Reformation of My Heart

Our friends and
neighbors Cathie
and CJ's hearts.

Like last week’s post, this entry from my book reflecting on the spiritual writings of Henri J. M. Nouwen might help us cope with the worldwide pandemic.

It makes no sense to preach the Gospel when I have allowed no time for my own conversion. –Henri Nouwen, The Primacy of the Heart, p 4.

Recently, during a retreat, someone described himself as a “square peg trying to fit into a round hole,” a metaphor with which many participants identified. But one retreatant who worked at a nineteenth-century historical site pointed out something new to us. In constructing a wooden building of that time, he explained, you wouldn’t want a round peg in a round hole because it could expand or contract, depending on temperature and moisture. It was actually better to have a square peg in a round hole to maintain the grip between the pieces.

In trying to fit into monastic life, Henri was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. He was an extrovert with an introvert’s calling. But the monastic life had a grip on him even if it wasn’t a complete or comfortable fit. This might also be your experience. Not all of us fit a monastic life, but maybe that’s all the better for its firm grip upon us. We are all called to monastic reflection, that is, moments we set aside for contemplation. If we can do this daily, we are all the more blessed.

Retreats are how we are most likely to fit the monastic way of life into our busy lives. It is there we may listen to sacred texts and to one another in new ways, as well as listen to our own hearts, our own centers, and to the God of our hearts. Unprovidentially, many of us want our retreats as full and busy as our everyday lives, and we anticipate a schedule of uplifting, stimulating talks, or we bring many books to read or plan many tasks to accomplish. But we need to find idle time lest we be distracted by time-bound idols.

In a previous book, Reformation of the Heart, I described two insights offered by participants in two different Henri Nouwen retreats I led the year following his death, one at Kirkridge in Pennsylvania and the other at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. At Kirkridge, a physical therapist explained that a wound has to heal from the inside out. At Ghost Ranch, a ceramic artist told us that, in spinning a pot, the shape of the inside determines the shape of the outside. So it is with the human heart. Our wounded hearts must heal from the inside out. And the gospel we proclaim is shaped by how we allow the good news of God’s love to shape our own hearts.

The truth is, however, that healing and love occur in the everyday events of our lives as well as on retreat or in what I call in my workshops “monastic moments,” brief opportunities to look inward. Healing and love may come to us in conversations with our friends, in caring for others, in serving a just cause, in catastrophic personal or public events, in life’s many interruptions, irritations, distractions, sorrows, and joys. Yet to have ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to feel, we need moments of quiet reflection to allow those many ways in which we experience healing and love to consciously convert our hearts so that we may be healers and lovers, better proclaiming the gospel.

+Heal my heart, so I may offer healing. Love my heart, so I may love.

I invite you to register and attend an online course/retreat I will be leading in September as part of the Spirituality Program of Columbia Theological Seminary entitled, “An Open Receptive Place: Henri Nouwen’s Spirituality.”

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Copyright © 2002 and 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.

When You Walk through a Storm

Kirkridge panel about the future of our movement.

When witnessing disaster, the spiritual sage Mister Rogers would say, “Look for the helpers.” A corollary I would add is, “Look for community.”

As hurricane Irma passed over Atlanta, I was reminded of hurricane Opal, which did far more damage to our neighborhood. Though without power, what I most remember is the fun we had afterwards alongside our neighbors cleaning up debris in the street and yards, sharing what food we had in potlucks, grateful that none of us had sustained unrepairable damage or loss.

Of course I realize that those with more devastating losses caused by Harvey in Texas,  Irma in Florida, multiple hurricanes in the Caribbean, and the monsoon rains in South Asia may not have such a rosy response, but my cousin and family rescued by boat in Beaumont may have appreciated “community” in a more vital way.

Some years after Opal, the Atlanta tornado barreled through the adjacent neighborhood of Cabbagetown. Its “sound of a freight train” caused us to shelter in our first floor garage briefly that night. On our walk the following day we witnessed the community helping one another pull trees and branches off cars, houses, and streets, while the Carroll Street Café provided free coffee.

Historic Oakland Cemetery also got walloped, and out of respect for the dead, whose bone fragments got pulled out of the ground by uprooted trees and whose headstones got toppled by forceful winds, community members worked for months to restore its quaint beauty and solemn dignity.

Wade and Hobbes and I met a woman whose top floor flat’s roof had been taken off, and she was distraught over her lost puppy. A few days later, invited to dinner by a lesbian couple, we told them about the encounter. “They found the puppy!” they told us, “It was on the news. It was hiding under her sofa!” One of the better purposes of media (including social networks) is that they help community form.

Irma arrived in Atlanta the day after I returned from another community, one formed in the more disastrous days of homophobia and heterosexism. During its 75^th anniversary of spiritual and political activism, Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center celebrated its 40 years offering sanctuary to LGBT people who struggled with the church and society’s rejection and violence. It was true joy being with people I have known and loved for decades. At one point, an actual rainbow graced the skies outside our meeting room.

I am looking forward to a more broadly interfaith and ecumenical gathering of LGBT saints in St. Louis October 31-November 2, “Rolling the Stone Away.” I hope you will consider attending. You can help young activists hear the stories of earlier generations in the LGBT movement by making a donation to their scholarship crowdfunding:

https://www.youcaring.com/rollingthestoneawaygenerationsoflovejustice-896533 

The Bible is, among other things, a reminder of how communities respond to disaster, hardship, and suffering.

In Coming Out as Sacrament, I suggested that it is in such vulnerability that we may experience God coming near to bring deliverance, healing, and resurrection—often through one another, often through one another’s stories.

The book included this wonderful story from holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: 

In The Gates of the Forest, Elie Wiesel tells the story of a rabbi who averted a disaster for his people by meditating at a certain spot in the forest, lighting a fire, and offering a prayer. The next time catastrophe approached, one of his disciples went to the same site, offered the prayer, but did not know how to light the fire—and still miraculously avoided disaster. Later, another rabbi went to the sacred spot, but knew neither the prayer nor how to light the fire; yet it was enough to save his people. Finally, another rabbi, in a similar desperate situation, knew neither the prayer, the fire, nor the place, but he could tell the story, and that retelling again prevented calamity. … Wiesel concludes, “God made [human beings] because [God] loves stories.”* 

Throughout its history, Kirkridge has been the “campfire” around which activists of all kinds have told our stories, including those in the LGBT Christian movement. St. Louis will prove to be an even more expansive opportunity for LGBT religious activists to shape community and share stories.

This is vital as we resist renewed attacks on us, and transform a world that does not yet view us favorably.

In facing disaster, look for helpers and for community.

Meet me in St. Louis!

P.S. Like scripture, we have our own “begats.” Stony Point Center’s 2015 “Rock Stars and Prophets” begat Kirkridge’s “40^th Year Celebration of LGBTQ Lives” which begat St. Louis’s “Rolling Away the Stone.”  For a video of my personal narrative recorded at Stony Point, go to: https://vimeo.com/172131713

Related Post: You Can Walk through a Storm

*Page 50 of Coming Out as Sacrament, paraphrasing Elie Wiesel in The Gates of the Forest (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966).

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

Both Feet Firmly Planted in Midair

As the first Jesuit pope visited the United States, the first openly gay Jesuit priest went to heaven. As John McNeill passed through the pearly gates, Saint Peter asked, “Where’s your partner, Charlie?” “Oh,” John said, a little absent-mindedly, “He’ll be along. He just didn’t think he should leave the country while Pope Francis might stop by.”

John tried to begin his talks with a bit of humor, sometimes as offbeat or puzzling as that. “Let me have too deep a sense of humor ever to be proud,” his fellow Jesuit, Daniel Lord, wrote in a “Prayer for Humility.”

And it is with that glee that he insisted his publisher keep his chosen title of his autobiography, Both Feet Firmly Planted in Midair. Both his editor and I tried to dissuade him from the title, lest it be misinterpreted, but he loved that that’s how a former professor characterized him: “There’s goes John J. McNeill, both feet firmly planted in midair.”

John McNeill, SJ, not only wrote but published a book with the Roman Catholic Church’s imprimatur in 1976 that changed many of our lives in the LGBT Christian community, The Church and the Homosexual. 

It was the first such tome since Derrick Sherwin Bailey’s Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition two decades earlier, and appeared more than a decade before John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, though McNeill credits Boswell’s as-yet-unpublished work as contributing to his own.

Soon McNeill’s book would be joined by Letha Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott’s Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? (1978) as prompters for the church to reconsider its views.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual seminarians of the 70s were beside ourselves with hope that these books portended a change that would permit our ordinations and ministries in the church. Having just purchased McNeill’s book, a friend of mine set it down with her school books on a table in Yale Divinity School’s refectory en route to the lunch line. She turned it face down so no one would see the title, then had second thoughts, and boldly turned it face up.

When she returned to the table, a classmate, observing the title, said, “So, is John McNeill a homosexual?” “Why would you ask that?” she inquired, guessing more than she let on. “Well, if he’s homosexual, he’ll be biased.” I can’t recall if she said it or thought it, “Don’t you think a heterosexual would also be biased?”

I had the privilege and honor to get to know John as we shared leadership of a number of retreats at Kirkridge, inhabiting rooms across the hall from one another. On many occasions there and elsewhere, I came to know his steadfast, lifelong partner Charlie Chiarelli. So I was saddened for both to hear of his death last week in Ft. Lauderdale, where they retired some years ago. They have been and will be in my prayers.

It so happens I am reading and using in my morning prayers The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, along with a companion text, Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits. I am doing so in preparation for helping with a spiritual formation course on Ignatian Spirituality the week of November 9-13.

Despite an accessible translation, I confess I have had to work hard at translating The Spiritual Exercises to meet my own spiritual needs. Reared a Baptist, I have regularly and often immediately observed and confessed personal sins, and as a Presbyterian and MCCer I learned also to confess corporate and systemic sins, and I don’t think rehearsing these would be spiritually helpful, except for the most obsessive-compulsive among us!

And some of the recommended objects of devotion and reflection don’t match my progressive theology. But I do get Ignatius’s point, that there’s work to be done to eliminate all that gets in the way of God’s presence.

The prayers in Hearts on Fire have been more helpful—for example, I am eager to do a personal retreat focusing on “Testament,” a guided meditation by the well-known Jesuit from India, the late Anthony de Mello, which is, as the book describes, “a creative alternative to examining one’s conscience.”

So, as I prepared to write this, I looked for things I had underlined in my reading thus far that might speak to John’s life, and that’s how the quote about humor above came to be included. But the quotes I want to use now are my own responses written in the margins!

After reading a contemporary paraphrase of the Anima Christi by David Fleming, SJ, I wrote, 

Death is the final praise,

            the final ecstasy

            giving up one’s spirit

            unto the Spirit.

And after being challenged by Ignatius to contemplate hell, something I cannot believe except metaphorically, I wrote: 

Hell is the place of not feeling love.

It can be anywhere and everywhere.

Love gives rise to purpose, meaning, hope, fulfillment—heaven.

Sin is being unloving, unkind—to myself, to others.

And then I added: 

Grief is hell. 

John has now offered “the final praise.” He saved LGBT Christians from hell, and reminded us of God’s love, giving rise to the “purpose, meaning, hope, and fulfillment” of our movement, a taste of heaven, reminding us what sin truly is: “being unloving, unkind” to ourselves and to others. Our grief may be hell, especially for one as close as Charlie, but we pray with Joseph Tetlow, SJ’s version of the Anima Christi, “make my pain pregnant with power.”

There were many times that John’s pain was “pregnant with power.” Being silenced by the church and then ousted from the Jesuits gave him the opportunity to fulfill a greater calling than he originally anticipated when, as a starving prisoner of war during WW II, a slave laborer, at risk of death from a vigilant SS guard, tossed him a potato, making the sign of the cross. John dated his priesthood from the moment of that courageous and compassionate act.

Thanks, John, in turn, for tossing me a saving “potato”!

There will be a gathering at Kirkridge to celebrate John McNeill’s legacy, January 15-17, 2016.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

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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Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com. 

Spiritual Handcuffs

A church I once served here in Atlanta invited the Voices of Hope choir from the Metro State Prison for women to sing during worship. Their final song just commanded movement and clapping—and I smiled to see we obliged in a minimalist sort of way while remaining seated in our pews. It was the kind of song some other congregations would stand for and throw their whole bodies into it. I felt a little self-conscious being the lone one who stood among the pew-sitting dancers. 

We had planned a brunch in their honor after service, and though their accompanying guards required them to sit together, I was able to talk with them a little by visiting their tables. I was stunned to discover that this outing was a first for one woman incarcerated in her youth decades before. Another told of her astonishment when she first saw a self-opening door. 

When the women left, tears came to my eyes as I watched them march out the sanctuary’s front doors single file and now handcuffed. We exchanged smiles and farewells but of course no handshakes as, one by one, they passed by to the prison bus outside. Some of them had a sweater or something draped over their hands so the handcuffs were not so noticeable. 

I think of the handcuffs on many religious people who are bound by beliefs that limit not only their experience of themselves, of the world, and of God, but also prevent their embrace of so many people they think don’t belong in church or consider unworthy of rights and privileges.  I believe there is a direct relationship between opening our minds spiritually and opening our hearts to others. 

I’ve also seen handcuffs on those who long ago left the church, before their spiritual formation was complete. Their spiritual growth was stunted, many holding prejudices taught them as children in tension with the easy youthful judgment of hypocrisy. An example I’ve witnessed repeatedly are those outside the church who nonetheless say one can’t be progressive and Christian, while dismissing the church for being so conservative! 

I’ve just come from a retreat I co-lead annually for gay and bisexual Christian men at Kirkridge, a retreat center with many progressive Christian programs. One-third of the men were new to this retreat; two-thirds were returning after one to twenty retreats. All of us use the opportunity to discover new aps for old beliefs, as well as expanding our spiritual horizons to such new thinking as queer theology. We bond also as a church away from church, a home away from home. So important has this become that many who have passed on have had their ashes interred or sprinkled in the memorial garden. 

In his book Soul Friend, Kenneth Leech calls a retreat “an essential feature of serious Christian living,” adding, “A retreat is a time of awakening, of new vision and new zest. Hugh Maycock once described the retreat conductor’s role as being to ‘astonish the soul.’ Another major part of a retreat is to allow an individual to relax and expand at leisure, to give some creative space in which to grow.” 

I would suggest a metaphor for the retreat experience is the story of Lazarus raised from a confining tomb, with fellow retreatants rolling the stone from its exit and removing the paralyzing death cloths (spiritual handcuffs) so he may newly engage Jesus, family, neighbors, and God. To Lazarus, Jesus said, “Come out!” And to his neighbors he said, “Unbind him and let him go.”

 

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!

Kirkridge: Where Retreats Become Advances

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

I just returned from a retreat with forty men at Kirkridge in Bangor, Pennsylvania. I was reminded of a minister friend who led so many retreats, we kidded him that it was time for him to stop leading “retreats” and instead lead “advances.” This annual retreat may be characterized—along with other Kirkridge retreats—as an advance for the participants.

Founded by a progressive Christian minister and administered by and host to progressive Christians since, Kirkridge’s motto is “To picket and to pray.” Social justice, personal growth, and progressive wisdom are reflected in its programming and even its operational style—for instance, it costs a little more than some other retreat centers because staff are paid fairly and provided health benefits. Yet the cost is less than most secular conferences.

Kirkridge’s spiritual roots are found in Celtic Christianity—an expression of our faith in which women could be spiritual leaders as well as men, clergy could be married or celibate, clergy and lay people were equally regarded, Christ walks among us in two shoes: scriptures and creation, there is no such thing as original sin, and what sins there are can be removed by Christ or an experience of nature without the church’s intervention. The Beloved Disciple that lay his head on Jesus’ breast during the Last Supper, “listening for the heartbeat of God,” is the patron saint of this contemplative movement that predates much of the present day church. The “soul friends” (anamchara) of Celtic spirituality led to the rite of reconciliation, the pastoral counseling movement, and present day spiritual directors.

Kirkridge and its adjacent Columcille (called “America’s Stonehenge”) have spiritual kinship with Iona, a center for Celtic spirituality on that isle off the west coast of Scotland.

A week before the retreat, the 85-year-old founder of Columcille, Bill Cohea, phoned me. “How are you?” I asked. “Well, I died a few months ago,” he said, chuckling, “I was having a procedure and my heart stopped for awhile. I was so prepared for whatever’s next that when they revived me, I said, ‘Shit! I’m still here! Shit! I’m still here! Shit! I’m still here!’"

I laughed and told him I just learned that Steve Jobs’ dying words were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”

Celtic spirituality recognizes those thin places on earth through which the awesome is revealed. The entwined threads on Celtic crosses and artifacts symbolize how heaven and earth intimately interweave.

Kirkridge is one of those “thin places” of Celtic spirituality. Though I’ve been going there for decades, only this weekend did I realize the significance of its name: it not only provides  a spectacular view from a ridge, but also a sacred vision of the forty men with whom I advanced as “church” (“kirk”).