A Birthday I'll Never Forget

This weekend, I hope to see those of you in Southern California either at the Henri Nouwen Saturday retreat at All Saints Pasadena, Oct 12, or the 11 a.m. Sunday worship Oct. 13 at West Hollywood UCC, formerly West Hollywood Presbyterian.

Last Thursday was my birthday. And I spent it diverted to the Cincinnati airport en route from Atlanta to Allentown, our intended nonstop flight forced to land there for repairs.

Most people would prefer not to work on their birthdays, but I was looking forward to the annual men’s retreat I co-lead at Kirkridge, and it did not feel like a sacrifice. Yet even more people would prefer not to spend their birthdays stuck in an airport, waiting for mechanics and parts to be flown in from Atlanta for an expected two-hour repair job—well, include me in that number, especially when it meant having a birthday lunch and dinner by myself. What began with my 7:30 a.m. arrival at our airport ended with my 11 p.m. arrival at Kirkridge.

What made it more than bearable, even pleasant, was the camaraderie that developed among us stranded but patient passengers, and even with the airline personnel who, instead of being defensive and distant (as is sometimes the case) were concerned and compassionate and communicative with what little information they were given.

One in particular handled people very well, and I told her so, asking if she had been brought in by the airline for this purpose. She was complimented, but explained those behind the desk were working their regular shifts. But, she explained, she too had been a stranded passenger.

I think it was a bid for understanding rather than attention that prompted me to blurt out, “It’s my birthday!” To which she promptly replied with a smile, “It’s my birthday too.” “What year?” I asked, only to discover we shared the same birth year. Then she volunteered her husband’s October birthday and I told her my partner’s October birthday.

Then, looking at her nametag, I observed, “And we’re both named ‘Chris!’” Though she had looked at my boarding pass when she processed my $6 meal voucher for lunch, she hadn’t made that connection. Separated at birth?! She remarked on this with surprise to her colleagues, and then came around the desk and we shared a birthday hug.

I had just reclined on the floor of the airport in an unobtrusive place to make up the sleep I missed the night before when I heard my name called from the airline desk. They were just beginning to issue vouchers to everyone, and Chris wanted to make sure I got mine—a $50 coupon for a future flight, a $6 voucher for dinner, along with an extra $10 voucher as a birthday present!

I had nothing to give her, but I presented her with my card and explained I wrote this blog. She was interested, she said, because she was a cancer survivor, and I gathered spirituality had been part of her recovery.

Plenty of time on my hands, I browsed the airport bookstore and ended up purchasing myself a birthday present, Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. I’d been wanting to read it since watching an online video of the author’s patient response to an ignorant Fox news interviewer belligerently questioning whether a Muslim should write about Jesus!

I sat down to read it in Wolfgang Puck’s airport restaurant, taking my time sipping a glass of wine before eventually ordering dinner. (The book is fascinating, and eventually I’ll write about it on this blog.) When I returned to the gate, Chris had saved me a piece of the birthday cake her coworkers gave her. One of those colleagues got on the phone, and soon announced that I was welcome to go upstairs to the Sky Club for a drink. I asked, “Can Chris go with me?” He said “sure” and though she was on duty and could only have a soda, I had a glass of wine and we talked.

I asked what her religious background was. “Roman Catholic and Presbyterian.” “Me too,” I exclaimed, having spent most of my life as a Presbyterian but deeply influenced by Catholic writers. And we ended up talking about the breath of fresh air Pope Francis was bringing the church, Protestant and Catholic. It felt in sync with the ecumenical gathering I was going to.

Though Kirkridge staff and the men of the retreat were very concerned about my plight, I was having a pretty good time! A challenging situation was redeemed by a little mutual understanding and lovingkindness, truly an experience of grace.

The icing on the cake for me was finally walking through the Kirkridge dining hall to my room downstairs and meeting a first-time retreatant who had come, not only because he read my books, but because he shared them with friends.

Everyone should have such a happy birthday!

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Et II, Benedict?

The 50^th anniversary of the promise of Vatican II prompts me to remember Pope John  XXIII with fondness, nostalgia, and reverence. His life experience, according to John W. O’Malley’s recent New York Times op-ed piece, helped him know “diversity, turmoil, sin and evil firsthand, but he also knew goodness as he found it in people of other faiths and no faith.” That’s among the reasons he initiated Vatican II, though he did not live to see it through to its conclusion, let alone its implementation.

I grew up with anti-Catholic sentiment preached from our Baptist pulpit, but a saving grace was my mother’s reading of Catholic alongside Protestant writers. As a young woman, she had enjoyed a positive relationship with nuns who cared for her frequently hospitalized mother in their small town Catholic hospital.

I was home sick from school when a news bulletin flashed the news of Pope John’s death on our Packard Bell television set in 1963. Though only 12 years of age, I immediately felt sad, knowing a unique light had left our world. In 1973 I visited his tomb in the crypt underneath St. Peter’s Basilica, noting fresh flowers. It moved me in a way no other gravesite on my first trip to Europe did; his was the only grave at which I cried. On my most recent visit to Rome, I was glad to see he had been promoted upstairs to the main floor, now in a glass coffin. At first I wasn’t sure it was him, so I asked a guard, “Is that Pope John XXIII?” “Most of him,” the guard replied with a wink. That same visit we also saw a living pope, Pope John Paul II, old and frail.

There was resistance to the changing nature of the church signaled by Vatican II, with its intended consultative collegiality among bishops, priests and laity, ecumenical emphasis, interfaith dialogue, vernacular liturgy, and other attempts at modernization that made it less of a dinosaur still breathing fire at the Enlightenment.

My friend, David Mellott, Dean of Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, suggests to me that Pope John could not have initiated reforms on his own had there not been a “sensus fidelium” in the Roman Catholic Church, “the sense of the faithful” that wanted change. It could be said that, had Pope John lived, that same “sensus fidelium” might have prompted even him to be more cautious in Vatican II’s application.  (Anyone who has served in ministry knows almost every congregation says it wants change until changes are actually implemented!)

In Vatican II, “The church validated for the first time the principle of religious freedom and rejected all forms of civil discrimination based on religious grounds. Thus ended an era of cozy church-state relations that began in the fourth century with Emperor Constantine,” the Georgetown professor, Jesuit priest, and author O’Malley observes. This is a very good time to be reminded of this in the United States.

In his 1986 autobiography, Confessions of a Parish Priest, diocesan priest and novelist Andrew Greeley tells of sneaking into the conclave of Vatican II with a faked pass and witnessing a battle between the conservative, turf-defending Roman Curia and the bishops who served the broader church, aided by more progressive theologians like Hans Kung and Karl Rahner. His analysis was that Vatican II irrevocably asserted that the church can change.

Greeley also mentions the present pope’s involvement in Vatican II, listing alongside Kung and Rahner “a much younger Ratzinger (who now conveniently forgets his contribution to the Council)…”—and Greeley wrote this before Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, when he was the Vatican watchdog for orthodoxy as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In a 1977 book that I used years ago for my morning reflections, Zen and the Bible,  Japanese Jesuit priest J. K. Kadowaki, lauding Vatican II, also refers to that much younger Ratzinger whom he met when doing research in West Germany:

While there I was invited by the Catholic theologian, Professor J. Ratzinger (now a cardinal), to lecture on “Zen and Christianity” to a group of his doctoral students.  … Toward the end of the seminar, Professor Ratzinger said, “How interesting it would be if we could compare the ideas of Zen with those of the Bible. If that could be done, it would be a great event, not only for the dialogue between Zen and Christianity, but also in respect to the ideological exchange between East and West.”

That’s in the spirit of Pope John XXIII and of Vatican II, though Pope Benedict might prefer to forget this too.  Now that Pope John has been beatified on his way to sainthood, progressive Christians might hope that he may intercede for the whole church—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant.

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal devotions, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  Please click here to learn more about this ministry and/or make a donation!

Many thanks to Dr. David Mellott for reviewing a draft of this post and contributing his wisdom from his Roman Catholic training.

Check out Glaser’s latest article on The Huffington Post: “Flag Pins & Crosses: ‘Mine Is Bigger than Yours!’”