My Public Declaration Against Ignorance, Tyranny, and Coercion

Zerubbabel: by Guillaume Rouille

Some years ago, I assumed the dramatic personae of Zerubbabel, a prince of the house of Judah.  In that noble character, I was invested with a sword, to remind me "to deal justly by all men."  As I write tonight, that sword rests in the corner next to our family altar.  It still reminds me that all men are created in the image of God, and that I ought to respect that image in them, even when they obscure it by bad choices and worse actions.

Over the past few years, I have noticed a growing trend in the world to coerce people to behave in certain ways, and even to adopt certain opinions.  It occurs all across the political spectrum, and is especially noticeable in religion.  People observe others who do not share their opinions or ways of doing things, and withdraw from them.  Then they believe things about them which may have a grain of truth, but are largely built on unfounded suppositions and untested data.  Then they slander them publicly without ever speaking to the objects of their scorn or mistrust about their motives or actions.  They ridicule or question the faith or goodwill of any who will not join in the boycott of their perceived enemies.  They reinforce their mistrust by talking amongst themselves and reproduce their hateful attitudes in their children and ideological disciples.

Great institutions crumble as one ideological party excludes all others, and as opinions become increasingly extreme.  Control is determined to be the only way to security.  Security is valued to such a degree that liberty is curtailed in the name of safety.  And one day we all awake to discover that Orwell and Huxley were the true prophets of the last century.  We find ourselves slaves, who when asked by those in control "What is the sum of two and two?" sullenly reply, "Whatever you want it to be."

Across the centuries, many good men have assumed the character of Zerubbabel, and of Constans, and Hiram, and others.  Those men have included George Washington, Benito Juarez, Simon Bolivar, Aleksandr Kerenski, Emilio Aguinaldo, and Guiseppe Garibaldi.  They came from widely differing backgrounds, but they all believed in liberty and in the dignity of the individual human being.  They were willing to take a chance that good people working together could do great things without being forced or bullied.  I am glad to stand today in their train, and to publicly decry the growth of despotism around the world.  I am glad to publicly disassociate myself from the common practice which seeks security at the cost of liberty.  And I am glad to publicly reaffirm with them the belief that all people are worthy of respect because they are made in God's image. 

Even if a person is wrong, even if he is dangerous, our common humanity demands that we respect him for who he might become and what he might be if he lived into his creator's image.  This is not to say that the evil and the destructive should not be resisted and made responsible when they are a credible and present danger to others.  But it is to say that even the worst of us are made in God's image, and ought to have the opportunity to live into our potential via the responsible exercise of freedom, which is liberty, the birthright of us all.

This is the reminder of my sword, the sword of an Irish Knight Mason.  It is at the very heart of Freemasonry, my fraternity and that of my father.  Today, we masons are under attack by many well meaning people in the name of religion.  They repeat conspiratorial half truths, and in some instances outright lies about us.  In their fear and search for certainty and stability, they blame the Craft, or the Jewish bankers, or the opposing political party, or the foreign menace, or some alien religion or culture.  Although I count many such folks as my friends, very few of them have ever asked me to explain why I am a Mason or what we teach and believe.  I imagine my experience is not that different from that of others in many groups which have been singled out for marginalization or exclusion by members of some other group.

"The School of Athens"
by Raphael
Where the study of truth and honest inquiry led to wisdom.
An example for all of us.

In closing, I would issue a challenge to everyone who reads this posting.  Find a person who is identified as a member of a group you say bad things about.  Engage them in a spirit of honest inquiry.  Learn what they really believe and what they are really like.  Then refrain from spreading falsehoods and half truths about them.  I predict that if we all do this thing, it will be a better world, and we will learn to respect each other again.  While our differences will remain, we will not be so quick to hate or devalue each other.

The End? Or The Beginning?

Jesus Christ- Our King and Saviour, My Lord

Rector's Rambling: November AD MMXII

I can't say that I was stunned- perhaps saddened and sickened would be better words.  I had logged on to check my e-mail and the Anglican news servers before going to our October Vestry meeting.  What I had dreaded had at last happened.  My friends in the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina had left the Episcopal Church.  In the words of one of their own officers:

"October 17, 2012

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

On Monday, October 15, 2012, Bishop Lawrence was notified by the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, that on September 18, 2012 the Disciplinary Board for Bishops had certified his abandonment of The Episcopal Church. This action triggered two pre-existing corporate resolutions of the Diocese made on November 1, 2011 and October 2, 2012, which simultaneously disaffiliated the Diocese from The Episcopal Church and called a Special Convention. That Convention will be held at St. Philip’s Church, Charleston, on Saturday, November 17, 2012.

The clergy of the Diocese are consequently called to gather for a special Clergy Day this Friday, October 19th at St. Paul’s, Summerville. Our meeting will begin at 10:30 a.m. and conclude by 4:00 p.m. The clergy of the Diocese are asked to RSVP electronically...

Our time will be spent discussing the significance of the actions taken by the Episcopal Church, our response as a Diocese and the plans for the immediate future. You may read related documents [on the diocesan website].

In Christ,

--(The Rev. Canon) Jim Lewis, Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina"

 

 

The event, so long anticipated with dread, now seems to have been eclipsed by a strange sense of calm.  In the midst of that calm, I picked up Love's Redeeming Work:The Anglican Quest for Holiness, edited by Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and published by Oxford University Press in 2001.  I believe with all my heart that the Holy Spirit led me to this 788 page anthology of Anglican spiritual writings through the ages.  As I read, the question began to take shape in my mind, "what is the church, what is the real nature of Christian community?"  For me, this is not just about South Carolina.  It is about friends and family members who have followed their consciences (and I believe the leading of the Holy Spirit) to the Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic Churches.  I will never again be able to receive Holy Communion with them.  It is about friends and family members who have left Anglicanism to attend Evangelical or Fundamentalist churches.  (I believe that they too are following God's leading in their lives.)  Never again will we share that wonderful sense of awe and unity of Spirit which has so often flowed from prayer book worship in antient buildings dedicated to God.  And as the general introduction to the cited work points out, what of those neighbors and friends and others who seek God with their hearts, minds, souls, and strength who have been alienated from formal church structure by the behaviour of us who bear the name of Christ? 

 

I do not believe that "The Church" can be defineed as any mere denominational structure- particularly if that structure can only manage to draw a bit over a half million people on any given Sunday morning for worship.  But such structures may well be localized expressions of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and without organizational and institutional structures, it does not take long until the "faith received" develops into mere folk religion and good intentions.  It first ceases to be catholic, and the loss of orthodoxy, order, and loving unity is usually not long in coming. 

 

And so what am I to do?  What are we to do at Saint John's?  I don't have all of the answers, but here are a few things which cross my mind:

1. I will continue to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that all who are reconciled to the Father receive that gift by his grace.  I will define the terms of this foundational belief in the terms set in Scripture and in the three historic creeds of the Church.

2. I will order my moral life, with God's help and to the best of my ability, after the example and teaching of Holy Scripture, and of our holy Mother the Church.

3. I will worship according to the forms and traditions of The Book of Common Prayer.

4. I will accept and affirm as fellow Christians all who exhibit in their profession of faith the threefold Johannine test (from the First Letter of St. John) of belief in Christ as defined in Scripture and Holy Tradition (the test of Doctrine), of godly behaviour as defined by Scripture (the test of Obedience), and  of mutual love- which is modeled for us by Christ and his saints in Scripture and Holy Tradition (the test of Love).

5. I will honour and respect the decisions of those Christians who believe that our sacramental fellowship and interchangability of orders must be limited for reasons of doctrine or conscience, and at the same tiime, I will maintain our open sacramental ministry at St. John's to all who have been baptised in the Name of the Holy and Blessed Trinity.

6. I will work to remain friends with adherents of other Christian denominations and non-christian faith groups, whatever events may occur, and whatever organizations to which we belong may decide to do.

7. I will not participate in or condone any actions, conversations, or gatherings public or private which exacerbate the divisions which plague the people of God.  If I find myself in a place where such things are going on, I will physically leave the gathering without any expression of anger, and will pray for all those involved in the situation, myself included.

 

Honestly, I don't know what else to do.  The Church will prosper and accomplish the mission given her by Christ, but she looks less and less like the beautiful church I once embraced.  That brings me some real sadness, but it also calls me to see real opportunity for the Bride of Christ to engage the world in new and exciting ways in a new millenium.  I pray for strength to make the transition to what will be, in the full knowledge that Christ is Victorious.  But I will always treasure in my heart the vision of what might have been.

 

To Christ- the true King!

Bill+

 

 

Why I Love Being A Priest

The Most Beautiful Bird In America?
 

That time of year is upon us again. Friday morning, Chuck and I embarked with Fat Leo the Labrador on our first shoot of the season at Federal Valley Pheasant Farm, outside Amesville, Ohio.  We went five for five, and unfortunately, there was no one there to witness the feat.  Since everyone would naturally assume that Chuck and I would lie for each other in all things sporting, the wonderful claim falls into the same category as a golfing hole in one scored when one is playing alone.  But it was a good day, and Leo settled in pretty fast and gave yoeman's service on the lanes.

Todd Frazier's Rally Starting Home Run

On Thursday, I traveled to the Queen City to see the Reds close their last home stand of the year against the Brewers.  With two down in the bottom of the ninth, the Reds rallied to tie and then win the game.  The game had all the excitement of one of those devotional movie closings when the good guys come from behind to win, and it was great to be there in the flesh with my friends from St. John's to experience the jubilatioin of seeing the team I followed in my youth carry the day.

But the weekend was not all play.  I married a young couple from our parish and felt the joy of their decision to begin their life with each other in Christ.  I gave last rites to a dear friend, really more a sister, who is a longtime member of our parish.  I was priviledged to baptize a little boy whose father has just returned from an active duty deployment with the Ohio Army National Guard.  I had the opportunity to preach twice on our responsibilities as a parish to the children and the new Christians in our midst, and to lead a discussion on the difficult passages of the Bible and how sometimes it is hard to understand how God's character and person is revealed in those passages.  Later in the afternoon I was priviledged to bless a basset, three westies, a springer, a yorkie, a rat terrier, and a beagle at our annual animal blessing.  Along the way I had the opportunity to help a couple of folks with very real physical needs and to lend a listening ear to a handful more.  Oh yes, I also renewed a couple of old friendships and welcomed two families who spend half of the year somewhere else back to St. John's for County Fair week. 

Our Little Girls

But of all the happy and inspiring times of the weekend, the one which perhaps moved me the most was being able to spend time with my grand-daughters.  We laughed and played and fed the chickens and read books and just loved each other.  It is good to have them back in Ohio again.

Surely, life is a mixture of the wonderful and the difficult, of the inspiring and the discouraging, but I am so very thankful that God has immersed me in it as a Priest of His Church.  Someone asked me recently what I would be doing if I was not the priest at St. John's.  I really couldn't give them an answer, because I couldn't imagine doing anything else.  God has blessed me so richly in this place, and for that I am grateful.

Thoughts on Carryng a Gun

Beretta Stampede in cal. .357 magnum
for when I need both hands free to do chores

Somehow it just doesn't feel right.  Carrying a weapon everywhere I go on my own property sort of un-nerves me.  And yet it is a necessity in the short term.  The severity of the drought here has seriously disrupted animal movement patterns in our part of the country.  We always have raccoons around the barn and trap twelve or thirteen in an average year.  Occasionally, the terriers will drag in a possum who has made his way up to the barn.  Groundhogs are a regular issue in the gardens.  Whitetail deer move through seasonally after the corn is cut.  But the drought has brought skunks out of the bottoms in search of water.  They are notorious for spreading rabies and then there is that ever present problem of how they protect themselves from the dogs, whose job it is to keep unwanted animals out of the gardens and outbuildings.  All three dogs have been sprayed at least once in the last week.  And so I carry a gun everytime I go out in order to dispatch skunks should they appear, which they often do in times of drought, even during the day.

Stoeger's 12 gague side by side Coach Gun
my barn gun of choice
 

I don't really have a problem with weapons.  I grew up with them, and they are just another tool of country living and field sport, much like a chainsaw or a post driver or a jon boat.  I figure that like baseball bats and kitchen knives, they have legitimate uses.  People who use them illigitimately ought to go to prison.  People who use them legitimately should be left alone.  But carrying them all the time because you must still leaves me a bit uneasy.  If we get rain from the hurricaine this weekend, my skunks will probably move back to the bottoms where they belong, and the shotgun will go back into it's safe.  But there are so many places in the world, some of them right here in my own country, where people never quite feel safe.  Some of them are probably just paranoid, but many of them really do live in places where legitimate authority is unable (or unwilling) to restrain bad guys and inhibit bad behaviour.  Folks there carry weapons not to shoot skunks and other vermin, but because they fear for their own safety and that of their families, often with very real cause.  Carrying has caused me to think about those folks a lot this week.  I think of an elderly person living in public housing in an American city.  I think of members of religious minorities in several countries across South Asia and North Central Africa (or even in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin suburb.)  I think of a Bosnian farmer or an Afghani shepherd.  The list goes on, and is as long as the list of how and where we homo-sapiens have chosen to mistreat each other.

Living in paradise here in Fairfield County as I do, it seems strange to think about things like this- but stranger things do abound in the world.  I find myself offering a prayer this day for those who feel afraid, and especially for those who have good reason to be afraid.  May God bring us all to reason and mutual respect, and hasten the day when our weapons can be used to kill a rabid skunk or fill a freezer with meat- instead of on each other.        

A New Masonic Year Begins in Lancaster

With the passing of summer each year, the masonic fraternity comes back to life after having "gone dark" for the hot months of  July and August.  I don't know why the lodges go dark in the summer, but they always have everywhere I have been active.  Perhaps it has to do with the oppressive heat in the second floor meeting rooms which tend to predominate in midwestern American Craft Masonry.  And I'm not sure where the term "going dark" comes from.  I've heard theories, but like so many things in masonry, they are just that- theories to be tossed about without enough evidence to make much of a definitive statement.

Tonight, I met with my brothers of the Allied Masonic Degrees, a research society dedicated to the preservation of a handful of degrees no longer in general use in the English speaking world.  It was a convivial evening, conducted in the drawing room of our local Lodge.  One of our borthers brought greetings from our brothers in Brazil, where he had recently traveled to address the members of the Order of DeMolay, a Masonic youth group based on the storied heroism of Jaques DeMolay, the last grand master of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, the famed Templars.  It was fascinating to hear his narrative of Brazil and her Masons, and the discussion turned rather effortlessly to the fraternity in Mexico, where our brother spent a significant portion of his early life.  I learned much, and to be with friends in such a setting of brotherhood was comforting and uplifting.
  
Even in this election year, and during the national convention of one of our leading political parties, the brothers observed that longstanding masonic admonition to refrain from arguing about politics and religion at lodge.  The discussions continued for a good hour after the meeting adjourned, and the talk was of plans for benevolence, fellowship, and ritual performance in the various lodges, chapters, and commanderies represented for the ensuing year.  Laughter and good will flowed freely, as they so often do in our fraternity. 

Over the past 27 years, I have fellowshipped with my Masonic Brothers on three continents and all across this great land.  The men with whom I have laughed and learned and served have represented all of the world's great religions, vastly differing political opinions, every social class, and every income and educational level.  We  have come from many nations and represent every color and race.  But by committing ourselves to respect each other and by working together to achieve those goals which are common to all good men, we have been able to maintain friendship in spite of our differences, without demanding that anyone give up his core beliefs to work alongside of us.  (That is unless those core beliefs include intolerance, tyranny, or lack of respect.)  We are committed to stressing that which is common, good, and true; and to respectfully permitting differences of opinion in religion, culture, and politics.

It is not such a bad way to live with one's neighbors, and I am thankful that having passed the darkness of the summer recess, we are together again.