Healing the World
In this reflection, I take inspiration from the life of Dr. Paul Farmer.
Forgiveness Breaks the Chains
Our anger, resentment, and grudges can be chains that bind us. Forgiveness breaks the chains.
Make Them True
Let’s take the beatitudes, not as a promise of future rescue, but as a call to present action.
Das Verstockungsproblem
Why are people so darned thick? Does God sometimes harden people’s hearts? I don’t think so, but some of our faith ancestors did.
As the Loaf Is Broken Open
Do you know the eucharistic chant, “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”?
Let all mortal flesh keep silence, And with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly-minded, For with blessing in His hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, Our full homage to demand.
That’s a translation by Gerard Moultrie from the ancient Greek Liturgy of St. James. In the Episcopal churches of my childhood, we sang it as a communion hymn, using the Ralph Vaughan Williams arrangement of “Picardy”, a French medieval folk melody. It’s a haunting melody and an elegant arrangement, and I must admit that the words too are beautiful—but they don’t fit my idea of what communion is all about.
So, of course, I wrote words of my own. Here’s my wife, Kelly Autrey-Webber, leading the singing for a Sunday service:
Sheet music for “As the Loaf Is Broken Open” is available on our web site here. As usual, it may be freely downloaded and copies for noncommercial purposes.
Care for One Another
You don’t have to be able to work miracles to do what Jesus taught us.
Revolutionaries
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that to follow the way of Jesus, we sometimes have to be revolutionaries.
Naked in the Hall of Scholars
This poem is from a book I’m working on now, a plea for lightweight Christianity. It’s mostly prose—pithy prose, I hope—but this is a sort of poetic interlude.
Naked in the Hall of Scholars
High up in the ceiling,
a single skylight admits the sun.
Swirls of dust show where the shaft of light passes.
Filtering down through the dusty air,
it shines on the restless bodies below.
The scholars turn and turn, massing like starlings,
discussing the Second Coming, so long delayed.
The sound of their voices—male voices, mostly—
rises and falls in sonorous waves,
tohu wabohu, chaos in a sea of sound.
They strive together, one with another,
a number of scholars that no man can number,
masters of ancient tongues, makers of many books.
They argue without end about the ending of the world,
their voices convening a great tribulation.
Popes in a long line speak from beneath their white canopies,
pontifical Latin flowing from their lips.
In a corner, Karl Barth reads from his own works,
in German, of course, precise and authoritative,
from the six million words of his Church Dogmatics,
and from the five hundredth page of his commentary
on the Epistle to the Romans.
“Will there never be an end,” he demands,
“of all our ceaseless talk
about the delay of the Parousia?”
Seemingly not.
I see C. S. Lewis seated, patiently expounding,
explaining it all so a child could follow,
further up and further in.
He meets my gaze, his eyes disappointed,
paternal, knowing me for a Susan.
“Let’s get this over with,” he says. “Take your seat.
The question is on the board.
You have one hour.”
Oh, God! I forgot there was a test today!
And that question on the board—Christ on a cracker!
Did we have to know Greek?
And now the professor of Greek from my seminary,
observes my struggles with sad disappointment.
I remember some Greek, surely I do,
but who can think, with all this arguing?
More eyes turn to me, and I realize:
I not only forgot there was a test today,
I forgot to put on my pants.
I am naked in the hall of scholars.
Rapture me … rapture me …
oh, why have you forsaken me?
Then it happens, my prayer oddly answered.
Gracefully I begin to rise,
floating upward through the dusty swirls of light.
Slowly I drift, up and away.
Slowly the voices and glances recede.
Slowly I rise,
weightless, naked, no longer ashamed,
washed ever upward by ripples of sound from below.
The voices fade, fade to a faintness.
Hours, maybe, pass unnoticed, until
I bump, gently and gently,
face to face with the still, dark ceiling.
Skimming the surface of the ceiling,
I swim toward the source of the bright shaft.
Someone has left the skylight open.
A scent from Outside reaches me, shocks me.
Surely there is peace there, a blessing of peace.
Surely the sound of a playful breeze,
moving over the face of the waters.
The Voice of Baptism
There’s nothing as beautiful as a baptism. But there’s nothing so beautiful that humans can’t turn it into a problem.
Altar Alteration
Hello, friends,
Here’s a mostly-musical video piece I made for the annual meeting of the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ. (Not sure they’ll be inviting me back!) It includes a song about how hard it is to change anything in church.
May you be blessed with a merry and mystical new year!