Henri Joins the Circus

Henri catching the wing of a windmill.

I invite you to Be Still! Be Loved! Be Grateful!, a Spiritual Formation course that I will be leading at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, GA, on Henri Nouwen’s life, ministry, and writings Sept. 22-24, 2016 following the 2oth anniversary of his death Sept. 21, 1996. A technical glitch tried to put some registrants on a waiting list, but there are still openings.

Attending an international Nouwen conference in Toronto this past June and doing further reading in preparation for the course, I’ve been thinking about the research Henri did for a book he never wrote about the Flying Rodleighs, trapeze artists in a German circus. He wanted it to say something about the spiritual life in more universal (rather than religious) language. So, last week, this children’s story came out of me!

Once upon a time there was a wide-eyed boy named Henri. He lived in Holland during a great war. His hands were large, his ears were large, he was clumsy and awkward, and he felt like a clown.

And so he went to clown seminary. He devoted himself to learning all the gestures a clown must use, flapping his oversize hands like birds, extending them at arms’ length in welcome, clapping them rapidly together as if offering multiple expressions of gratitude for everything and everyone he encountered.

He stuck his neck out, squinted his eyes as if to see better, turned a big ear to hear clearly, bowed grandly but deferentially, and stood on tippy-toes to accentuate his already great height when making a point. And he had a huge, goofy grin that revealed his absolute delight at encountering you.

Henri found a costume that accentuated his vocation, and learned how to apply garish makeup that sometimes covered his true feelings.

So Henri joined the circus, following the poet e.e. cummings’ famous advice: “damn everything but the circus.” He travelled hither and yon, over hill and over dale, as the circus wagons kept rolling along.

He stumbled and fumbled and tumbled and somersaulted his way into people’s hearts. “He is just like us,” they said, sometimes smiling in recognition, sometimes deeply moved as his familiar foibles and limitations tugged at their heart strings. His disabilities mirrored our disabilities. 

But Henri had a secret wish: to fly through the air with the greatest of ease. Sometimes his height allowed him to catch an arm of a windmill, common in Holland’s countryside, and the uplift took his breath away. He could see great distances and imagine himself flung to the heavens before crashing to earth in a pile of hay, cushioning his fall.

And then Henri met Rodney, a trapeze artist. Rodney was strong and graceful, beautiful and amazing. He was everything Henri wished to be, and  HE COULD FLY! Boy, could he fly, doing doubles and triples midair without a care in the world.

“How do you do that?” Henri asked Rodney, appreciatively. “Being absolutely present in the moment,” Rodney explained. “I let go of everything that can hold me down: my cares, my doubts, my fears, even yesterday’s mistakes. And I trust. I trust the Catcher, and I trust the net. Gravity is not my enemy; it is the friend that brings me home. I can go up toward the skies knowing I will come home. I surrender to the moment and soar, knowing gravity will keep me down to earth.”

Then Rodney added, “It’s the same thing you do when you stumble and fumble and tumble and somersault into people’s hearts—except you do it grounded. Your gravity is compassion. Your home is the heart.”

Henri was stunned. He had never thought of his work in this way. Rodney’s words lifted him up, and Henri felt like this man on the flying trapeze.

My book about Henri:

Henri’s Mantle: 100 Meditations on Nouwen’s Legacy

Click here for my posts that mention Henri, and scroll down.

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

"Jesus Preaches in the Temple"

“Jesus Preaches in the Temple” from artist Douglas Blanchard’s series, The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision, and his book with author and blogger Kittredge Cherry. Copyright © by Douglas Blanchard. Used by permission.

Please join Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church in Atlanta for 11 a.m. Easter worship this Sunday, where I’ll be preaching on “Whose Resurrection Is It, Anyway?”

It took Douglas Blanchard’s painting “Jesus Preaches in the Temple” and Kittredge Cherry’s reflections on his series of 24 paintings of Jesus’ life, The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision, to remind me that scripture says several times that Jesus taught in the temple in the midst of the Passion narrative. Of course, most of us remember that when Jesus was “handed over” (betrayed) to “the powers that be,” he mischievously asked why they had not arrested him in broad daylight while teaching in the temple.

But I always pictured Jesus teaching to those whose life circumstances would have prevented them from entering the temple, like the man unable to walk asking for alms from Peter and John at the temple gate, told in the third chapter of Acts. In the name of Jesus, it says, they lifted him up “and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.”

I tended to imagine Jesus preaching to those outside the doors of the temple like this man, and his story serving as a metaphor for their welcome, their strengthened resolve to enter, and their resulting joy.

That Matthew, Mark, and Luke place Jesus’ teaching in the temple just after his angry outburst clearing it of merchants who provided for worshipers’ ritual needs (temple coins and animal sacrifices) suggests he was indeed creating space for temple outsiders.

In an early book, I explained how the space he cleared would have been the space in which those of us who have been excluded and marginalized might have gathered: Gentiles, women, LGBT folk, people with disabilities. I didn’t think of the immediate accessibility he provided those then considered unclean by religious scruples. Matthew specifically claims that those with disabilities then joined him in the temple (21:14)!

Jesus in Love blogger Kitt Cherry (a longtime friend) points out, however, that the artist has not placed Jesus in the Jerusalem temple, but in a Christian cathedral, made clear by the procession of crosses being carried by robed liturgists behind the immediate scene. A variety of people are drawn to Jesus “spellbound” by his teachings while seeming to ignore the formal worship behind them. Kitt asks, what would Christians do if Jesus entered their churches today? And I wonder, would they prefer to rest in peace in their traditions?

Some Christians are fond of asking, “What would Jesus do?” But the Passion narrative asks us, “What would we do?”

How often do we hand Jesus over to “the powers that be”: those who use Jesus to promote political or religious agendas anathema to what he taught? And how often do we pretend we’re not with Jesus, fearful that others might think we’re “one of them.”

And how often do we hang on Jesus’ words, reading and reflecting on what he taught?

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for ALL people.” (Emphasis Jesus’)

Many thanks to Kitt and Doug! I’ve added another of Doug’s paintings to a previous post: Blessed Are the Prophets, a post which also appeared on the website of More Light Presbyterians this past Sunday.

Here are readings for the remainder of Holy Week:

Maundy Thursday:  Judas Kiss

In the Company of Birds

Good Friday:            “Faggot” Jesus

Holy Saturday:         What God Did for Love

Easter Sunday:         Resurrecting Jesus

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Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite, catalogued by year and month.

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

"Pride Goeth before a Fall"--and Getting Back Up!

Chris speaking at GWI 2014. Photo by Ryan Johnson.

The week of our snow and ice in Georgia, I gingerly stepped and carefully drove to avoid any ice-related accidents. When most ice and snow had melted and the weather warmed, I decided to go for a run, proudly wearing my sleeveless neon-blue running shirt and shorts in which I look quite good if much too blue. (Looking good enhances my workouts and my running, as with most athletes!)

But before I got out of the guest parking lot of our complex, I fell sprawling on the pavement, catching myself with my hands, scraping them and one elbow and both knees. I wish I could blame slipping on ice or tripping on shoelaces or debris, but the asphalt was dry as a bone and clean as a whistle.

I picked myself up, went back to our unit, scrubbed my wounds to avoid infection, treated them with antibiotic cream, and bandaged the bleeding scrapes and cuts.  “Pride goeth before a fall,” the judging Proverb came to me. I realized that wearing my usual winter garb for running—long sleeved shirt, gloves, and long running pants—would have minimized my injuries.

Yet pride is also what prompted me to proceed with my long run—puffy and bruised knees, multiple bandaids, and raw skin notwithstanding—this time wearing my long-sleeved running shirt. Though the fall was humbling, pride is what made me get back up and start again.

As I ran, I thought back on the four days I had spent that week at the Georgia Winter Institute 2014, meeting in a former Confederate weapons factory in Columbus, Georgia, south of Atlanta, where I live.  GWI’s mission is stated in one sentence: “The Georgia Winter Institute connects people with and without disabilities to work together to nurture and use our gifts to strengthen community bonds.”

In my closing keynote I told the assembly of a gathering of people living with HIV and AIDS, their families, friends, volunteer and professional caregivers near Detroit. “I have no memory of what I said to them,” I explained, “I absolutely remember what they ‘said’ to me. As we helped them carry all their medical paraphernalia from their cars to their rooms at the retreat center—their IV drip bottles and tubing, their medicines, oxygen tanks, and various pieces of special equipment—all I could think of was how determined they were to participate in this event, to be part of the community. And by contrast, I thought about how many people pass up on going on retreats or building community simply because it’s ‘inconvenient.’”

They had been knocked down, so to speak, but they had gotten back up again. And that’s what I witnessed among those gathered in Columbus. Perhaps their pride is challenged by how the culture, government, medical establishment, and houses of worship are inadequately mindful of their gifts and challenges, whether their own or those they love or serve, but pride is what gets us all back up again.

Other posts related to running mishaps:

Praying for “Enemies”

BEWARE OF THE GOD! (includes an Olympic running mishap)

Last week’s post also about GWI 2014:

A Dream within a Dream

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC supported solely by readers. Please click here for more information or to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you!

Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

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

A Dream within a Dream

Buttons created by Carmine Vara and used by permission. Learn more about Carmine and his button and magnet business by clicking here!

As I told those attending the Meekhof Lectures in the Seattle area a few weeks ago, “If my dreams are any indication, I have much unfinished business with the church.”

One morning of last week’s Georgia Winter Institute, just before I woke, I had a dream of church in which people of diverse race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, abilities, and beliefs were having quite a good time talking over differences amiably, even kidding one another, but with no “gotchas” or condemnation or competition.  It was so moving to experience that I awoke with tears in my eyes.

No doubt it was a reflection of what we were experiencing at GWI 2014. People with disabilities are themselves diverse, but they also gather people around them who differ in almost every way except the fulfillment we experience recognizing the power and potential of people facing intellectual and physical challenges—our family members, friends, neighbors, strangers, clients, patients, parishioners, and community members. Their stories were central to building the community we achieved during our days together.

As often happens after a successful retreat with people who coalesce, I would think many of us had the thought, “Why can’t it always be this way?” And, in my dream within a dream, I clearly yearned for a church that was as good at diversity as this gathering had been. And sometimes, we are. Though my leadership was more along the line of “generic” spirituality, I mentioned during a conversational segment that the early church was attractive not so much because of its beliefs, but because the first Christians were so kind and compassionate to one another and their communities.

I counted among my new friends several Pentecostals and a Promise Keeper, as well as a soldier who was not part of our group but, as a fellow guest of the hotel, was drawn to what we were about.  The philosophy of the conference was not only building community among ourselves, but also with the citizens of Columbus, Georgia, and its environs.

I am writing this on an American high holy day, Super Bowl Sunday. This morning I awoke to quite another dream about the church, extremely vivid and detailed enough to become another Book of Revelation! Or perhaps Hildegard of Bingen’s visions that I’m currently reading are rubbing off on me? 

In this dream, I had been asked to meet with a committee of a church I once served asking what I thought if they spent their endowment on their current expenses, and I advised them the money was given for future generations and that they should build into their current budget what they needed so their present church generation understood how much it costs to run a church, rather than squander their capital. I doubted the committee would take my advice.

Because in the dream (and in reality) it was Sunday morning, I considered staying for worship. But the scenes that unfolded around me were both dramatic like a mega-church and chaotic like a three ring circus, everything happening at once. Instead of one there were seven tall pulpits, spaced on an angle on the raised chancel like on a brow of ship, each bearing the name of a pastor in bronze-cast letters. And the one leading worship was dressed like he was about to perform The Mikado!

As I tried to leave, I kept remembering things I had to do, or I’d run into someone I knew who wanted to talk, and after clearing these hurdles, I found that parts of my clothing and the items I was carrying kept getting caught on things, resisting my departure.

As I wrote at the beginning, “If my dreams are any indication, I have much unfinished business with the church.”

Next week’s post also about GWI 2014:

“Pride Goeth before a Fall”—and Getting Back Up!

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC supported solely by readers. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you!

Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

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

The Sound of Eden

I look forward to seeing some of you at the Georgia Winter Institute next week.

These thoughts may not be ripe enough for picking for a post, but several encounters prompt this. Sunday I preached at St. Paul UCC in Barrington near Chicago during their lively monthly praise service. At the O’Hare Hilton that afternoon just before my flight home, I delightedly met two longtime friends who are gifted church musicians, Jan Graves and Mark Bowman, both of whom I worked alongside on the magazine Open Hands, and we talked about many things, including music in worship. I shared some of Hildegard of Bingen’s thoughts on the subject, which I had just read about on the flight to Chicago in preparation for a weekend course in February.

As many of you know, Hildegard was a visionary abbess of a Benedictine community of women in the 12^th century who composed music and verse for worship. While I personally stumble on her visions, I am taken with her attitudes toward music.

Hildegard scholar and editor Barbara Newman writes, “For Hildegard, not only inspired canticles but all music was associated with prophecy and the nostalgia for Eden. That is why, she says, ‘a person often sighs and moans upon hearing some melody, recalling the nature of the celestial harmony’” before human beings were, in Hildegard’s words from another context, “lured…away from the celestial harmony and the delights of paradise.”

Newman explains Hildegard’s view that “Music could not only express the prophetic spirit; it might even awaken that spirit,” offering the example of Elisha calling for a musician and, upon hearing the music, “the Spirit suddenly descended upon him and he prophesied” (2 Kings 3:15).

Newman observes that Augustine found the sensual nature of music problematic, but for Hildegard, “liturgical song was a medium that perfectly united soul and body.” Personally, I have thought of church music as an integration of word and sacrament, because it’s verbal as well as embodied.  Thus how appropriate that my sermon about “Discerning the Body of Christ” in one another enjoyed the context of a praise service led by four outstanding female singers, one of whom is the pastor. Hildegard viewed Christ as a second Adam, weaving the broken body of humanity into the one body which God shaped “in the primal dawn / before all creation.”

What also strikes me as I study Hildegard is that her theology of music was developed during a period when she and her community were forbidden by the church hierarchy to sing, a punishment for their refusal to exhume an “unworthy” body from their churchyard. Newman summarizes Hildegard’s adamant defense to church leaders in this way: “To silence music in the Church is to create an artificial rift between earth and heaven, to put asunder that which God has joined together.” Want often makes us more keenly aware of the meaning of what we’re denied.

Those of us who have been denied by the church because of our own embodied praise—women, LGBT, racial minorities, those with disabilities, those with reasoning brains, and so on—have our own theologies that the church needs to hear.  May we be as adamant as Hildegard opposing “an artificial rift between earth and heaven.”

Related post:

In Praise of Praise

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC supported solely by readers. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you!

Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

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