Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart

In Western North Carolina we have had snow and cold. We are not Maine or North Dakota so it was hardly a blizzard, but it doesn’t take much to put everything to a stop. Jo and I live on five acres of land in a development that is on a non-public road.  So, Sunday morning, I began shoveling our driveway with images of heart attacks in my mind.  One of my neighbors has a fancy tiller with a plow on the front and he helped. Since both of us are over sixty, we rested often. We talked about the day, the Christmas some years ago that was a blizzard, our kids, when to plant gardens. As we talked, another neighbor had hitched up a plow to the front of his tractor and was plowing our street.  And in a quiet way, it felt as if God’s kingdom had drawn near. 

I was thinking about this yesterday when I read the words from the Epistle in the Morning Office: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you” (Ephesians 1).

My neighbors and I have little in common. We don’t talk about our work or politics. We don’t talk about religion. However, there are times when our pace stops; we come out of our bubbles and “the eyes of our hearts [are] enlightened” and the kingdom comes near. On a snow day, it doesn’t matter how you voted  or how you have mapped the world. We all want a clear road that connects us to community and one another, and the truth is we can’t clear that by ourselves.

When it snows, there aren’t Democrats or Republicans; there are just humans, citizens, fellow men and women on the path trying to find our way.  In this age of division and sometimes anxiety, suspicion and rancor, my hope is that we remember it’s always snowing. Every day we need to help one another clear a path.  We need to help each other connect our driveways to the common thoroughfare so that we find our way to the city of the New Jerusalem—which is our common destination.

A passage from O’Bama’s speech last night that lifted me up: “Presuming a reservoir of goodness in others can be a risk, and there will be times when this disappoints you. But…it can energize and inspire. And more often than not, your faith…will be confirmed.”

That presumption of goodness in others opens us up for God to make “the eyes of our hearts” be “enlightened” so that we might remember “the hope to which God has called us.”  The truth is somewhere it’s always snowing, and we are called out of our little boxes to the common road that leads—if we can see with the eyes of our hearts---to the New Jerusalem.

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The Brightness of a New Page

1-4-17

I am living just as the century ends.

A great leaf, that God and you and I

have covered with writing

turns now, overhead, in strange hands.

We feel the sweep of it like a wind.

We see the brightness of a new page

Where everything yet can happen.

Unmoved by us, the fates take its measure

And look at one another, saying nothing.

Ranier Maria Rilke---Book of Hours

          What did you resolve for this year?  Lose some weight?  Exercise?  Take on that project that has lain dormant? 

          I read this Rilke poem every New Year because it holds that tension between our enthusiasm of starting new with the realism of knowing that there are so many forces beyond our control.  I want to finish a book I have been working on for at least six years. I want my children to flourish and avoid all the mistakes I made at their age.  I want to believe that my country can live up to its dream of being that city shining on the hill.  I want the Church to be the Church. And I want less nonsense from our leaders and more true vision that leads to improving the common good. I want to recapture that great hope I had eight years ago when Barack Obama promised “Change you can believe in.”

          Yet there are the last lines of the poem: “the fates take its measure.”  We live amid forces beyond our control.  The recession; the falling of the Twin Towers; Katrina; the wounds that come because life is fragile and the world is complex.

          Our calling in this New Year—with all the confusion around a new President—is to hold the polarity of hope and fate and live into the tension.   Everything can happen because God is God and the Spirit still broods and always will brood over the earth.  This is not a time for despair or for playing it small. It’s “the brightness of a new page.”  I will not give up on hope simply because of an election. God is bigger than that.

But I will also not—or at least try not—to be so foolish to think that I or anyone knows what will happen today or tomorrow or the rest of 2017. The fates say nothing about the future.

This is a long way of saying my resolution for this year is to be more faithful.  To live this day for the Lord and believe there will be manna tomorrow.  God’s calling is too big for me or you to spend 365 days or even one day worrying about Donald Trump and the Congress.  We have to live this life today—because it’s the only day we have. We also have to know that out of our hands the fates take their measure and say nothing to us.  Things will happen in 2017 that don’t fit into our life plan. This is why we have faith. This is the wonder of being alive.

Happy New Year,

+Porter

Home A Different Way

                                                                         12-28-16

The days are getting longer.  Unnoticed by us the light is increasing day by day.  In this Christmastide let us reorient ourselves by turning towards the light.

Our Lord commanded us to be “wise as serpents but innocent as doves.”  No doubt we have gotten the serpents’ part down.  Our news is filled with a repetition of all that is wrong and all that we must fear. This is especially true on this day of the Feast of the Holy Innocents—the day King Herod ordered all the males under two to be rounded up and slaughtered.  Yes, it’s important to keep a healthy awareness of the ramifications of sin.

However, we live too much in the serpent land of skepticism and cynicism and need to move to the land of the doves—of innocence and wonder and hope.  Let’s remember that after the magi saw the child and stood in the light, “they went home a different way.” 

It’s too easy to despair or to make our world smaller out of fear.  If we lock our doors and close our lives, we will never get to the place of the new birth that is also a new beginning for everyone. Christ is born in all people—and all means all. Everyone goes home a different way because the world is finally turned rightside up.  God is distant from us but in this world—closer than our own breath. 

Regardless of the news, we are called to base our hope and our lives on the conviction that the Word has become flesh in us—in this world—closer than our own breath.  The pilgrimage we must make is not to Assisi or Iona, but to the holiness in each of us regardless of how scary the headlines are or how unworthy we may feel.  That means we all get to start over—Roy Cooper and Pat McCrory/ Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  The new birth isn’t about an event two thousand years ago but is happening now.  It’s the wonderful part about being born in a stable---there are no doors. It’s open season for grace and it’s free.

The world has always been filled with darkness and light. However, we become what we attend to. In Jesus’ days, it would have been the smart thing to pay attention to the decrees from Herod—to hunker down and play it safe.  But the Lord calls us to follow the light; to find the Christ, and to take a new way to a home that is bigger than we are comfortable with.  Because this new birth is too big for definitions of Left/Right. The Word has become flesh everywhere in everyone. We are all invited to take a different road.

In this bleak midwinter, let’s do more than look to the stars. Let us let the light inside us, so that through us God might make the world new.

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Untie the Boat from the Dock

Last Saturday I went to the ordination of J. Clarkson and Nathan Bourne to the sacred order of deacons.  They both vowed to “look for Christ in all others” and to make Christ’s “redemptive love known by [their] word and example to those among whom [they] live, and work, and worship.”  As deacons, they are sent into the world to serve all persons so that their lives are a witness to the reconciling love of the Lord.

Two days before this, the North Carolina Legislature moved in the opposite direction.  Their work was not reconciling but divisive; not community building but widening existing separations; and not redemptive but reductive.  Without dialogue, without consideration, without public input, they stripped the new Governor of much of his authority because he is a Democrat and they are Republicans and because Democrats decades ago had done something similar.  That is not leadership and it does little for the common good. At some point, someone must stop the cycle of recriminations and lead.

Nothing positive can be built from negativity.  Sunday morning I was listening to Krista Tippet on the way to church. She was interviewing two Buddhist teachers and they said, “Sometimes we are rowing harder and harder but never untie the boat from the dock.”

It is time for us—our state legislature; our Congress; and we the people—time to untie the rope that keeps us stuck in the never-ending rock throwing and leave the dock to head towards the New Jerusalem. It doesn’t mean we paste over our differences, nor do we silence our criticism when we hear our leaders fail to lead.  Of course in a country like ours, there will be many points of view.

But it does mean we embrace our baptismal vows to build up the body and act accordingly.  At some point, it doesn’t matter if we are smarter or wiser or holier than Donald Trump or the North Carolina legislators.  What matters is that we are agents of God’s reign of justice peace and mercy here and now.  It’s a waste of time to spend the next four years railing against the President. I have been there in the past with previous Presidents, and it wasn’t good for my soul and didn’t change anything.

My hope comes from watching the television program Full Frontal this week and seeing Samantha Bee and Glenn Beck make peace with each other simply because their hope for this country is deeper than their differences.  The kind of work we all must do is this: get out of our silos of self-righteousness and find others who want a future big enough for everyone to flourish and then reach across the divide.

I pray for our leaders every day—especially for Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan—I am praying that they flourish as children of God. More than that, I am also praying for myself---praying that I can see the face of Jesus in them.

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Lighting Up One Small Corner of the World

12-14-16

When I was a child, on a Saturday before Christmas my father would get a tall ladder and stand precariously to string lights above our front door. He would always tell us that this was the year that our house would win the “Best Christmas Lights Award.”  Somehow, I hoped that would happen even though there really wasn’t an award and we would never have won anyway. I could look across the street and tell the competition was steep.

In my teenage years, I stopped thinking about the Lights Award because I was more interested spending time with my girlfriend during the holidays.

It’s been a long time since I strung up Christmas lights with my children looking on.  Yet yesterday I found myself winding strings of colored lights on a lone holly tree in our front yard.  We live on four and half acres so it’s unlikely any award committee is driving down our street and even if they were, my decorations were hardly a work of art.  My only hope is that my grandchildren might approve.

At a point, standing in the early evening, I wondered why I do this year after year.  Perhaps I want to believe that amidst so much confusion and so much loss of direction and cohesion in this country and this world, maybe it’s worth investing in lighting what we can where we are.

I confess I need a Sabbath from the election aftermath, but it’s not enough to watch reruns of Grantchester. One of the quotations I carry in my head is from the Russian novelist, Dostoevsky: “Beauty can change the world.”  When the world around us becomes more and more disordered, we must maintain a glimpse of a different realm.  We must recapture a vision. I have spent more and more time reading novels since November 8 because I need an alternate narrative.

However, that’s not enough. I need to do something to incarnate that narrative in this world even if it’s only colored lights on a holly bush in the countryside of Western North Carolina. I’d like to think it might be an arrow that points to a different realm than what I see as the disorder in Washington, but even if it’s not, it helps me.  It lifts my heart to know there are lights in the darkness of my yard.

Maybe that’s a place to start at least for our sake if not the world’s sake.

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Turning Till We Turn Round Right

Monday morning I woke up and my world was spinning. I walked towards the bathroom but bumped into the wall.  I have had bouts of vertigo for five years. I never know when they will come or when they will leave. It’s like I go to bed and the next thing I know I am with Dorothy in the house that’s spinning round in the air.

While there are some things that help—the Epley maneuver; surprisingly a low dose of valium---most of why vertigo comes or goes remains a mystery. It happens and then it lets go. When it is with me, my life is very slow and contained. I listen to books on tape. I notice the amazing December weather outside my window. Most of all I remember how dependent I am on others and what an illusion it is to plan the future.

Today I am upright and my world is only slowly spinning.  Here’s what I remembered in these two days: the world is layered.  There’s the spin of the never-ending news cycle. Before Monday I was upset over President Elect Trump’s appointments, the losses of UNC’s basketball team, my inability to find the right presents for my children or wife, and so on. But there are deeper layers. Not being able to get out of bed reminds us of what is essential and what is not.

On our best days, it reminds us that most people across the globe can’t think about the news feed or what’s happening on twitter or Facebook or CNN. They are focusing on whether their loved ones have a bed or food or what they need in order to go beyond surviving in order at least to glimpse what it might mean to flourish.

It also reminds us that there is a deeper where we simply let go of our preoccupations and sit in the moment and let the world spin.  I have a medical understanding of vertigo, but in the moment it comes, all I understand is I am part of a wave that I can only ride. I have to surrender and once again say to God “Help.”  It’s a helpful corrective. 

During this time of Advent, we can’t make the world behave but we can embrace those times when we stop—either by choice or circumstances—and let the great world spin without our worry or our illusion of control.

+Porter

Moving up the Mountain 11-30-16

In the weeks since the election I have been engaged in two activities—reading about Donald Trump’s appointments and studying Dante’s Divine Comedy for a class I am teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary in February. Surprisingly reading Dante has enabled me to keep a creeping despair a safe distance away as I read the political news.  When I look at some of President Elect Trump’s appointments, I feel as if I am in that dark wood Dante confronted and, like him, the straight way seems lost. While I won’t say that the next four years look like hell, I will say that Dante offers me some much-needed advice for this time.

          So just a short Dante refresher. Because of political warfare and upheaval in his day, Dante was exiled from Florence, his birth city, when he was 37 and never returned. His imagined future was taken away. He had to make a home in exile and find a way not merely to rail against his political enemies, nor to define himself by his past, but to find a way to move from hell to heaven by write a poem that became a map for all men and women who feel lost to find the way once more.

          What I remembered in my study, is that to move from darkness to light requires a larger vision.  You can’t build anything lasting from negativity.  Dante’s love for Beatrice and her love for him pull him through his journey from hell through purgatory into heaven.  It’s not enough to fight against what we dislike because the negative energy will overcome and mislead us. We must remember what it is we stand for and move towards it regardless of what is around us—even when it feels like hell. As William Sloan Coffin said, “The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”  What is it we love and how can we move towards it?  What is the truth that is worth our life? Let’s remember that the Israelites in Babylon had to learn to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land because the song led them home.

It’s the light and not the dark that will guide us. The secret of moving up the holy mountain of Purgatory is not by fighting our enemies but by shedding the sins that bind us.  Thus, when the pilgrims come around a circle leading upward, an angel takes a sin off their foreheads and they float up the next level because they are lighter.  That’s a vision worth holding onto for these four years. What if by walking together and shedding what binds us, we found a path to become lighter instead of angrier or deeper in despair?  What if we remembered what is right and then took the steps we can take in that direction?  Because it’s not an either/or world. It’s a world that gets lost and forgets how to get found.  

Let’s remember the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” 

During this Advent, let us discard our desire to map the world of good and evil and instead change our gaze to look to the stars and then walk towards that distant light undaunted by the detours or obstacles in our way—even if we feel as if we are in exile. For we are looking for the birth of the one who will bring salvation and hope and God’s reign for all people. He is our hope and our faith—his love will pull us from a dark wood into heaven.

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Giving Thanks in a Confusing World

Tomorrow we gather to give thanks. It’s worth remembering that Thanksgiving became a national holiday because of a proclamation from President Lincoln in 1863 as our nation was divided and at war.  In Lincoln’s proclamation, he wrote: “I do therefore invite my fellow citizens …to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”

          Thanksgiving and communion are twins because to give thanks is to open up.  It’s why the section of Holy Communion when we receive the bread and wine are named “The Great Thanksgiving.”  As we remember God’s grace, our hearts expand because we remember that God is finally in charge.

          Yes, these are hard days for our country. Yes, there are huge divisions.  Unspeakable words have been spoken which tear at the very fabric of the Union. And yes, many have doubts about our elected leaders and our future as the United Sates being in any way united.

          But one fact remains. This is the time in which we live, and this is the day we have to give thanks all the Lord has done, is doing, and will do for us.  Like Lincoln, we give thanks for God; we turn away from our divisiveness and our anger and our recriminations; and we ask God to break once again into this world and make us new.

          The way forward in this time is to go deeper through our faith.  When we cannot talk our way through a deep divide, we must pray our way through.  If we cannot find connection with our brothers and sisters on the surface, we have to dig to get to the water table where we find a deeper union—a union that doesn’t gloss over our differences or merely wait until the power shifts again in a way that works for us.

          I realized I do not want to spend the next four years just being angry or outraged. I do not what to be upset with the Federal Government every day. I want to live my life and be an agent for change—both at the same time. The place to start is by giving thanks for this “one wild and precious life” God has given me to live.  From that place, I can be mindful of and responsive to what’s going on in our nation and the world, but not reactive and not allow it to overtake my connection with the Prince of Peace.

          On Thanksgiving, my family always makes Christmas wish lists. I don’t need any more sweaters, and I don’t need any more books (although I will ask for some anyway).  I need the peace of the Lord, and I intend to ask for it and live for it.

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The Truth of the Work Itself

Porter’s Weekly Reflection 11-16-16

I feel as if I am in this movie that switched plots in the middle and went from comedy to mayhem.  I want to leave but I can’t, and I can’t make the plot get back to what I want to see.

It feels as if we as a people must find the place between high emotion and indifference.  On the one hand the unfolding of the election has to play its way out, and we won’t know what it means until the unfolding is at least more clear if not complete. On the other, as citizens we are called to be concerned about the well-being of the Republic and have a civic duty to voice our concerns.

But the truth is we cannot make time go any faster, nor can we see the future with certainty before it comes.

So, two thoughts come to me from Thomas Merton.

First, in the midst of the 1960’s Merton wrote often about the wrongness of the Vietnam War and the injustice of limiting the rights of African Americans.  His friends begged him to leave his monastery and come protest in the South and in Washington, but he said he should stay in the monastery because, “There needs to be one sane person left.”

The second is a passage from a letter Merton wrote to a young man named James Forrest:

          “When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.  As you get used to this idea you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.  And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people.  The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real.  In the end, as you yourself mention in passing, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths.  If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the invincible disappointments….” (in Thomas Merton: The Hidden Ground of Love, pp. 294-297)

It’s not that we ignore what is going on in our country nor that we acquiesce to everything the President Elect decides.  This is not a call for passivity but for perspective. 

What is the truth that Christ is calling us to serve and how are we doing that by our thoughts and actions in this moment?  Are we demonstrating a counter balance to the unfairness, prejudice, bigotry, selfishness, and violence we see in our country by our daily actions and our thoughts/emotions?  To borrow from Gandhi, are we the change we hope to see in the world?

It’s a waste of time to rail against Donald Trump or any other loud voice in a loud voice.  It doesn’t mean we need to roll over, but it does mean as Christians we are called to show what The Way looks like by who we are and what we do. We do need to speak in the public square but speak in a way that always invites all of us to conversion.  God is still working God’s purpose out.

In this transition, let’s focus on serving Christ’s truth in how we act, in what we say, and in our confidence that God is still in control.   Let’s make sure that there is at least one sane person left.

During this space in which the future seems less clear than in the past, let us concentrate on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself  and remember that the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

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The Day After 11/9/16

Last night was a night of surprises and I have to say for me unwelcome surprises. I was watching the PBS Newshour and saw David Brooks get quieter and quieter as the electoral map turned more and more red. I was saying to myself, “How? and Why and What Now?”   I woke this morning with only two useful reactions.

First is about our response to moments of confusion and upheaval.  We want a narrative that explains it and makes it bearable, but sometimes there is only the moment itself.  We have to live into the mystery—be it sweet our unsweet. Last weekend I spoke at the Diocese of Louisiana Convention on the gifts of recovery. I said, “All we have is our faith. All we have is God’s promise. All we have is the love of the Lord which is in our hearts, but because we have that---we know there will be resurrection--not because of us—but because God’s love is stronger than death.”

I mean we don’t choose when we are born nor what circumstances we have to confront. We have “one wild and precious life” to live and we have to live it regardless of what happens around us. It’s not whether we like or dislike what happens; it’s how we live after the event.

There is a Zen saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."  Yes, we do have to be realistic about the changes this election will bring. But this is the day the Lord has made. If we do not rejoice and be glad in it, then when will we?

This doesn’t mean we don’t speak out about the issues of the day nor that we should pretend the results of the election don’t matter. They do. But our calling is to live faithfully and to be agents of God’s will and work here and now. Our life is too short for despair or denial. Instead let us go deeper and ask God, “What is it that we are called to do now given what has happened?” Then we must do it. 

As Christians we are called to speak the truth in love and to remember what binds us instead of what divides us. In the midst of arguments my mother would say, “I guess we all are saying the same thing,” even though we were not. We need to be honest about our stark differences, but then we need to go deeper and get to the water table where we rediscover our common humanity.

My prayer for Mr. Trump is that he realizes he is elected to be the President for the United States—all the citizens of those states. Our part is to pray for President-Elect Trump’s ability to govern for the well-being of all the citizens and to seek to find ways to be agents of reconciliation and “to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being” (BCP, 305).

The election is over. Today let us chop wood and carry water.

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The Power of Story

          My wife, Jo, and I spent three weeks at the beach.  We had planned on a month but then hurricane Matthew came and changed our plans.  After the storm, we walked on the beach, ate lots of seafood, saw some old friends and read.  We read a lot.  I want to recommend some novels to you, but first tell you why it’s important to have these stories inside us.

          The poet Elizabeth Sewell once wrote: “We feel after our fate in the lines of other lives, and for this learning it matters little whether those figures be real, as we say, or imagined, so long as they live.”  She means we come to see our own story most clearly through other’s lives.  Stories provide what T.S. Eliot called an “objective correlative.”  Because we literally cannot see ourselves, we look at others and have a moment of recognition.  It’s not so much that we are interested in Hester Prynne or Ahab or Holden Caulfield; it’s that by knowing their lives, we discover our own.

          It’s why Jesus answered questions with a story.  There’s no other way to talk about the kingdom of heaven or anything else that has depth. When we meet someone, the way we know them is by sharing our story with theirs.

This process of discovery is continuous.  Sometimes I have to live into a book.  You can’t understand King Lear until you have suffered great loss. It doesn’t make sense at sixteen but makes all kinds of sense at sixty.

          I would also assert that part of what ails our country today is that we are losing a cohesive story.  As a result, our politicians offer competing stories about what matters for our nation and what threats it but mostly their stories are too small and confined to why we shouldn’t vote for their opponent. They don’t point a story large enough for everyone.  Without a common story or a common narrative, it’s hard to have conversation, and we find ourselves back at the Tower of Babel.

          I don’t say that if everyone read novels we’d have heaven on earth, but I do say that the lack of a corporate imagination hinders our common life and our ability to find communion.   Dostoyevsky claimed, “Beauty can change the world” because he knew that art offers a vision, a new way of seeing, a hidden world of possibilities, as well as connecting us to our hearts.  Truthfully the world made a whole lot more sense to me reading novels at the beach instead of watching CNN much less the debates.

          My retirement vows are to exercise, to pay more attention to my family, to write, and to read novels---real novels: the kind that make you laugh and weep and wonder.  Here some that I’ve read mostly at the beach and would recommend. Now that I have time to read, I intend to offer book recommendations periodically.  Happy reading.

+Porter

Foregiveness4You— Ann Bauer

          A novel about an ex-priest who is recruited to begin a for profit enterprise to offer absolution to non-church people. An easy read but very funny and for church folks thought provoking.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven         Chris Cleave

          One of the most beautiful novels I have read. In World War II a British man and a woman fall in love in London only to be separated by the war. The novel switches between his war experience and her activity the war torn city.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos           Dominic Smith

          And amazing book about a painting from the 17th century and how a contemporary art dealer handles a forgery. The novel is told in three time periods. You learn a lot about forgery and the art world but more importantly about creativity and the bonds that hold us together.

The Guineveres      Sarah Domet

This is Ms. Domet’s first novel but what a start. It’s about four girls named Guinevere in a strict convent school and how they survive.  It’s funny and seems lightweight but has a cumulative power to it. Plus, it’s fun to read.

The Far Away Nearby        Rebecca Solnit

          A book long essay about her mother especially after her mother’s Alzheimer.  The book’s central focus is on the redemptive power of storytelling and how our sense of the past changes.  Beautifully written.

Halloween

    As a child my favorite holiday was Halloween. Yes, it was about the candy. My sister and brother and I would carry pillow cases from door to door in our neighborhood and then gather in the living room and compare our bounty. It was more than candy, however.  Although as a child I could not have articulated this, for a night we got to act out our dreams. We put on our fears and hopes and fantasies and knocked on our neighbors’ doors to see how they would react. “Trick or Treat?” “No or Yes?” “War or Peace?” “Division or Community?” 
    Halloween in many ways is both a test of and an invitation to community. Can we go to strangers’ houses to see if they will welcome the stranger who looks scary? When you open your door and see someone surprising, can you see beyond the mask and offer a token of peace? Can we get our fears and our hopes in front of us so we can see them, and recognize them as our own and then recognize them as part the wider neighborhood and as part of us? Can we share what we have with one another?
    Decades ago Jo and our son and I spent a year in Portugal. One of the common observations from Portuguese who had been in America was the absence of a common green in the USA. “You stay in your boxes instead of coming to a square where you can walk and talk” they’d say. Of course, in 1984 Portugal was a very homogeneous culture. Making community here is more complex. However, as Christians who celebrate Holy Communion as the core of who we are, our calling is to call a society who is afraid to come out of their boxes to open our doors to our hopes and fears; to face the stranger who looks at least different if not scary; and to give them a token of friendship.
    Even if we don’t go Trick or Treating next week, let us observe Halloween by opening our doors and our lives to those who look like our hopes and fears. Then they will take off their masks and All Hollow’s Eve becomes All Saints Day and we see the face of the Lord.
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Serenity

    The poet W. H. Auden labelled the 20th Century “the Age of Anxiety.”  There was fear from the Cold War, the lingering memory of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the turmoil of revolutions in countries like Russia and China.  We, of course, have gone beyond anxiety and live in a time of terror.  It wasn’t so long ago that our government measured the degree of terror with colors---like a cultural barometer.
    I think of this because I am speaking at the Diocese of Louisiana Convention on addiction and sobriety on November 4-5 three days before the election.
It came to me that in God’s economy, focusing on sobriety in its deepest sense is the only way to prepare for the turmoil and aftermath of the election. We all know the first part of the serenity prayer, but what about the rest?  Written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, here’s the prayer in its entirety:
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed; the courage to change the things which can be changed; and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time. Enjoying one moment at a time. Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that You will make all things right, if I surrender to Your will. So that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next.”
So much of our anxiety comes from our lack of control and from our projection of our fears onto others.  The voices of “What if” are a drumbeat in our heads. Our anxiety over the future keeps us from being present in the only moment we have, which is now. Serenity comes from enjoying one moment at a time and acknowledging that inner growth and communal growth always involves suffering. There is no way to resurrection except through the cross.  
For me, my need for the future to work out as I think it should is what must be crucified if I am to be free to discover Christ in the openness of the present moment. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” This is the day regardless of who gets elected because this is the only day we have to be alive and experience God’s grace.
I watch the news and hear of events like the burning of a Republican headquarters building in Hillsboro, NC or crowds chanting “Lock her up” and I yearn for serenity to come to our nation. Perhaps serenity is less an idea people can learn and more an example they can emulate.  Perhaps our calling as faithful followers of the crucified one is to show the world what serenity or faithfulness looks like.  Perhaps now is the time for us to be living examples of the blessing we hear week after week: “The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the love of God and of God’s son Jesus Christ our Lord.”  
If we aren’t agents of serenity, who will be?
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Having Less Can Show You More

Tuesday of last week my wife Jo and I headed for Pawley’s Island. Our plan was to spend a month at the beach to recalibrate.  I packed four novels and a jigsaw puzzle. My plan was to walk on the beach in the morning and rock on the porch and read in the afternoon. We got to Columbia and stopped for lunch. The woman at the next table overhearing our plans, leaned over and said, “The Governor’s going to announce an evacuation for the whole coast this afternoon.” So we turned around and drove home.
By Sunday I was itching to get out of town.  The sun was out; Hurricane Matthew had passed. “How bad can it be?” I asked. We found out. There was no electricity from Andrews, SC to Pawley’s Island.  No traffic lights working.  There was no power at our house on the mainland. We boiled water on the grill. Publix was open so we got takeout from the deli for lunch and supper.  We lit candles.
Life became slower but deeper.
First, the days are so much longer without distractions.  Darkness fell at 7:00. For a while we read with flashlights, but I kept looking at my watch asking myself if I could go to sleep at 8:30.  We cleaned the yard; we walked on the beach; we scrounged for sources of light and ways to cook.  I worried about finding ice to keep the food from spoiling and batteries for flashlights.  On Tuesday morning I said to myself, “This isn’t how I would have chosen to slow down, but it’s effective.”
Second, as the poet says “Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things.”  Everyone lost power. In a sea of scarcity instead of fearing one another, people reached out as fellow citizens. The local church invited everyone to come for a spaghetti supper and recharge their cell phones.  A local volunteer fireman told Jo and me we could come get ice for our coolers at the fire department.  A neighbor loaned us batteries for our radio.  There wasn’t pushing and shoving in the supermarket; there was some laughter and a lot of helpful advice—what gas station was open; where to get coffee; what store still had supplies.  No one cared about who was voting for whom.  We were merely human beings.
I came to the beach to think about the future but found that what matters is the present moment. Instead of figuring out the next year, I thought how we could have dinner without a stove or a refrigerator.  I remembered the goodness of the warmth of the sun and the sweetness of how people console one another in times of crisis and loss. As Jo and I cleaned the front yard from debris, people stopped and talked instead of getting on with their busy lives.
During this election season it’s too easy to despair over a loss of community. It’s too simplistic to think only of divisions and dissension  Let’s remember somewhere on the planet the power is always going out, and amid the difficulty people are rediscovering the goodness of having one another. My hope is that when the power returns, I’ll remember what matters in life and what doesn’t and that we as a nation will too.
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St. Francis

Yesterday, October 4, was the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.  To honor him my hope is that we do more than bless animals or put up a bird bath.  We in the USA are in sore need of Francis’ perspective. In an age of labels and division; in a time of a political split in our nation and in a time riddled with distrust, we need the near-sighted view of this saint.
In his wonderful book on St. Francis, G. K. Chesterton writes this, “Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. WE might say his mind had no background…. In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees.  He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man.”
Francis wasn’t interested in categories; he was fascinated by the person, animal, or thing in front of him because he was certain if he looked closely enough and if his heart and mind were pure, he would see the face of Jesus.
We are cursed by primarily seeing the forest.  Perhaps there is so much information that the only way we can survive is through labels or categories. It may be that the media gives us these labels and we adopt them without reflection. Who knows the cause?
We do know the effect, however.  We see what we expect to see and so did Francis. The difference is that Francis always expected to see the face of Jesus while too often we expect to see a label or a cause or a mirror of our own preoccupations.  May we celebrate this saint by cleansing our eyes.  Before our categorization machine starts, let us ask Francis to intercede for us and help us see the other not as a label, but as a child of God, a window to the holy, a representation of our Lord.  Instead of the forest, let’s look at the tree. If we do, then we and the world will be made new.

The World is Round

Twelve years ago I gave my first Convention Address as the 6th Bishop of WNC.  Because I had returned to Asheville after a thirty four year absence, I began with a quote from a book entitled A Handful of Blackberries.  In the story a young man returns home after a long time away. He was disappointed to be back where he started. Finally one of his friends asks, “Didn’t anyone tell you the world is round?”

Because the world is round, it means despite my departure as your active bishop, we will continue to be connected.  Being your bishop has been the greatest privilege of my life. I have had the opportunity to ordain, confirm, receive, reaffirm, and bless. I have been honored to represent you in many places and venues—from Canterbury to Taiwan.  Most of all I have been honored to lead the diocese for this dozen years and to work with committees, boards, parishes, and faithful people seeking to do the work of Christ in this world.

I am confident José McLoughlin will be a wonderful bishop and that the diocese will flourish. He has many gifts and brings a new perspective.  While I am sure that Oklahoma has its charms, there is nothing finer than to be in Carolina all the time. I am sure that you will do all you can to make this home for him and Laurel.

The world is also round because I am returning to where I started as a teacher. I will be teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary in the Spring of 2017 and have accepted a position at Wake Forest Divinity School beginning in the Fall of 2017.  Jo and I will have an apartment in Winston-Salem and will see what it’s like to commute for a while. I will also be able to return to being a Spiritual Director which I haven’t been able to do as an active bishop.

What will continue is my writing and speaking.  I now have a website---www.portertaylor.com--which is amazing for such an untechnological person. I will post weekly reflections on it (and you can sign up there at “Contact” to receive them weekly) and on Facebook (I am happy to friend everyone) or email me and I’ll make sure it happens: portertaylor80@gmail.com.  However, I won’t be doing any Church work in the diocese until at least next fall nor give any advice or commentary about the diocese. I am glad to talk about novels and spirituality and my grandchildren. This will be good for me and good for the diocese.

Because the world is round, I’d like to leave you with what I said in that first address. I quoted from Ron Rolheiser’s book The Holy Longing where he lists four non-negotiable essentials for the Christian life: 1. Prayer; 2. Social Justice; 3. Community; 4. Tender Hearts.  We have to have a journey inward, a journey outward, and a journey together, but none of those make any difference if we have a frozen heart.  My fervent hope for this diocese as well as the wider Church is that we hold onto these essentials—especially the last.  In a world increasingly contentious and divided, only those with tender hearts can answer our calling to be repairers of the breech.

God bless you and God be with you.

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What Are Our Expectations?

I was driving to work Monday and saw a sign that almost made me run off the road.  I live in Fairview and there are no bumper stickers that say “Keep Fairview Weird” as in Asheville, and yet even for our bucolic mindset, the sign was indeed weird. The local church, housed in metal butler building, posted a sign that read “Holy Ghost Fire Falling Revival: Expect a Miracle.”

This shook my Book of Common Prayer sensibilities and made me wonder—“What is it we expect when we come to our parishes?”  Probably we expect to be challenged or at least somewhat enlightened by the sermon.  Certainly I hope to be renewed by the sacraments, inspired by the liturgy, moved by the prayers, connected by the music, restored by the fellowship, lightened by the absolution, restored by the blessing and so on. I hope to experience the communion of saints both alive and in God’s greater glory.  I mean I am not cynical about what occurs in Episcopal parishes during worship.

But I don’t expect the Holy Ghost to bring fire falling from the heavens, and I honestly don’t go expecting a miracle. Yet I wonder why not?

I wonder if our heritage from the enlightenment and from living in this scientific, rationalistic, and yes cynical age has lessened our expectations of what God can, is and will do in us and through us and among us.  Do we expect a miracle in Syria? Or with the refugees coming to Europe? Or with the drug cartels in Central and South America? Or with the political climate in our country and in North Carolina? Do we expect the Holy Spirit’s fire to fall from the sky and make us new?

I honestly am not going to go to the revival on Emma’s Grove Rd.  But when I go to Church Sunday, I am hoping for some fire inside of me and I am hoping to experience God making all things new and I am hoping that’s what you will hope for too.

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Do Not Despair

I read a fascinating article in The Economist this week on the prevalence of pessimism.  71% of people in Great Briton think the world is getting worse; only 5% think it’s getting better.  Although the global poverty has fallen by half in the past 20 years, only 5% of Americans believe this is true.  The writers attribute much of this pessimism to the fact that we as humans don’t rely on data for our perceptions, we rely on examples for our sense of what’s going on.  As the article states: “Famines, Earthquakes and Beheadings” all make gripping headlines.  “40 Million Planes Landed Safely Last Year” does not.

This negativity matters for many reasons, but chief among them is that it is hard to be charitable, generous, or self-sacrificing when we are afraid.  Our first responses in fear are fight or flight, yet the Gospel of our Lord always calls us to the third way of engagement.  

Engagement calls us to get beyond our fears and anxieties to see what is actually happening on the ground, in our cities, and to gain accurate information about the condition of all God’s people across the globe.  For example, the article points out that “In 1820, 94% of humanity subsisted on less than $2 a day in modern money. That fell to 37% in 1990 and less than 10% in 2015.”  And there are advances in medicine, clean water, a decline in the caste system in India and so on.  Despite the headlines, “the average European is ten times more likely to die by falling down the stairs than to be killed by a terrorist.”

Yes, we have enormous problems and serious issues to deal both in the USA and worldwide.  But let us remember that despair is a sin. We as Christians believe in God who has promised to make the world right. Although we may forget that this movement is happening, it is among us despite the headlines.  Therefore, we are to be people of hope and know the goodness of the Lord. Then we can be part of God’s movement to make the world right.

As the sweet poet George Herbert wrote, “Away Distrust—My God hath promised and He is just.”

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Election Year

Monday evening I was blessed to attend the opening of Nuevo Amanecer, a conference sponsored by the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America for increasing and enhancing Latino and Hispanic ministry.  There were over 450 people in attendance. We sang and prayed and received the Eucharist and felt God’s blessing. The theme of the conference was Together We Grow/ Unidos Crecemos.  I am particularly grateful to the Rev. Anthony Guillén, the missioner for Latino/Hispanic Ministry for the Episcopal Church for his vision and work and to the Rev. Hilario Cisneros and the Rev. Miguel Alvarez for their work in our diocese.

As I stood among this celebratory throng Monday evening, I thought to myself, “This is our country at its best. This is what we must walk towards.”  “Together we grow” sounds a lot like “United States.”  During this election it’s tempting to give into a kind of cynicism about the state of our country much less the world.  We are reminded daily that many of our political leaders will not work with each other and we hear a drumbeat from those running for office about what’s wrong with our nation and how terrible their opponents are.

However, this is the day the Lord has made and this is our “one wild and precious life.”  In the Eucharistic prayer we are called to “lift our hearts up to the Lord” which means to set our sights on the New Jerusalem—God’s city where all God’s children live in peace and harmony. As we do that, we discover that we experience that heavenly destination here and now if we look for it. As the saints say, “All the way to heaven is heaven and all the way to hell is hell.”  We find what we are looking for.

Let us do our civic duty. Let us participate in the election process and keep abreast of the news, but let us also be agents of the Good News by remembering “Together we grow/ Unidos Crecemos.”

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I am very happy to announce that I have accepted a position as Visiting Professor of Episcopal Studies at The Wake Forest University School of Divinity beginning in the fall of 2017.  In the spring of 2017 I will be teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary.  I am grateful for these opportunities.

Life's Distractions

Amid all the noise around us, it’s easy to forget what matters.  There’s the constant wrangle of our politicians; the constant buzz of social media; and the relentless barrage of advertisements in our consumer culture.  But then something happens and we remember: the floods in Louisiana; the fires in California and most recently the earthquake in Italy.

In one of her short stories, Flannery O’Connor wrote about an elderly hard headed woman, “She’d been a good woman if there’d been someone to shoot her all the time.”  O’Connor meant if the world would shake us out of our constant distraction or self-absorption, then we’d remember what’s important and what isn’t.

Next month I turn 66, and as a result I have begun to think about the time I have left in this life.  One of my many commitments in retirement is to avoid as much distraction as I can and to focus on real joy and real pain and real beauty and real issues because the truth is we have no idea when a flood or fire or earthquake or car wreck or anything can happen.

Of course, this isn’t just a retirement issue; it’s an issue about being fully human.  We live in an age of distraction, but we have the power to disregard the constant stream of trivia and focus on what lasts.

Pray for the people in Louisiana, California, and Italy. Go on the web to the Episcopal Relief and Development website and send some of your funds to help your brothers and sisters in these places. Most of all, pay attention to the hurts and hopes close to you and far away, and decrease your attention to the noise that cannot feed our souls. Our lives are short and God offers us too much goodness, beauty and love as well as tragedy, heartache and pain for us not to be aware.

This is the day the Lord has made. Let us be alive in it.

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