AFTER THE DARK NIGHT: HOW I PRAY THESE DAYS

Why should you care how I pray? What does my inner subjectivity have to do with yours? Certainly not that my inner subjectivity is anything to emulate. I am not an example in the sense of doing it right. But I might be an example of something larger than myself. I might be a particular expression of a whole – a whole of which we are both parts – so that each of our inner subjectivities has enough in common we can learn from each other. I do not mean that you should pray the way I pray. Not at all. But the spiritual and cultural influences that shape my prayer might touch you too in some way.

Since college days I wanted to “be spiritual.” I was spiritually competitive. I wanted to be the most spiritual person in the room. If you had done a 3-day Ignatian retreat, I had done an 8-day; if you had done an 8-day, I had done the 19^th Annotation. I had more degrees and certificates in spirituality than most anyone I knew because I took care not to know the people who were better credentialed than I was. In addition to Shalem and all the Christian hot spots, I had been to Esalen, Omega, Kagyu Samten Choling in New Hampshire and Karma Dzong in Colorado. I had studied vipassana with Larry Rosenberg in Cambridge and shamata with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder. Does this sound like Paul recounting his mystical flights and missionary ordeals (I was a Marine for Jesus) in 2^nd Corinthians? Do you think there may have been something not quite right in my spiritual quest?

I don’t for a minute regret my prayer and meditation practices from those days. Some of them are still with me, but they are no longer the staple of my spiritual diet. These days my prayer is pretty simple. Any child can do it. I pray for people. What might that be about?

Relationships have become precious to me. It may be the loss of relationships that teaches their value. No longer having parents in this world, no longer having siblings, makes it a different place. Being an empty nester changes the home. That sounds sad; and it is sad, but also poignant. I value my marriage more. I value my ties across the miles to my children and their families.

When I was a parish priest, relationships were close and personal – especially since I stayed in the same church for 14 years and the same small city for 18. I don’t have that now. But I do know people around Nevada, and I value them more than I would have once. Driving hours and hours through miles of arid loneliness makes me look at people differently when I arrive.

So I pray differently. After the basic daily office intro including some praise, thanksgiving, and the Our Father, I pray for my ancestors, for my family, and for a list of people who are in some sort of need (for Lucy’s metabolism, Karen’s cancer, Robin’s heart). I pray for those individuals purely hoping to open a channel of grace.

I pray for the Church, especially the Episcopal Church and our PB Katharine. I pray for Joseph and the Diocese of Machakos, for Alex and the Diocese of Santiago; and then for this Diocese of Nevada, for the Standing Committee, the staff, for particular parishes and clergy who are in the midst of troubles or on the threshold of opportunities.

What is going on here? I would be quite happy to have mystical experiences again. I would like to be a tranquil, serene, soulful person both for the intrinsic value of equanimity (like lower blood pressure) as well as the status of having people say, “he’s so spiritual.” But to tell the truth, I am not nearly as interested in myself as I once was. St. Augustine said, “I have become a great problem to myself.” That was my experience. Life is better now because I am no longer my own production. I am no longer a homework assignment to be turned in for a grade. The people with whom I am in relationship matter to me -- not my ego credentials.

My prayer parallels my work. Over the years I have taken on causes. I still have causes today. “A life without a cause is a life without an effect.” But through community organizing, I have come to value the relational network of public friends even more than the causes. The danger with the causes is that it is so easy invest one’s ego in them. Then we wind up using people to further our ego-infested causes. Friendships don’t make us proud. They make us human.

I am describing a shift from private heroic spirituality to relational spirituality. I don’t claim to be good at it. I wouldn’t last long in an intentional community. I tried once. Too tight for me. But whether I’m any good at it or not isn’t the point. The point is that I appreciate these people I pray for. I value them and my life is better because they are in it.

Maybe it’s just me. But maybe it isn’t. The best theology I am reading these days is relational theology. Roberto Goizueta’s book, Caminemos Con Jesus is subtitled "A Theology of Accompaniment." Marcus Borg can be summarized, “It’ about the relationships.” Same thing might be said of St. Paul.

Community organizing is on the rise as a means of both missional engagement and congregational development. Parker Palmer’s Circles of Trust model is teaching us how to create safe places in which genuinely human encounters are possible. Maybe it isn’t just me. Maybe it’s us -- us at this point in our human story.

Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone is about the decline of community in our culture. Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort is about the division of communities into little clusters of like-minded people, what Robert Bellah calls “special interest enclaves.” No wonder we listen to Garrison Keillor’s stories of Lake Woebegone with a kind of longing. We miss human community and it isn’t just nostalgia. Human community is an incarnate expression of the unity and diversity of God, of Reality itself, represented theologically by the Trinity. To fracture into a society of scattered individuals is to lose touch with our authentic human nature, the nature of God, and the imago dei.

So for me prayer these days is about connection. It’s about caring for the well being of my “poor earthbound companions and fellow mortals.” It’s nothing to write home about. But my longing for human bonds of affection is laced with hope.

Epiphany In Pahrump: A Glimpse Of The Future Church?

Worship was in fine form at St. Martin’s in the Desert, Pahrump, Nevada this Epiphany morning. For those who don’t know, Pahrump is a desert town situated between Las Vegas and Death Valley. Surprisingly it boasts at least one winery. I heard there was a second but have not seen it.

A lovely crèche was in the front of the nave. Three children processed bearing figures of kings and camels to complete the Nativity scene. The big deal about today’s service is that we received 9 new Episcopalians – all adults. To put this in context, that means we received as new members about 20% of those present.

Today’s vestry meeting was taken up mostly by discussion of community social ministries – a report on the monthly Teen Night hosted for community teens by St. Martin’s, the Stand For Children program hosted by St. Martin’s, the collection of school supplies for low income students, a $1,000 gift to Meals on Wheels because there is a waiting list of senior citizens needing that service. Most of St. Martin’s energy and attention is pointed outward.

We did go over the proposed budget, which will be presented to the annual meeting. It included the assessment paid to the Diocese plus a substantial additional contribution to support Ministry Development around the Diocese. The vestry expressed gratitude for the training the Diocese has provided them in the past. They want to support our effort to offer programs to other congregations. They want more training themselves, but mostly they see their contribution as “paying back” or “paying forward” for what they have been given. It’s sort of like the Eucharist – a giving back and receiving again.

The proposed parish budget for this year is a deficit budget, but the vestry wasn’t too worried about that. They adopted a deficit budget last year and wound up with a surplus. So they are hopeful.

But the St. Martin’s vestry was concerned that other congregations in Nevada may be struggling financially. They had heard about this in table conversations at Convention. They wanted to know if they should send support to struggling congregations out of their deficit budget. I assured them that the Diocese would take care of that and they had done their part by paying in their assessment.

St. Martin’s has a generous line item in their budget for outreach. They have another line item to support the operating budget of Camp Galilee (our diocesan camp & conference center). That line item does not include the money they send to Galilee out of their education budget to pay the expenses of sending children from Pahrump to camp. Some of these children are members of St. Martin’s. Some are just kids in town who need a week of camp at Tahoe.

There was talk about the upcoming MLK Breakfast where St. Martin’s has sponsored a table and Rev. Julie will give the invocation. They will do another project later in the year for the Bishop’s Big Hairy Audacious Goal, probably a Stand For Children event.

The vestry did not discuss The Knitting Nancys of St. Martin’s. But we did talk about them over the coffee hour. They had been featured in the national newsletter of The Seaman’s Institute for the sheer volume of gifts they produce for people who need them. None of this even mentions the prayer and study being done by St. Martin’s members of The Episcopal Community.

Oh bricks and mortar issues. There was a bogus rumor last year that our church in Tonopah was up for sale. So St. Martin’s members expressed some anxiety during the coffee hour for the well-being of our congregation in Tonopah. I wish there were not rumors that the Diocese is closing small churches. But I like it that one small church cares about another.

Being a bishop, I did my best to find fault with them. So I challenged the vestry on the budget to provide continuing education funds for their priest.

“Covered,” they said, “it’s under ‘training’.”

 “What about her costs of attending clergy conference?” I shot back.

“It’s under ‘business travel’,” they replied.

“And her Convention costs?” (I was scrambling.)

“We pay full fare for both clergy and lay delegates,” they said.

“How about a Basic Discipleship class?” I asked.

“Done and dusted,” they said.

 “How about following that up with a Gifts Discernment Workshop?” I countered.

“Calling you this week to schedule it. And by the way how are you coming on another Lenten mission discernment program as a sequel to the one we did last Lent?” they replied.

I was defeated. So I gave up and went home.

The Congregational Life Office of The Episcopal Church featured St. Martin’s in the Desert in a documentary film last year as an example of a congregation that is growing and flourishing because they are connected to their community. When they gather to sing and pray, they have a tangible sense of mission. Their mission field is right there in Nye County.

Having failed to nail St. Martin’s for any failures, I was left with nothing to say this morning but to commend them for actually acting like Christians.

Guns In America: The Spiritual Opportunity For Grace

The best way to invest the wave of mass murders we have experienced in recent years would be to repent from social violence. Reasonable regulation of firearms would be the most obvious pragmatic way to back off from our compulsive habit of violence. But gun reform is at once a far, far cry from enough on the one hand, and extraordinarily hard to achieve on the other. I have not read America & Its Guns: A Theological Expose by Jim Atwood and my theological hero Walter Brueggemann. I’ve only read Rick Barber’s review at http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=10140; but I have just ordered the book and plan to read it soon. If we are going to think and act with wisdom we need to engage violence theologically. Isn’t that what the Cross compels us to do?

At this initial stage, I am wondering if the very difficulty in even discussing guns rationally might be a point of entry into the theological challenge we must confront if we are going to take repentance deep enough to respond to all the bloodshed – not just Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Gabby Gifford shooting; the Colorado Theater Massacre, and Sandy Hook Elementary – but all the the one at a time killings and the 181 school shootings in America since Columbine. A reform that makes such killings less frequent is not an adequate answer. But maybe that’s where we have to begin.

Let’s start with the anti-gun folks. There is something oddly self-defeating in our way of challenging gun violence. It is as if we are more concerned with expressing a feeling and maintaining a moral stance than we are about saving lives. As part of that puritanical separatist sentiment, we do not take into account the people on the other side. We imagine them all to be dumb and violent. That is simply not true. I know any number of kind, decent folks, progressive on all manner of social issues, but they are pretty attached to their guns. In ways -- perhaps the ways I will discuss momentarily -- they feel violated or fear being violated by those who would deprive them of their weaponry. That feeling may or may not be reasonable, but it is real, and if we want to change our society, we have to start with what’s real – reasonable or not. To disregard the concerns of the gun owners is itself a kind of violence.

One year my Diocese (not Nevada) devoted our Convention to gun violence. We passed a resolution forbidding Episcopalians from owning handguns and requiring all church members to hand over their guns to their priests. In Georgia! We lost a few members, but to my knowledge never collected a single handgun. What were we smoking?

Here’s what I mean by puritanical separatism: many Abolitionists opposed the Union war effort and all the political efforts of the 1840s and 50s to stop the spread of slavery. They were perfectly content to see the South go its own way. The Abolitionists would have abolished slavery in their nation without freeing a single slave. They would have accomplished nothing but to keep their own skirts clean. That is the kind of spirit among the anti-gun activists that will perpetuate the violence.

The pro-gun folks are decidedly voicing something deep within the American identity. One pro-gun comment I read this week said, “I am an American. I will not give up the gun in my purse.” Her gun was part and parcel of being an American in her mind. That takes some unpacking. But it must not be dismissed. She is onto something. America has 5% of the world’s population, but we own 50% of the world’s guns. We have lots of guns and we use them. The U S per capita rate of gun deaths is about 20 times the average of other developed nations. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/14/chart-the-u-s-has-far-more-gun-related-killings-than-any-other-developed-country/. No other developed nation has anything like our rate of gun deaths. Only Chile is even in the ballpark. To be fair, several undeveloped nations are worse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate. But the woman’s point is still fair. Owning and using lethal weapons is wired into our self-concept. I gather Atwood and Brueggemann help us understand how we came to identify with our guns.

For now, I think of a line from a song written by a Nevada singer-songwriter. “Something to do with my pride. Something to do with my fear.” Let’s start with fear. Americans are afraid. We are very afraid. Many people carrying guns are afraid of the other people carrying guns. No surprise. Our crime rate is high. So some of that fear just makes sense.

But I have personally observed that an extraordinary number of people who are not seriously at risk are just as afraid, often more afraid, than are the people who live and work in dangerous neighborhoods or have dangerous jobs. Maybe fear is contagious so we catch it from people who are afraid with good reason. But I am also intrigued by the argument of Lynn Serafinn in 7 Graces of Marketing. http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/tag/lynn-serafinn/. She says that marketing strategies for the past several decades have used fear (including fear of scarcity), sex, and a kind of debased humor to sell, sell, sell. Those who are bombarded with this kind of marketing at the rate we Americans are, by her reasoning, are bound to be afraid. If I know Walter Brueggemann, I suspect he’ll make the same connection. We are, in short, afraid. And we have placed our trust not in God or in each other, but in our own access to lethal force.

Speaking of the lethal weapons of his day, the Psalmist wrote: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses; but we trust in the name of the Lord.” (Ps 27). When Judah turned to the death dealing power of Egypt for defense, Isaiah said,

“Woe to them that go to Egypt for help, and trust in chariots and stay on horses for they are many; and in horsemen for they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel; nor do they seek the Lord. Because you have said ‘We have made a covenant with death, with Hades we have an agreement, . . . .’ I lay in Zion a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone . . . “ (Is. 28: 14-16)

Our level of fear, though understandable, says something about our faith. Our trust is not in the foundation stone, the tried stone, the precious cornerstone. Instead when we say the answer to “a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” we have made a “covenant with death.” We trust our ability to invoke the death of another to save us from death. “Something to do with our fear.” “

But also “something to do with (our) pride.”  What constitutes human worth? What makes a person a hero? How do we establish our status? Is it who we are, what we have, or something we can do? Culture defines the criteria of human worth. In our culture, if a person can amass great wealth, he or she is worthy. Second, best is the ability to kill people. There is an axis of value here. There is a horizontal axis of good versus bad plus a vertical axis as pride versus shame. On the good versus bad axis, it matters who we kill – good to kill Osama bin Laden (not the Christian view – I’m talking about the cultural value), bad to kill innocent children. But on the pride versus shame axis, the thing is to be able to kill – anybody, preferably a lot of people. The strong person may refrain from killing, especially if restraint justifies him or her on the good-bad axis; but the ability to kill is what counts. Unless we are physically very formidable or have terrific martial arts skills, the best way to be lethal is to pack heat.

Where do I get the idea that our capacity to kill is a measure of our worth? What makes us a “great nation?” It isn’t our education system, which we don’t fund. Neither is it the purity of our democracy, which we spend a fortune to corrupt. It’s our ability to inflict shock and awe – impose our will by force.

Who are our movie heroes if not the rugged individuals who can dispatch large numbers of people in just a few minutes of screen time?  The ability to kill carries cred. It gets respect. If we aren’t rich and we can’t kill, what good are we?

We have lost more people to gun deaths in the United States since 1968 than in all our wars. People in other developed nations, and even many undeveloped nations, think of us as “violent.” Why is that? “Something to do with our pride. Something to do with our fear.”

When puritanical separatism faces off against pride (more specifically its corollary of shame) and fear, there isn’t much space left in the room for reason. Reason would find the right tool for the right job. Because mass shootings account for a statistically insignificant percentage of total gun deaths, restricting the right to own semi-automatic weapons to law enforcement, the military, or others with some legitimate need to kill large numbers of people very fast will not actually have a major impact on the rate of gun deaths. But if we want to stop mass shootings, restricting the right to own semi-automatic weapons would save lives.

Requiring background checks to prevent criminals, terrorists, and dangerous mentally ill people from buying guns would not necessarily stop a random crazy person from getting a gun and committing mass murder. But it would reduce the number of individual gun deaths each year.

We don’t have to repeal the 2^nd amendment or ban all handguns to make a difference that would save lives. But it would take reasoned negotiations taking into account the concerns of both sides. The good thing about needing to come together is that in order to have reasoned negotiation; we must first engage the spiritual issues underlying our puritanical separatism, our pride, and our fear. What if in the course of discussing legislation there were actual conversions of heart? What if we turned to each other in God, found our worth in God’s eyes, entrusted our well-being to God? What if we actually beat our own weapons into plowshares, not because the other side forced us to do so, but because we as a culture redefined the measure of human worth in such a way that the ploughshare carried more respect than the weapon?

I am not saying we need a change of heart instead of a change of law. But we cannot achieve a change of law without some change of heart; and if that change of heart just kept going, it would achieve more than legislation ever could. It might achieve something worthy of the blood that has been spilled.