hatred has no physical effect on our enemies; it does not harm them. Rather, it is we who suffer the ill consequences of such overwhelming bitterness. [p111]

Remembering both the mighty and meek suffer may hold our hearts open for our sake if not for theirs.

Related Post: Praying for “Enemies”

Thanks to Toby Schmidt, cover designer of Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable, which features the image of Icarus used above.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

If the Church Had Been There, Matthew Shepard Would Not Have Died

This past Friday, October 12, was the 20^th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death. I realized that as I read the good news that his ashes will be interred in the Washington National Cathedral alongside other national figures who helped transform our consciences for the better.

I was about to preach at Oaklands Presbyterian Church in Laurel, Maryland, when someone handed me a newspaper article about a young gay man who was hanging on to life by a thread after being beaten and hung coyote style on a fence in the prairies of Wyoming. Another gay-bashing, I thought, and I doubted any more would come of it than the gay-bashings friends and others had endured. Thank God, I was wrong about its impact.

Weeks later I paralleled Matthew’s life with the Presbyterian Church’s history on LGBT concerns during a “Moment for Mission” for Rutgers Presbyterian Church in New York City on December 6, 1998. It was printed in the March/April 1999 issue of the More Light Update, and then in a Church & Society issue on “Hate,” September/October 1999.

In memory of Matthew Shepard and the many other lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people (the latter of whom bear a disproportionate brunt of our hate crimes) similarly attacked, I’ve decided to offer this as my post this week.

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him what Martha had said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother Matthew Shepard would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and those who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So everyone said, “See how he loved Matthew Shepard!”

But some of them said, “Could not one who gave vision to the visionless have kept Matthew from dying?”

The gay University of Wyoming student who was brutally killed in October 1998 was born in 1976, the year that the United Presbyterian Church set up the Task Force to Study Homosexuality. As we held our meetings and regional hearings to determine whether homosexuality was a sin and a bar to ordination, Matthew Shepard’s mother was changing his diapers and dreaming who he might become.

Matthew Shepard was just learning to walk when the 1978 General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church gathered in San Diego and rejected the recommended policy of the majority report of our task force that homosexuality was neither sin nor a bar to ordination.

Although we were devastated by this outcome, at least the General Assembly had not changed the Book of Order, had not set its recommended policy to presbyteries and congregations in stone. But, as Matthew Shepard was learning to talk, the denomination’s Stated Clerk muted our hopes by declaring that the Assembly had interpreted the church Constitution in a way that made its recommendation binding on presbyteries and congregations.

Many congregations balked and, as friends and family told Matthew Shepard’s parents what a sweet little boy they had, a handful of Presbyterian churches began passing statements saying they would welcome people into their churches and into church leadership without regard to sexual orientation. Thus began the More Light church movement, which gave rise to similar movements in other denominations.

Matthew Shepard entered school as denominations across the United States resisted being schooled in matters related to sexuality. Churches kept an arm’s length from homosexuality and human sexuality by commissioning church committees to study these issues, only to dismiss and even condemn their conclusions and recommendations.

So, as Matthew Shepard was becoming aware of his own sexuality, our church and almost every church was announcing in the media that it was sinful, not God’s wish for humanity, evil, sick. Matthew would have had an easier time of it had he grown up in the 1950s when few people talked about homosexuality.

In Matthew’s final years of high school, as he was developing the normal crushes and contemplating what he would do with his life, the Presbyterian Church was busy codifying its anti-gay position by an amendment to our Book of Order.

As Matthew began a college career focused on political science and international relations and hoped someday to serve the United States government in a foreign embassy, that same government passed legislation that prevented recognizing the same-gender marriage he might have had.

And the night of Matthew’s death, the Presbyterian church was sleeping on its ecclesiastical sofa, having declared a moratorium on decisions regarding homosexuality.

Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney were coming of age at the same time, exposed to the same anti-gay messages that the church was sending to Matthew Shepard. If the church calls gay life sick and depraved, why shouldn’t they? If Christians angrily attack the so-called homosexual agenda, why shouldn’t they attack homosexuals? If Christians rob gays and lesbians of their spiritual inheritance and vocations, why shouldn’t they rob Matthew?

If the church excommunicates gays and lesbians, why shouldn’t they cast Matthew out? Excommunication means to send out of community, away from the resources needed for survival, to die of exposure in the wilderness. And in the wilderness of Wyoming, Russell and Aaron executed that sentence upon Matthew Shepard.

If the body of Christ—the church—had been there, Matthew Shepard would not have died.

If the body of Christ had been there, Russell and Aaron would not have brutalized him simply for who he was.

Unlike Jesus, the body of Christ doesn’t have a second chance with Matthew. The church cannot resurrect people. So it needs to get there sooner if it is to bring life to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. It cannot dawdle, lest its only service to gay people be to bury its failures at rescuing the spiritually abused.

“Lord, if you had been there, our brother Matthew Shepard would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”

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Copyright © 1998 and 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

A Death in the Neighborhood

This is a true story, but the names of the family members have been changed to protect their privacy. A few weeks ago I showed it to “Susan” for the first time, and asked her permission to use it on my blog, and she gladly agreed. I gave it as a talk for Atlanta’s Midtown Spiritual Community on July 28, 2004.

An order of the day for me is walking my dogs, and before the summer day became a furnace, I decided to take them. Outside was bright and colorful and inviting. Royal blue sky above the lush green Southern urban-residential landscape of my Atlanta neighborhood called Ormewood Park: undulating rises and ravines draped with kudzu, wisteria, and ivy out of which grow tall oaks with thick limbs reaching high, alongside squat magnolias with thick limbs reaching wide, their leaves filtering morning sun like light or dark green stained glass. Standing out in furry golden contrast to all this green, my dogs inspected and sniffed the usual places en route: telephone poles, mail box bases, root systems of trees, tall grasses, stones and curbstone. They left their messages for other canine passersby to read with their all-knowing noses.

As usual, we passed Jim’s house. The screened porch veiled the presence of Jim initially, but he spoke out in greeting. I asked how the chemotherapy was going. He said fine, that they had stopped it in preparation for the surgery. Today he was going in for a test to see if the surgery would be done to remove the original cancer. I made my usual commitment to pray for him, as well as my customary “if there’s anything I can do, let me know.” He belongs to the church down the street to which I also belong but seldom go. On another walk I had met some of his neighbors who were checking in to see how he was doing.

My dogs and I continued down his street toward the church. In front of another church, where the homeless congregate because of an outreach program there, we make a decision whether to turn onto a street, which we often do, or go further along this street, always the choice of the doggies who usually have me in tow rather than the other way around. But the next block had an emergency vehicle, paramedics, with flashing lights on the other side of the street, and a police car on our side—always problematic for my dogs, who do not take well to men in uniform, either because my dogs are pacifists, which I doubt, since they bare their teeth when it suits them to intimidate each other or a potential intruder or even me when I try to move them on the bed, or more likely, because police look like those delivery persons who invade their turf: our yard and porch.

As we approach, my intuition tells me of trouble and I wonder do I want to get involved, especially with the dogs pulling on their leashes and work waiting for me back home. The paramedics made me think perhaps some older person on the block is ill or reluctantly given up the ghost, but the police caused me to consider foul play. CJ, also a member of the church down the street, drove by me, waved, and parked, but not to greet me. She ran across the street to the house behind the box-like paramedics’ truck. I figured it was someone she knew. Doggies and my curiosity won out, and we continued down the street, alongside the police car now, then rounding the paramedics truck that blocked our view. I had already heard sobbing, and now saw its origin, young Jeff on his knees in the front yard, seemingly inconsolable but being consoled by two women, one being Sharon, the pastor of the church. Jeff is home from college for the summer.

Sharon saw me and came over to explain. He had just found his father dead in the bedroom. Jeff had laundered the cat and was bringing it into his father’s room for help drying it when he made the terrible discovery.

His father Dennis flashed in memory, not an old person, younger than me as it turned out, approaching his fiftieth birthday, but he looked way older and always smelled of alcohol. Later a neighbor said bluntly to me he had drunk himself to death, and, at his subsequent memorial service, his alcoholism was talked about openly. He hadn’t eaten in weeks and a case of beer was found in his room. He had simply collapsed in the night on his bedroom floor. I had known he had a problem with alcohol. And I know alcoholism is a disease. But other people fight life-threatening diseases, like Jim down the street. I wondered what had broken Dennis’s spirit or his heart for the fight against his own life-threatening disease?

Sharon kindly held the dogs so I might offer condolences to Jeff, still sobbing on the ground. I was self-conscious, both because I never know what to say in the face of such grief and because I was shirtless, feeling a little naked, and I doubted a half-naked gay man hugging Jeff would have felt comfortable for either of us. Thankfully, another person on the ground between us served as a buffer.

“Jeff, I am so sorry...” is all I could say and probably all I should have said. Too many words at such a time often prove to be facile, sentimental, or sophomoric. We all sat there in silence and let Jeff cry. I realized as we crouched facing the sidewalk that this was the house with the tree with an intricate root system above ground which the dogs loved to sniff and I loved to imagine is inhabited by leprechauns and gnomes, perhaps even the site of Middle Earth. I had never been in the house, but I had been in the backyard for a fireworks display, though I can’t remember whether it was on a New Year’s Eve or a Fourth of July. Then I returned to Sharon and the dogs, so she could get back to Jeff.

The dogs were well-behaved. They seem to understand grief. God knows they’ve comforted me when I’ve cried, either watching the news or a nostalgic movie. When my mother died and my then partner left, Calvin was my only child and had seen me collapse in tears, and like a St. Bernard—which he is not—came to my rescue with an elixir better than alcohol, his own sloppy licks and kisses, trying to make me better. As I say, though they were well-behaved, I pulled them away from the police officer who was trying to make nice with them, for fear they might prove distrustful. As I later found out, the policeman lives across the street.

I learned from Sharon that Dennis’s wife, Jeff’s mother, did not yet know. She was flying home at that very moment, having visited her daughter Anna, who has spent the past year in Germany as a student. Anna didn’t know either, intending to follow her mother home a week later. How horrible, I thought, not to know one’s partner in life is dead, and having to come home to discover it. And yet it was worse. Their dog, Shelly, had died unexpectedly just two days before. Jeff was sitting with her in the vet’s waiting room when she passed. I felt overwhelming grief for the family. The memorial service bulletin, as it turned out, was to have Dennis’s picture on the front and Shelly’s photo on the back.

As with Jim earlier in the walk, I told Sharon I would be glad to help, if there was anything I could do. She said, as a matter of fact, could I come and sit in the house while they went to pick up Susan at the airport? She said she didn’t think the house should be left empty. I’ve learned not to question requests made in the throes of grief. They must be honored as if they have their own logic, because they do. I said sure. She told me when to return that afternoon.

Upon my return I learned that all sorts of neighbors had been over cleaning the house and the yard. Some were going to be bringing back laundry and needed to be able to get in. Other friends and coworkers who had been notified might stop by or call. Everyone seemed to know what had happened except Susan. An email had been sent to alert church members. So there was a reason for me sitting in the house after all. And, as it turned out, this was all just the beginning of a week-long effort of neighbors and fellow church members to provide food and comfort and care to the family and the several dozen family members and friends who came from near and far for the memorial service.

But I found quite another reason for being there. I had my Dr. Zhivago in my car to read, but I left it there, feeling it might seem less than reverential to sit in the house reading. I chose instead to sit in the house reflecting on the awesome event that had transpired there that day, a death in the neighborhood. There was something almost tangible in the quiet empty house that was holy and sacred and worthy of awe. I thought of all the drama of the day, and it surfaced deep emotions from my heart and involuntary tears to my eyes, especially Jeff’s initial heartbreak and now burden of telling his mother. Strangely enough, instead of making me feel gloomy, it made me feel privileged and even uplifted to be a part of it, no matter how small a role I had been given. I felt honored.

The house was not really empty. It reminded me of the home I grew up in, filled to capacity with things: for some, a cluttered look; for others, a lived-in look. Lots of knickknacks and tchotchkes. Sitting in one of the few empty chairs, I looked up and realized I was surrounded by angels. At first I saw a dozen, and then a multitude of the heavenly host maintaining reverent silence. No, it wasn’t a mystical experience. It was a collection of wooden, plastic, porcelain, stuffed, woven, and ceramic angels that covered all horizontal surfaces: shelves, table, cabinet tops. And then I saw the candles, as many candles as angels, everywhere—unlit, of course, but with the promise of light.

And then I saw an identical shape everywhere, on fabrics, as sconces, on tchotchkes, in pictures, hanging in groups on the wall. I recognized the shape but couldn’t remember what it represented. Some were shaped by angels or the candleholders that had arms or leaves. Only later did I discover that it was the Scout fleur-de-lis or trefoil, an iris-shaped insignia whose three parts signify the three parts of the Scout promise of duty to God and country, to others, and to self. This trefoil was so pervasive it served as a house theme, like one of those geometric patterns that architect Frank Lloyd Wright would repeat in one of the homes he designed. It was a fitting graphic for a family devoted to Scouting.

The Scout emblems were all sizes and colors, but those that bore the official colors were blue to represent the sky and gold to represent the sun, and the flame at the base, I have learned, symbolizes love of humanity. In essence, then, it is a religious symbol, and I realized I was in a house of prayer, surrounded by angels, candles, and icons—a good place to reflect on death and life, and more specifically to pray for Jeff and Susan, as Jeff went with church friends and neighbors to the airport to meet and tell his mom, Susan.

I sat there, mostly in an absorbing and friendly silence, for two hours. Friends Michael and Bob brought laundry and we made the bed. A neighbor dropped over. A coworker of Susan’s from the Scout store stopped by, and we chatted for a while. She was my relief keeper of the house. She intended to stay until Susan got home, spending the night if needed, so I left soon after her arrival. I had hoped to be there when Susan returned, to offer a hug, but her passing through customs was an unusually slow process and I had an evening commitment.

One week later I made the same walk with my dogs before sitting down to write this. But I chose to turn down the side street rather than proceed past the house I had spent two hours in just one week earlier. Before reaching that corner, I again passed Jim on his porch. How did the test go? I asked, referring to the one he was to take before proceeding with the surgery. Not good, he rasped, his throat swollen from enlarged lymph nodes. Matter-of-factly, he explained, “They’re not going to do the surgery. The cancer has spread all over and there’s nothing they can do.” I was stunned. Again I committed to keep him in my prayers, again I offered to help if I can, even if it’s just to talk. He expressed his appreciation, and then added, “I have neighbors who are watching out for me, and friends from the church.”

Indeed.

Apologies to all who read the original version of last week’s post. I mislabeled Gov. Wallace's speech. It was "Segregation Forever" not "Integration Forever." I guess I was trying to right a wrong of history unconsciously!

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Copyright © 2004 and 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Help Me Understand

"I am the mountain. The mountain is me." --A homemade Zen saying.

Look closely for me at the bottom of this photo of the Matterhorn, taken in 1973. 

I did not have the faith to move this mountain, but I did have the faith to be in awe.

Zen almost silenced me. Or it did, and still I’m blogging!

I’ve written several posts about a book on Zen Buddhism I’ve just completed reading. I found myself becoming quieter and quieter as I read a brief section each day during morning prayer. Part of it was that Zen was telling me to shut up, just be. And part of it was that the whole enterprise had the effect of a Zen koan like “the sound of one hand clapping” to still the mind.

I especially loved this example of Zen mondo (questions and answers): “What is it ultimately?” “Willows are green and flowers are pink.”

“Willows are green and flowers are pink.” I wish I had thought of that when asked some outlandish question during Q&A’s in the church or equally, in the LGBT community, on whether one can be gay and Christian. Or another, “Only those who know it know.”

“Willows are green and flowers are pink.” Also a good answer for thorny theological questions like, how can a good God allow suffering in the world?

“The ‘beauty’ of Zen is the inner power that unites nature and life from within,” Abbot Zenkei Shibayama writes.

I have only an inkling of what that means—some intuitive, receptive neuron in my brain that may or may not get it.

And that’s why I became quieter and quieter as I read. I often get quiet when I don’t understand something, which has saved me from embarrassing moments of pretense.

But I liked it. Like witnessing a magnificent waterfall cascading from verdant cliffs down the face of a grey stone canyon wall to a valley below. Like hearing a musical composition caringly played that lifts the soul to cosmic, heavenly realms. Like the final gasp of an instance of prolonged lovemaking so profound as to put the most elevated sacred texts to shame.

I don’t need to understand something to see its beauty.

Years ago, I occasionally worked with another activist who sometimes questioned my thinking with the words, “Help me understand…” Given the context of our connection and other put-downs of me, I always thought the words were patronizing, as in “Help me understand how you can come to such a crazy conclusion.”

Only recently have I thought perhaps the phrase came from PBS and NPR, whose news interviewers often use the phrase, “Help us understand…” to aid interviewees to better explain their thinking to viewers and listeners.

A seminary professor with whom I served on a school committee told me privately that I sometimes seem to speak aloud mid-thought, mid-thinking process, so that what led to my conclusions were unclear. Perhaps that’s what was happening with my fellow activist. Perhaps that’s what happens on this blog!

Long ago I learned that my own need to understand something could be a means of control. In college, French existentialist author and philosopher Albert Camus spoke to me when he described “true understanding as ‘standing under,’ receiving without being in control (as understanding or ‘superior’ knowledge often implies).” I wrote this in Henri’s Mantle (p 94).

So I have been standing under Zen Buddhism, hoping a little of its wisdom and beauty will gently fall on me.

A final thought from Abbot Shibayama (A Flower Does Not Talk, p 122):

Zen asks us to open our eyes to the realm where subject and object are not yet separated, and I and you are one; and then to live and work in this new dimension.

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What the World Needs Now Is Grace (Sweet Grace)

Wildflowers in the Swiss Alps, 1973.

Oh, isn’t that sweet? Chris is getting sentimental in his latter years, you might be thinking, out of touch with reality, pining nostalgically for an ideal world of lovingkindness. Next he’ll be composing rhymes for Hallmark cards.

But grace is countercultural, haven’t you noticed? Watch, read, listen, or click the news and you will find much that is ungracious. As a cure and balance, I’ve been paying attention to stories that don’t make it above the fold of the newspaper (for those who remember such a reference), are not “trending” or on the bestseller list:

+A doctor walking twenty blocks through rain to see her 91-year-old Filipina-American patient hours before she died, and the daughters who cared for her.

+A book about Darwin’s understanding that beauty and artful behavior, not just natural selection, influenced the shaping of species. And females had much to say in the process!

+How three friends worked together to prove that upside-down jellyfish sleep, indicating a brain is not required for slumber. (I think not having a brain would help!)

+A columnist’s pilgrimage to the Vatican and a pope who cares about refugees, immigrants, climate change, war and peace.

+Admiration for an unsung Civil Rights activist from the 50s, Rev. Joseph De Laine, involved in Brown v Board of Education.

+Understanding how feminism has positively affected the future direction of philosophy.

+Artists who make a statement with their artwork shortly before they die.

I wanted to title my first book about seeking ordination in the church as an openly gay man, A Profile in Grace. I was tentative about it, though, because it could imply that grace was something I had achieved or was gifted on my own, when my intent was that I, like everyone else, live and love and work by God’s grace. Harper & Row, its first publisher, preferred a title that suggested the story line, and my friend Scott Rogo suggested Uncommon Calling.

But God’s grace is what called me out of the closet and into that uncommon calling, a lifelong ministry of reconciliation between the church and the LGBT community, and more broadly, between sexuality and spirituality.

Grace is tough and truthful and transformative and liberating. It requires strength and honesty and change and freedom. When I have encountered or beheld or experienced or witnessed God’s grace, I have become better, happier, more helpful, and more gracious. Grace begets grace.

We may all be profiles in grace. It is in the glory of God’s grace that each of us discovers who we are created and called to be.

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The Church that Wants Me

Church along our walk in Cabbagetown,

a neighborhood of Atlanta.

“In your dreams,” you might be saying in response to this post’s title. And that’s exactly where I found it: in my dreams.

The morning I write this I awoke from a warm and friendly dream of being “courted” by a small but vibrant congregation who wanted me as their pastor.

Many of the churches I have been a part of throughout my life, either as member or minister, have been troubled. Three challenging congregations “in transition” as they say, had attributes that made me love them, but to counter their darker sides with humor, I associated them, more or less privately, with classic films or a television series.

In one I saw parallels to director George Cukor’s 1939 comedy-drama, The Women, based on a Clare Boothe play—a film filled with gossip, rivalries, jealousies, sniping, betrayals, as well as fierce loyalties.

Serving a congregation in which I followed an extremely popular pastor, I felt like the second and less attractive and stylish and poised wife of Laurence Olivier in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic tale, replete with mystery, dark secrets, homoerotic longings, and nostalgia for a lost grand past.

Another church was so full of surprises that I saw a parallel to a TV series I was watching at the time, 24 (starring Kiefer Sutherland), a series with continual twists and turns and revelations.  As with the series, each week in this congregation I’d be amazed and disturbed, and say, “I didn’t see that coming.”

I have been a guest speaker for a number of congregations that seemed, on a visit, welcoming and healthy. Though churches put on their best face for visitors, I usually can discern trouble by speaking with a congregation’s leaders and members, or the hosts who have welcomed me to stay in their homes. So healthy and happy congregations are out there.

It was this kind of congregation I dreamed about. Granted, it may have been my brain attempting to balance the very negative dream the night before about a presbytery meeting gone awry and vicious!

On further reflection, however, I realized the dream was not just a wish but a reality. That week I’d received a number of positive responses to this blog, whose readership is the largest congregation I’ve ever served!

And there are no board meetings, no committees, no commute, little overhead, no buildings or plans to build one, no bills, no pledge drive, no dress code, no conflict among members, no begging for volunteers—the list goes on and benefits both you and me. (Of course it also means this ministry realizes very little income—apparently those things are what churchgoers are paying for!)

Without complaint, I can get political, critique or reinterpret Christian tenets, explore other religions, read and talk about spirituality and the contemplative life (you’d be surprised how many churchgoers don’t like that!), and be as queer as I choose to be—not to say I don’t wonder “was it something I said?” that prompts someone to “unsubscribe” or attendance to go down. You, the reader, always have the option to skip or delete, read or respond or share my thoughts.

I miss face-to-face encounters, but sometimes e-mail exchanges are more intimate and profound and informative than the usual chit-chat during coffee hour, and they come from all over the world. And I supplement this blog community—as I hope that you do—with other people, communities, causes, and conversations.

A good thing about calling this “Progressive Christian Reflections” is that I can be as progressive as I want to be, as Christian as I am, and offer my reflections to you in the hopes they spark your own. And I am grateful I can do this under the auspices of MCC, Metropolitan Community Churches, as one of the denomination’s Emerging Ministries.

So, no wonder it’s a dream job. Thanks for reading!

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Or mail 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 © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.