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Like the Sofa She Sits
Like the sofa she sits in memory
The well-worn couch in the thrift store window
Our lives intersected I had hoped we would be
Familiar agreeable comfort grown old
Constant in love though we drifted apart
Shabbily restful the promise of peace
Given to wandering affairs of the heart
Now put on display and seeking release
I stare through glass and think about calling
I could make an offer I could seek a bargain
But I know I won’t do it there’s no point pretending
It’s a thing of the past and there’s really no reason
The old davenport, the long-parted lover
We simply were not made for each other
(By C. Eric Funston)
From the Psalter:
Hallelujah!
Praise God in his holy temple;
praise him in the firmament of his power.
Praise him for his mighty acts;
praise him for his excellent greatness.
Praise him with the blast of the ram’s-horn; *
praise him with lyre and harp.
Praise him with timbrel and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe.
Praise him with resounding cymbals;
praise him with loud-clanging cymbals.
Let everything that has breath
praise the Lord.
Hallelujah!
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalme 150 (BCP Version) – January 11, 2014.)
The musical Godspell debuted in 1971 (my junior year in college); in it, Christ is portrayed as a clown. Whether it was an expression of or the catalyst for the phenomenon of offering clown eucharists as an edgy, avant-garde presentation of the Christian Mysteries, I really don’t know. The two are inextricably linked in my memory.
And . . . to be honest, I never cared for either. And . . . being further honest, that may be because I have never like clowns. I find them creepy. On the other hand, a bishop of whom I was very fond and for whom I had great respect, loved Clown Eucharists. He had a set of clown-decorated vestments made; he offered a clown eucharist at least once each year (often at diocesan convention) throughout his episcopate. They may have resonated for him because, unlike me, he loved clowns.
But I didn’t (and don’t) and so the clown eucharist was, for me, a distraction. I couldn’t get passed the gimmick, the clown images and the circus music, to the Christ at the center of mass. The clown gimmick, not the foolishness of God to which it was supposedly pointing, took over and seemed to be the point of the whole thing.
Some years later, when the music of U2 became popular and new generation were finding spiritual meaning in the band’s lyrics, someone put together a celebration of the Holy Mysteries in which that music played a part — the major part — it was the only music — and promoted the event as a U2charist.
“Right,” I thought. “The clown eucharist in a new guise.” Again, for me, the gimmick (the U2 music) distracts from the principal focus. I attended a U2charist and, for me, all I heard was the band’s music; I didn’t hear the gospel. That’s not to say it wasn’t there; it may have been. I just couldn’t hear it through the distraction of the soundtrack.
Since then I have heard of (but not attended) celebrations of Holy Communion in which the music was all from the Beatles canon, or all “oldies” from the 1960s, or all Broadway show tunes . . . and I wouldn’t be surprised if there have been other similar “thematic” eucharists. All, I think, the descendants of the clown masses of the 1970s — attempts to package the Christian Mysteries in edgy and avant-garde ways to present them to a target audience, to sneak the gospel message in under the guise of entertainment.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Let me hasten to say that I think entertainment is fine. If clowns float your boat, go the circus! If you like the music of U2 (and I do), listen to it! If you like Broadway musicals (and I do), go to the theater! And if you find something of spiritual import in those entertainments (and I do), great! Make use of it in your spiritual life and, even, in church services and celebrations.
The last of the psalms encourages the people of God to make use of many forms of entertainment, symbolized by musical instruments — trumpets and horns (the ram’s horn), stringed instruments, percussion, wood winds — and dance, in their worship. So I believe it’s fine to make use of clowns, to use of U2’s music, to sing the Beatles’ lyrics, to offer the tunes from Broadway shows as part of the liturgy.
But when these things become the reason for the service, when we name the service for the clowns or the bands or the theater district, the tool meant to be used for praising God has become the object of praise. The psalm says, “Praise God with strings and pipe,” not “Praise the strings and pipe;” “Praise God with resounding cymbals,” not “Praise the cymbals.”
Others, I am quite certain, will have found the U2charists a path to God. Other, I know, will have found in the Beatles mass and in the Broadway eucharists the truth of the gospel. After all, that bishop whom I really did love found Christ in clowns no matter how creepy I may have found them!
But for me, these feel “gimmicky” — one or two Beatles songs might be used to good effect, but nothing but Beatles music through the whole service? Not so much. U2’s Gloria could certainly stand as a liturgical piece, but all U2 music throughout the mass? Too much of a good thing. I’m not sure that I can say anything positive about clowns . . . but someone might, perhaps. My point is that themed eucharists like these, in which the theme predominates, feel like gimmicks. It feels to me like we have stopped praising God with the clowns and have started praising the clowns; the gimmick distracts. Praise God with the gimmick, but don’t praise the gimmick!
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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!
====================
Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
Tulip in the Snow
Driving the highway
in the grey washed-out winter noon,
without warning
the thought assaults me.
If I could paint, I think,
I would paint
a glistening field of diamond-bright white,
not the snow of this highway shoulder,
not this snow
pock-marked with road salt,
mud,
and the black ink
of dissolving tire tread,
not this snow
looking like a scar
from the slice of a bread knife
through the face
of an old man whose acne
never quite ended decades ago.
A glistening field of diamond-bright white
and, in one distant corner,
a single red tulip.
(By C. Eric Funston)
From the Letter to the Colossians:
Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Colossians 2:16-17 (NRSV) – January 10, 2014.)
I sometimes wonder to what extent Paul, as an educated Jewish citizen of a Greek-speaking empire, was schooled in the classical Greek philosophers. Had he read Plato’s Republic? Was he aware of the conversation portrayed in Book VII between Socrates and Glaucon in which the allegory of the cave is laid out?
In the dialog, Socrates describes a prison cave in which the inmates have lived all of their lives chained in such a way that all they can see is a blank wall. The prisoners watch shadows formed on the wall by things passing between them and a fire behind them. They recognize the shadows, give them the names of the things which cast them, and believe them to actually be those things. The shadows, says Socrates, are as close as the inmates get to viewing reality. According to Socrates, a philosopher is like a prisoner who is loosed, sees the real forms casting the images, and comes to understand that the shadows are not reality at all. He is aware of the true form of reality, not the shadows seen by the chained inmates. The story illustrates Plato’s “Theory of Forms,” which holds that things in the material world perceivable through sensation are mere “shadows” of ideal “forms.” These “forms,” not the “shadows,” possess the highest and most fundamental reality.
When Paul writes things like “these are only a shadow . . . the substance belongs to Christ,” he seems to be buying into this Platonic idea. His famous line from the first letter to the church in Corinth seems to do so as well: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12) Take these sorts of Pauline statements and mix them with the Letter to the Hebrews (“They offer worship in a sanctuary that is a sketch and shadow of the heavenly one.” – Heb. 8:5) and even a bit of James (“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” – James 1:17), and one can see where the Neoplatonists and even the Gnostics get the notion that the material world is less than ideal, fallen, corrupt, or even evil. That’s a position that, unfortunately in my opinion, has made a significant impact on Christian theology.
It is also not a view to which the Hebrew Scriptures lend much support and one doubts very much that it was the opinion of Jesus of Nazareth! Oh sure, there are hints of it in Hebrew poetry and prayer. For example, King David prays with the assembly of the people: “For we are aliens and transients before you, as were all our ancestors; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope.” (1 Chron 29:15) And Bildad the Shuhite advises Job: “For we are but of yesterday, and we know nothing, for our days on earth are but a shadow.” (Job 8:9) And from time to time the Psalms say things like the description of human beings as “like a breath; their days are like a passing shadow.” (Ps. 144:4) But on the whole, the Old Testament and (I suggest) the Christian faith declare a much different understanding of reality!
Just read the accounts of creation in Genesis! God is not shown to be casting shadows; God is creating hard, physical reality and, at each step along the way, declares it good. In the second account (which is probably the older of the two), God gets God’s hands dirty in all that good, hard, physical reality molding human beings out of the clay. I’m particularly fond of poet James Weldon Johnson’s retelling of that story (which I quoted in last Sunday’s sermon):
Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life.(“The Creation”, from God’s Trombones)
When I was a second-year student at law school I was a member of the law review where we used some very early word processing equipment and software in which one had to enter the codes for changes in typeface, indentation, and so forth (not too dissimilar from writing HTML code, frankly). What you looked at on the green-on-black computer screen bore no resemblance to what (you hoped) the printer would produce. The next year, when I became an editor, we purchased a new computer and were introduced to a new concept – “WYSIWYG” (pronounced “wissy-wig”) – What You See Is What You Get. What was on the screen looked like what the printer produced!
I believe that’s the kind of world we have been given, one in which what we perceive is real. Yes, I know that quantum mechanics and superstring theory bring that into some question, that at some super-micro-nano-reality level things are not quite what they seem; but that is a different issue than this philosophical nothing-is-really-real shadow-world construct of Plato’s, and a far cry from the fallen, corrupt, evil world of some Christian theologies. We live in a real, physical world, one in which God was pleased to take on flesh and dwell among us (John 1:1-14).
When I see beautiful winter hillside covered with glistening snow, when I taste a sweet-tart bite of homemade cherry pie, when I kiss my wife or hug my daughter, when I listen to a Vivaldi concerto, I am seeing/tasting/feeling/hearing what I get, not some shadow of an unseen and unknowable “ideal form.” Like that mammy bending over her baby, what I am experiencing is real and good; it is the ideal. We live in a WYSIWYG world!
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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!
====================
Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
An Anglo-Catholic Procession in a Midwestern Church
Wearing his cope like a leather jacket and jeans,
the priest steers the procession,
a diesel truck with an oversized trailer
turning left through the narrow
two-laned small-town streets
of the congregation’s protestant piety,
heedless of the fenders of their faith
hastily backed away
from the crosswalk of the center aisle.
The thurible-swinging acolyte,
like the chrome-plated grill of a monstrous tractor
giving notice of the behemoth’s approach,
barrels on toward his goal,
smoke like diesel exhaust billowing
around and over the crucifer’s head.
If I pump my right fist arm raised high
like a kid in a passing Coupe de Ville,
will he let out with the shriek of an air horn?
The choir swings wide, rolling off the pavement,
leaving a deep polyphonic rut
in the garden sensibilities of the faithful
at the edge of the road.
Slightly over-correcting, they get back on track
and find the coda in the choir loft.
Torch-bearers and eucharistic ministers,
sub-deacon and deacon,
shudder and stumble to their places,
an 18-wheeler with defective air brakes.
“Blessed be God . . . ”
intones the trucker celebrant;
“And blessed be his kingdom . . . ”
sighs the relieved assembly.
(By C. Eric Funston)
Illustration: Procession of re-ordained in a church by Paolo Uccello (1469)
From the Psalter:
Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy,
for we have had more than enough of contempt,
Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich,
and of the derision of the proud.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 123:4-5 (BCP Version) – January 9, 2014.)
There’s a lot of talk these days about “class warfare,” most of it sheer nonsense. There is, it must be admitted, a growing class divide, an increasing gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of us. One might be tempted to write about that in light of this psalm’s reference to the “scorn of the indolent rich” and the “derision of the proud.” But, let’s face it . . . scorn, derision, contempt, and generally obnoxious conduct transcend class and other distinctions.
Prickly, disagreeable people come in all income groups, all races, all genders and sexual preferences, all religions . . . in any grouping of human beings you care to make. Indeed, everyone of us can be and are, from time to time, prickly and unpleasant. A lot of the time, we are completely oblivious to our own unpleasantness.
Driving past our town square yesterday afternoon, I noticed that a sweet gum tree had shed its empty seedpods, the hard, prickly fruit littering the snow all around the trunk. I rolled down the car window, pulled out my smartphone and took this picture (which came out a bit unfocussed). I thought I might use it as inspiration (or illustration) for a poem. And then this psalm came up on the lectionary rotation and the sweet gum was an obvious metaphor.
Unpleasant people drop little bombs of scorn, little grenades of derision all around them. They mar the world around them the same way the sweet gum tree’s seedpods mar the snow around the tree. But like the tree, they are unaware (or uncaring) of the damage they are doing and seem unable (or unwilling) to bend; they lack the flexibility to remedy the mess they create around them.
The psalmist is right to pray for deliverance from such folk . . . but more importantly we should pray for change in ourselves, that we not be prickly, contemptuous, and scornful towards those around us. Jesus once said to his listeners:
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Matt. 7:3-5, NRSV)
In terms of the tree on square . . . deal with your own prickly seedpods of contempt, scorn, or derision before criticizing another’s.
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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!
====================
Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
Reading in Context
I sit at night,
Wrapped in a shawl preparing to read.
Warm, I sit in my recliner.
A fire burns in my den’s old stone hearth.
I take up the book.
The table-lamp’s friendly liquid light
illumes metaphors of similes of analogies.
Invasions and wars and mayhem and death;
traveling tents turned into temples,
temples transfixed on tentpegs,
temples topped with spires,
temples crowned with thorns,
thorny words that bring no comfort.
This is my work.
I read.
The page is slick; the writing, oily.
The eye slides off,
like a late-night dancer from a lubricated
length of well-polished pole.
This? This is supposed to be holy?
The words are sour; the prose is acrid.
The brain spits up,
like a distempered infant disgorging
a dose of terpin hydrate.
This? This is supposed to be sacred?
The verse is harsh; the stories, dreadful.
The spirit rebels,
like a captive cruel-clawed kitten
being clutched too tightly.
This? This is supposed to be helpful?
She died tonight,
Breathed her last and turned away.
Numb, I sit in the unused chapel.
An electric candle flickers in the darkness.
I pick up a book.
The fluorescent light
callously barging in through the doorway
shines on praises of glories of blessings of forgiveness.
Seas parting, tables spread, honey, milk, wine, bread;
mountaintop holy ground welcoming feet,
feet of the messengers,
feet bathed at Passover,
feet pierced with spikes,
spikenard-like words that succor and soothe.
This is our life.
I read.
The words make sense; the stories comfort.
My soul unwinds
like the knotted cord of an old
black telephone desk set.
This. This is the word of the Lord.
(By C. Eric Funston)
From the Psalter:
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 118:24 (NRSV) – January 8, 2014.)
My wife and I met at a Cursillo three-day weekend event. I was a part of the team (one of the cooks) putting on the Cursillo; she was “making” her Cursillo (as the lingo has it). She claims we’d met before at a fund-raiser fair at my parish (she attended elsewhere), but I was very busy during the fair and don’t recall that. I remember meeting her at the Cursillo weekend.
The Cursillo movement and the Cursillo community became an important of the early years of our marriage. We married about six months after meeting and in another six months we relocated to another state where I attended law school. There was an active Cursillo community in that location and we became involved.
An eye-opening move, that was. We discovered that the Cursillo community in our original home had been doing things incorreclty! Not just different. They’d been wrong. They’d been violating of the agreement between the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Cursillo Movement, which had licensed the Cursillo method to the Episcopalians. And, we later learned, they knew they’d been doing so.
This comes to mind today because one of the major elements of a Cursillo weekend is music. In those communities, it was the sort of music that today might be called “praise choruses” or “church folk” or “contemporary.” Simple, easily remembered, repetitive songs accompanied by guitars, banjos, tambourines, bongos. One song common to both communities was based on this verse; in fact, it was this verse so far as I can remember.
There may have been verses and this may simply have been the chorus, but all I can recall is this verse: “This is the day, this is the day, that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made. We will rejoice, we will rejoice, and be glad in it, and be glad in it.” A catchy, bouncy little tune to which one could dance a formless dance, whirling like a dervish! It was easy to get caught up in and it demonstrated to me the spiritual power of music, simple melodies, and physical movement. Whirling and spinning and experiencing the power of the Spirit!
When my wife and I returned to our original home after three years in law school, we were asked to be the leaders of a coeducational three-day Cursillo event. We agreed, but we said we wanted to try to abide by the agreement between our church and the Roman Catholics, to discontinue those practices which violated the accord, to keep faith with our brothers and sisters who had gifted us with the Cursillo as a tool for deepening the faith of mature Christians.
There was push-back. In fact, there was outright rebellion. Members of the community refused to sponsor candidates to the weekend we were to lead; others refused to contribute to the cost of the event. Evelyn and I resigned from leadership and felt we had no choice but to withdraw from the community.
What had been an important support for us in the early years of married life became a source of grief and sadness. It still is. We miss being a part of that community and we miss the nearly automatic entry being in the Cursillo community gave us to a wider circle of church friends when we relocated. Where we live now, there is no active Cursillo community so the sharpness of the grief is dulled; there are no “Reunions,” nor “Ultreyas” (as the regular get-togethers of Cursillistas are called), so no constant reminders that we are no longer a part of Cursillo.
And yet we rejoice that we were fortunate to have been called to that community. It’s where we met; it sustained us. Like each day the Lord makes, it has passed. When it was here, we rejoiced in it and we were glad. And we look back on it still with gratitude. When I think of it, I think of this verse and that danceable chorus, and my soul comes alive in the Spirit, whirling and spinning, and expressing the joy that community gave us . . . and how grateful I am to that experience for the gift of my wife and the family we have created.
Everyday is a new day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it, whirling and spinning in the power of the Spirit.
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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!
====================
Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
Prayers Interrupted
click tick pop
bang moan
click sigh
the echo of muffled
bass drum
hushed boom
a wood block
tapped by an angry cricket
tick tickity tick tick tick . . . click pop
an army of ants
do a soft-shoe
on a snare drum
sh shh sh sh sh sh
while the wind breaths through
a McDonald’s smoothie straw
moan . . . sigh . . .
sigh . . . moan
prayers interrupted
the muted percussion
of a house
coming alive
on winter’s morn
amen
(By C. Eric Funston)
