Thoughts on Memorial Day

Rest Eternal grant unto them, O Lord,
and let Light Perpetual shine upon them.  AMEN.

A friend of mine, a retired Presbyterian Pastor and former Army Chaplain, sent me the following short meditation on Memorial Day, and I thought it worth passing on to you.  He said that he preached some version of this in every town in which he ever pastored, and in a few others besides.  It was his priviledge to share it with soldiers on occasion before their deployments.  And so I send this out with many thanks to the Reverend Chaplain (Major) Keith Kivlin, 73d Infantry Brigade (SEPARATE) and 16th Engineer Brigade. 

"This is Memorial Day, not Veteran's Day.  No Vets died in any of the wars fought by our country.  Memorial Day is a memorial for the dead: those Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guards who died in the wars of our nation.  Considering the generally solemn occasion, the picnics and ball games and swimming pools and car races appear to be inappropriate ways to keep the day.  Unless... you remember the military personnel who gave their lives were all young.  The average age of an American soldier in each and all of our wars was and is 19 years.  Watching re-enactors you get the impression that the men who died fighting for our country were all a bunch of middle aged guys with beer bellies.  But that would be wrong.  They were young.  They were incredibly young.  They were amazingly young.  How do we memorialize these very young people who died fighting for our freedoms?  certainly it is wise to spend a few minutes in a grave yard and plant flags and flowers.  But after that what?  I think we have it right after all.  Keep this day the way these honored dead would have kept this day in their strength and exhuberance.  Go play some ball, deep fry a turkey, grill some burgers, splash in a pool, play some music (preferably very LOUD music), drink some beer and whiskey, play some guitars and banjos, play some golf, do some touch dancing with several beautiful girls, wash your old car in the shade of the maple tree, kiss your girl friends, wives, co-workers, etc.  In doing the above, throw a ball, kiss a girl, grill a burger, drink a beer for those who gave up all their sunny picnic days for you.  If you do some of these things today, our war dead in the Realms of Light will laugh and send a blessing our way!  Pray for Peace!  In this celebration may the Lord Jesus Christ be with you!  Amen."

Peace and Love,

Keith

Sermon for Pentecost, AD MMXII

The Descent of the Holy Spirit, by Anthony Van Dyck

Pentecost Year B
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster, 27 May 2012

Acts2:1-21
Psalm 104
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-16:15

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. AMEN.

The Logo of Shriners International

Friday night Danny Meenach, Pete Martin, David Mowrey, and I donned our rhinestone encrusted red fezzes and descended on the main entrance of Wal-Mart to solicit donations for the Shriner’s Orthopedic and Burn Hospitals for Children. It is a worthy charity, and the “people of Wal-Mart” gave generously. Many of them did not appear to have a lot of extra cash, and their donations of one or two or five dollars reminded me of that widow whom Jesus commended for giving her two mites. “Because she has given all that she has, she has given more than all of them.” There was a time when I used to watch people a lot. And then time and circumstance limited that past-time, and so my three and a half hours at Wal-Mart provided a welcome opportunity to watch people again. I was a bit disturbed by what I saw. There were more people in the general population who seemed to be burned out on drugs than I had remembered. In the same way, there was a higher concentration of people who seemed to suffer from the ill affects of poverty than I had remembered from the days when I did most of my people watching in Lexington, Kentucky back in the 70’s. If the eye is the window of the soul, and I believe it is for most of us, I think it is safe to say that many of the people I saw were living in that shadowy land between faith and hope, where uncertainty and hurt can so easily lead to distrust and despair.

Perhaps you have visited that land at some point in your life. You believe that there is a God, a God who loves you. Your faith has led you to respond by giving your life to Him and calling out for his deliverance, but as hours blend into days and days into weeks, your prayers seem to go unanswered, and your soul wavers. The hope you had entertained seems so far away, and your loved one still suffers from cancer, and that person you love so dearly seems as unresponsive as ever, and you watch your balances dwindle as markets fluxuate and you are forced to draw down more and more capital to meet your regular expenses. Your faith is intact, but hope seems an unrealized dream.

Whitsunday, more commonly called the Feast of Pentecost, is the festival of our Holy Mother the Church which addresses the discouragement of that in-between land perhaps better than any other. It relates the historic fulfillment of the outpouring of the Blessed Holy Spirit in the lives of the early Christians. Jesus had ascended into heaven, and had told the disciples to go into the city and wait for the fulfillment of that which had been foretold by the prophets, the coming of the Spirit upon the people of God. He had said, “When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it unto you. All that the Father has in mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:13-15)

And now, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy and Blessed Trinity, is come into the world to guide the Ecclesia, the Church of God, into all truth. He fell upon them in power that day, and the world has never been the same. Common lives were filled with a confidence beyond what they had ever known. In many ways their situations did not change, but they were now aware of the infilling of God, and their transformed perceptions led to new outlooks, new callings, and new realities of faith and experience. They bore witness to the fact that Jesus Christ had defeated death and the grave, and had changed their lives forever. The boldness of their insistence led to persecution and radical transformation of culture, of institutions, and of lives. All of this because the Gift of the Holy Ghost had come upon them just as the prophets foretold. “For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I shall be your God.” (Ezekiel 36:24-28) Because the gift of the Holy Spirit was theirs, their outlooks and their realities were transformed. The grayness of that in-between land gave way to the Technicolor certainty of the realized hope of the kingdom of God in their lives.

Have you experienced this ushering in of the Kingdom of God? Certainly it is a reality in the history of the Church, but have you known it in your own heart? Has His Spirit borne witness with your own spirit that indeed you are a child of God, and a joint heir with Jesus Christ? Has the grayness and uncertainty of life’s reality been reinterpreted and understood in that new light, that fuller truth and understanding which is the gift of God to all who believe?

On this feast of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church, I urge you to receive those gifts that God has prepared for you, and which Jesus promised were ours if we would wait for the fulfillment. By coming today to this holy place to receive the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, you have in a very real way gone into the city to await the coming of the gift. You have believed that Jesus is the Christ, the one who did what the Bible says he did, and is who the Bible says he is. You have come to this place in faith, believing in the promise. Now I urge you to cast yourself upon his grace and mercy, praying earnestly that on this day, you might know that truth which He has promised. On this day, pray earnestly to him that the faith of the Church might be your own, and that the experience of the Church my be known in your life with power, and intimacy, and transforming reality.

God may change your immediate situation. It is much more likely that your situation will stay the same, but that he will transform your mind and your outlook. The miracle, you see, may not be in the physical healing, or the changed reality. It may be in that spiritual understanding which comes from what Wesley and others have called “the heart strangely warmed.” When we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that we have been with God, and that He loves us, we are guided into that deeper truth which only comes from knowing Him, for the Spirit of God speaks to us that which the Father has delivered to the Son. Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants, for the servant does not know what his lord does. But I call you friends, for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” Friends of Jesus, receive today that truth, that understanding, that knowledge that our Lord and our Saviour, our brother and our friend offers us through the coming of the Holy Spirit into the world. As it transformed the Empire of Rome, so will it transform our outlooks and our reality, and men and women everywhere will know the reality of the power of God’s love. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Hermit for a Day!

To live in a cave with a dog for a day,
is a dream often sought by a boy!

The last few days have marked one of those uninspired low spots that occasionally characterize my life.  I am neither discouraged nor depressed.  I go to work and do my job and have no lack of purpose or meaning.  But the inspiration to do great things or to be great simply isn't there.  In such times the colors on the farm seem a bit more vivid and the chatter of the birds more melodic than usual.  While I don't necessarily dislike people in general during these times, I find that I seek out my own company and more solitude during these short interludes of thoughtfulness.  I generally wake earlier than usual, and avoid main highways or congested streets in town.  The garden holds more fascination for me, and the small things, the ever changing things there, draw me in like Mesmer's bauble.

There was a time when these short flights caused me to wonder if I might be called to a monastic vocation.  I remember visiting a Trappist house and corresponding with one of the brothers there for two or three years.  His counsel was timely and wise, and I fell in love instead.  Then there were occasions when I toyed with the idea that such times as these might mean that God was getting ready to call me to another field of endeavor.  But an older and wiser voice told me that far too many clergy blame their inability to weather the storms of life or to experience the kind of intimacy which really makes them a part of a community of faith, on God's call.  It is easier to find self-esteem in being the misunderstood and maltreated itinerant than in weathering the squabbles and personality clashes necessary to really belong to a particular nodule of the family of God.

Perhaps it is because sometimes I feel so old, but I am coming to see these times of lowness as gifts from a loving heavenly Father.  He knows that I can only handle so much significance, and he occasionally gives me a break from the rat race of modern life.  When I played at being an academic so many years ago, on occasion I would get tired of reading significant literature or meaningful history, and would read something totally mindless- like "Conan the Barbarian" or Lord Home's musings on his patrimony.  I always seemed to come away refreshed and ready to go back to the library or the classroom.  There were times when as an Army Chaplain I simply needed to wear civilian clothes and call people by their first names.  And now God gives me the gift of the willingness to walk away from things, some of which are rather important, for just a little while to rest and refresh myself.  The change in mood or perception doesn't mean that he is calling me to another place or another job.  It is just a way that he can give me a break to preserve my spiritual and mental health, and probably my physical health as well (for after all they are one and the same.)

And so, from a soon to be old man who has been a bit tired of late, I hope you too will be able to find a time and a place apart- and to enjoy it as the gift of a loving heavenly Father who wishes your best, and your wholeness. 

Rules for Christians in a Political Season

Rector’s Rambling-June 2012

We are in the midst of a political season, both in the church and in the state. This summer, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church will meet in Indianapolis to debate issues and pass resolutions which will be misunderstood by many, held to be prophetic by some and un-godly by others, and ignored by far more. In November, the people of the United States will elect a president, a congress, and one third of the US Senate. The process and its results will be misunderstood by many, hailed as an answer by some and mourned as the end of the world by others, and life will go on in some form for most of us. In the mean time, many of us will have conducted ourselves in ways which will divide us from friends, hurt the feelings of many, and effectively shut down the probability of real communication between people for some time to come. Politics can be a ruthless game. If we accept the practices of many and allow ourselves to believe that “the ends justify the means,” or that we must “win at any cost,” we break our covenant as Episcopalian Christians to “respect the dignity of every human being.”

In this month’s Rector’s Rambling, I offer some ideas for civil discourse that just might help us to preserve our friendships and lay the groundwork for ongoing cooperation between people of differing views. This list is of course incomplete, but I pray that it will help us to think twice before speaking once, and help us to develop a framework for peaceful co-existence and mutual respect.

1. Keep your language respectful. Tone can mean as much as words when we speak of others. I once knew a cleric who referred to a former bishop as “_______, our Bishop” when she was upset with him. The form, drawn from the prayers of the people, is perfectly respectful, but as she used it, it was filled with scorn. I would suggest never speaking of the principals in the debates which surround us with adjectives or by employing their first names. The phrase “President Obama,” or “Governor Romney,” or “Bishop Jefferts-Schori” can be delivered in a respectful tone which is much more rational and healing than “Barry,” or ”That Mormon,” or “Herself.” When we start with a pejorative or with mocking, there is no real possibility that respectful and rational discussion of the issues will follow.

2. Check your facts and stick to the facts which are relevant to the issue being discussed. Far too many people are too quick to forward or tweet or post to my-space. The result is that at best inaccuracies are spread, and at the worst, vicious lies are circulated. The commandment is clear that we are forbidden to bear false witness against our neighbor. Forwarding false things is breaking the ninth commandment. It must be repented of and correction must be made if we value our souls. Verify your facts and state them as part of a clearly reasoned argument. Believe half of what you hear or read, about a quarter of what you see, and delete anything which constitutes a personal attack on anyone. As inspector Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, “Just the facts ma’am.”

3. Insist that your conversations be limited to issues and verifiable facts. If someone starts attacking a person without evidence or if they jump from factoid to factoid or issue to issue in a way which excites emotion without addressing substance rationally, say something like, “I really don’t want to get involved in this kind of discussion. I’d be glad to discuss a single issue at a time with you after we have both had a chance to marshal and verify our facts.” It may seem rude at first, but it will preserve more friendships and enable more good citizenship (and more good churchmanship) than just going along with what most people do.

4. Avoid the talking head shows on both left and right. They set a tone of loudness and a precedent of talking over each other which debases public discourse. Don’t let them be your example of how to argue or debate.

5. Beware any speaker who employs sophistic rhetorical tricks over well reasoned and organized arguments. Such people are often expert at moving the heart, but they seldom inform the mind. Their method has been regularly employed by demagogues and tyrants throughout history. This is not to say that a good debater should not try to move the heart, but he or she ought always to appeal to reason over emotion. To do otherwise is merely to incite the mob.

6. Never cast the person with whom you disagree as “evil.” There are evil people in the world, who after a pre-meditated fashion seek to dominate or hurt others. Most people do not fall into that category. Be willing to give your political adversary the benefit of the doubt for the sake of a respectful argument. Once you have called them evil, or assumed them to be so, your relationship is probably over forever, as is the real possibility of your living together successfully.

I hope these suggestions will help us all to survive yet another political season, and to fulfill our covenant made with each other before God that we will “Respect the dignity of every human being.”

Faithfully,

Bill+

Gardening at Briarwood

Now that most of the garden staples are planted for the year, there is time for a little bit of experimentation.  I've planted about 65 feet of straw bale crops this year, mostly tomatoes and peppers of various sorts, with a few peas, some cucumbers, and a bit of spinach.  I believe the key to success in this plot is water- huge ammounts of water applied every day.  (Fortunately, we live on the Amanda Aquifer, and water is not a problem.)  Time will tell if I am right.  To get the bales ready for planting, I layed them on their sides (binder up) and end to end, gave them a healthy dose of urea (34% nitrogen), and kept them wet for a couple of weeks.  Everything seems to be growing well, and nothing has burnt up yet.   For some years now, I've worked unsuccessfully to extend the spinach and lettuce seasons into the hot months of summer.  I've tried shade cloth and more water, but the crops still bolt with the onset of July's heat.  This year, I'm trying again with a small hydrophonics system which receives morning sun only and is set to bathe the roots in organically fertilized and oxygenated water every hour, with two extended periods of watering each day.  It may be as unsuccessful as prior attempts, but I always learn something about how things grow, and I do enjoy it.  If it doesn't work, the chickens are always glad to eat a few extra heads of overgrown greens.

The Peonies (pronounced Pineys in this part of the world) are beginning to bloom ever so gloriously, and the Siberian Iris have joined their German and Dutch cousins in a magnificent display.  While they have not yet bloomed, the Marigolds and Nastursums are in place to accompany the Pansys as row markers throughout the garden.  The hummingbird feeders have a steady clientele and I am going through about a quart of birdseed a day, along with one suet block.  The birds have found us this year.  With this in mind, I've started a flat of Sunflower plants which should sprout on Monday or Tuesday.  The climbing Roses are blooming nicely, and I expect the tea Roses to start in the next week or so.  The bush Roses will not be far behind.  Fortunately, Princess and Squirt, the Equines, not only mow the pasture, but also provide us with small mountains of high quality fertilizer.

I cannot but praise the God who has surrounded me with such beauty.  Through the blessings of location and lots of hard work, Rebecca and I have been favoured to open a window on Heaven- to build Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land.  I hope and pray that all who read these words might find a way to share the beauty of God in your own way and in your own situation.  So Mote It Be!

Son-in-Law Matthew on TV- Military Service and Priestly Vocation

This week, Son-in-Law Fr. Matthew Canter was interviewed by the TV news in San Diego California about his service as an infantryman in Iraq and how it impacts his service as a priest today.  I hope you will take a few minutes to watch this news report. (sorry I don't know how to get past the advertisement, but it is short.)

http://www.cbs8.com/story/18067851/from-the-front-lines-of-war-a-local-mans-new-mission

Matthew+, we are thankful for you and honour both your service to the Republic and the ministry to which God has called you.

Pro Deo et Patria!

Bill+, Rebecca, and Tristan