On the Changing Nature of War and War Memorials

For this post, I simply direct readers to a video of my talk at the Mill Valley Rotary Club last July.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1D4i3fJrC8

Sermon Washington, DC

Let me begin this morning by thanking our Pastor Ellen for inviting me to preach this morning and by thanking all of you for listening to me, not just a couple of months ago, but on the many occasions of my speaking from this pulpit and for all the support I have received from this congregation over - can you believe it? - the past 12 years now.

In the church calendar, we just celebrated Ascension Thursday and we look forward next week to celebrating Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit fifty days or seven weeks after the crucifixion of Jesus.  Next weekend we also will celebrate Memorial Day here in the US.

Today I am not going to say much about history, as I have a history of doing.  Instead I am going to begin with a couple of stories by way of introducing today's lesson.   The second of these stories will be about a rabbi whom I heard speak at the Washington Rotary Club just ten days ago.  His presentation was so good and it consisted of just two little stories, so I thought I'd do likewise.  Monkey see monkey do. 

So:  two stories, one about a rabbi, but first a story about a librarian and me.  I love odd conversations that take place with strangers in the course of a day.  They sometimes are an occasion for grace entering your life.  This is what our lesson for today is about:  an unexpected meeting between Jesus, a Pharisee and an unnamed woman, a truly graceful encounter.

I just returned from my 20-year reunion at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.  I had a great time there 20 years ago and a great time over the weekend.  I had numerous fun encounters there, with old friends, with professors, with the people who make espresso.  Cambridge is always exciting; When the weather is nice, Cambridge is also just a lot of fun.

One day, back then, twenty years ago, I was preparing to say a few words at an informal Easter Service for the Grad Christian Fellowship.  And I needed a Bible.

So I went over to the undergraduate library in Harvard Yard to get a Bible.  The undergraduate library, named after some New England worthy, no doubt, whose name I've forgotten, has open stacks. You can wander in, find your book and proceed to checkout.  So I found a Revised Standard Version and stopped at the desk to fill out the requisite paperwork - this was before computerized everything.  The slip of paper, in triplicate - remember? - called for my name, ID#, title of book and author.  OK.  Easy enough.  Name, ID, Title  . . . . Author. 

Hmmmm.

Title:  Bible, obviously.

Author:  Just to have fun, I wrote "GOD."

And placed the paper in front a Harvard college kid just to see what she would do with it.

She read it, looked at me to check for any obvious signs of mental disorder, then picked up a pencil and added to the word GOD a comma and two little words: "et al."

When we get an unexpected gift, we call it grace.  The title of today's sermon is The Heart of the Gospel and the heart of the Gospel is Grace, et al, as I will attempt to show.

Story # 2.  is about Rabbi Shmuel Hertzfeld, who calls himself a progressive orthodox rabbi.  He gave me the idea for a sermon titled the Heart of the Gospel.  Herztfeld means 'heartfield' by the way, but it was not his name that gave me the idea, it was the answer he gave to a question I asked after his talk at the Washington Rotary Club.  For that talk, he told just two stories, as I said and told them so well that he had some 100 Washington attorneys, lobbyists and other self-important people eating out of his hand.  But he did not talk about the Bible. 

This disappointed me because I love to hear rabbis talk Bible.  So when there was time for questions I raised my hand and asked him not to name his favorite line from scripture - that sounded a little too obvious, or something - so I asked, Rabbi, if you're having a bad day and you really need some inspiration, what lines from scripture do you read? 

I was hoping he would say well Rabbi Nachman of Tilsit recommends this passage and Rabbi Zusia from somewhere else recommends that, but I recommend something from Deuteronomy, Jeremiah. . . But he did not do that.  Instead, he said

"When I'm having a bad day, I don't read the Bible at all.  I go to visit the sick in the hospital.  I make myself of service and that makes me feel better."

For days afterward, I marveled at this lesson from Rabbi Shmuel of Washington, the progressive orthodox rabbi, who drives a 1994 Chevrolet station wagon with a menorah on top of it.

Yes, that is certainly true, I thought, performing acts of love and service is probably the best medicine there is; it's certainly very good.  Then, sometime over the next couple of days, the proverb popped into my head:

Those who love much are forgiven much. 

Yes, love much, perform acts of service and loving kindness and you and your friends and family will forget or forgive you for the mistakes you've made and they'll remember the good instead.  What a wonderful proverb.  Where does it come from?   Must come from the Bible.  So I looked it up and, well, not exactly.   Today's Gospel according to Luke seems to be the source of the proverb, but it does not have those exact words in that exact order.

Now before we begin our investigation, let me ask:

How many of you recognize the proverb: "Those who love much are forgiven much"?

How many recognize it but think I might have not quoted it quite correctly?  Could it be:

Those who are forgiven much love much

Those who love much forgive much

Those who forgive much love much

Let's read on and see what we've got here.  As we have read this morning, a woman enters Simon's house where Jesus is at table and spontaneously, unexpectedly washes Jesus's feet.  Jesus and Simon, his host, then have a little discussion of this incident, at the end of which Jesus commends the woman for her loving service, forgives the woman's sins and tells her to go in peace.  And Simon?  Well, he leaves Simon hanging there.  Something like this story is included in the other three Gospels, but none of the others conclude by connecting love and forgiveness.

In Mark's Gospel, a woman pours expensive ointment over the head of Jesus at the house of Simon the leper and various people present get upset because this expensive stuff could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.  There is nothing in Mark about the nature of the woman or her name or the names of anyone else there.  Simon the leper is mentioned only because it's his house.  He neither says nor does anything. 

In Matthew's Gospel, the story is almost the same, only it is the disciples who are identified as those complaining about the cost of this gesture.

John takes us away from the house of Simon the Leper and places us in the house of Lazarus and brings in Mary and Martha to attend to Jesus.  Martha characteristically makes dinner and Mary characteristically engages in an act of devotion.  She pours a jar of perfume on Jesus’ feet and wipes his feet with her hair.  And the house is filled with the fragrance.  So we have gone from the anointing of Jesus's head to the anointing and wiping of his feet.  Then it is Judas, not the disciples or anyone else, who complains about the cost.

In none of these accounts does Jesus say anything to Simon or to the woman or anything about love or the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus simply rebukes the disciples or those present for their outrage and says that this gesture, however extravagant, is fully justified.

Now we're ready to take a look at Luke, in detail.

36 Then one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with him. And He went to the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to eat.

37 And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, 38 and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.

The woman, still unnamed but identified as a sinner, does not just anoint the feet of Jesus, but washes them with her tears and wipes them with her hair and kisses them and anoints them with oil. 

39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, “This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.”

Simon figures that Jesus cannot be a prophet because if he were, he would perceive the sort of woman this was and would not allow her anywhere near him, let alone touch him, (or engage with him so sensuously.)

Jesus then shows that he is at least some kind of prophet because he reads Simon's thoughts and tells him a little story.

41 “There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?”  43 Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”  And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.”

We have moved in a twinkling from a story about a sinful woman who has done something improper, in Simon's opinion, to the world of creditors and debtors.  We have the story of a creditor who forgives two debtors - just like the Lord's Payer tells us - one of fifty and another of 500 denarii. 

So which debtor will love the creditor more?  Well, the one who was forgiven the most debt, the one who owed 500 denarii, says Simon.

If we stop the story right here, then the proverb should be:

"Those who are forgiven much, love much."  Those who have been forgiven a lot are grateful that they got off so easy & so they lead more loving lives, and give as they have been given.

Jesus says to Simon, "You have rightly judged."  You pass this little exam.  So far, so good.

Now the plot thickens. 

44 Then He turned to the woman and said to Simon,

I find this really interesting.  Some experts say the 75% of communication is non-verbal.  I don't know about that, but I am certain that body language, posture, gestures and voice tone are important.

How did he do this?  How did he turn to the woman, yet make clear that he was talking to Simon?

Did he turn to her, look at her and face her the whole time while talking to Simon?

I doubt it.

He's got to turn his head and look at Simon and at the woman as he delivers these lines, while his body is turned toward her alone.  She speaks seven sentences, while turned to the woman, yet speaking to Simon.

44 Then He turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?

The question is rhetorical.  The answer is yes and no.  Yes, Simon sees the woman, but in another sense he does not and that's the problem.  Jesus perceives that Simon has pre-judged the woman.  To Simon, she IS a sinner, therefore what she does is sinful.  Simon does not see the good in her or in what she does.  So in the most important sense, he does not see the woman.

Jesus continues:

I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head.

45 You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in.

46 You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil.

47 Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”

Thus Jesus talks to Simon and to the woman at the same time, giving a lesson to Simon and profoundly acknowledging her, all at the same time.

Thus the proverb should be:   "Those who love much are forgiven much." 

Then Jesus adds: "But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little."

This seems to be delivered right at Simon the Pharisee:  Simon, you've been forgiven little, you forgive little, you've been loved little and you love little.  If I were Simon at this point I would feel about two feet tall and want to excuse myself.

48 Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

At this point, the story seems over and could just as well end.

But there's more.

49 And those who sat at the table with Him began to say to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”  As in the Gospel of John:  Who is this that even the seas and the wind obey him?

The story could end there.  But there's still more.

50 Then He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

The Greek is beautiful and onomotopoetic:

Ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε

πορεύου εἰς εἰρήνην.

Hay pistis soo sesoken say

porewoo ace ayraynayn

This succession of sibilants fall like soft rain; the vowels dissolve you into the air,

Ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε

πορεύου εἰς εἰρήνην.

Hay pistis soo sesoken say

porewoo ace ayraynayn

Your faith has saved you.   Go in peace.  This is the conclusion.  Luke concluded four stories, including this one, with these exact words.

But what has faith got to do with it?  Has Jesus introduced a new concept in the last verse of this chapter?  I don't think so.  Faith, love, forgiving, being forgiven, add hope to the list - they all work together.  Take one of them away and you lose the others.

Loving and forgiving are certainly related.  They might be the most difficult behaviors we ever perform.  Loving and forgiving involve are acts of will, certainly, but cannot simply be willed.  It's easy to decide to pick up a pencil, for example, and pick it up.  But it is far from easy to decide to love or forgive and then actually love or forgive.  We might say that love looks to the future; forgiveness to the past.  Perhaps we must free ourselves from the past in order to step into the future.

But how do we forgive what has happened without love?  The great Buddhist teacher Thich nat Han writes:

"Forgiveness will not be possible until compassion is born in your heart."

How can we care about someone, or a big group of someones, who has done us wrong?  And how can we have compassion, or love, without confidence in the future, that the future will not just repeat the errors of the past?  Confidence in the future we often call hope, or faith, or both.

Thus the heart of the Gospel I would say is Grace, the mysterious inpouring of God's power that enables us to do love and forgive, have faith and hope, et cetera.

Now I cannot conclude this sermon without saying a few good words about this story's obvious bad guy.  The unnamed woman is literally showered with soft words of forgiveness and peace.  And Simon?  Well, who knows what he took away from this lesson.  We all have days when we leap to conclusions about people that turn out to be unfair; there are only so many hours in a day and we only have so much patience; we harden our hearts periodically just in order to get through a day.  Hence the need of all of us for forgiveness. 

And let us remember this sermon was inspired by Rabbi Hertzfeld  - heartfield.  The rabbis are the successors of the Pharisees and the rabbinic tradition is full of heartfulness.  And there was no more faithful and heartful person on the planet recently than Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel.  Listen to what he wrote some sixty years ago:

“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.” 

The heart of the Gospel, the heart of our Faith and I'm tempted to say all faiths is love and forgiveness.   In our story today, it is the unnamed woman who knows this.  It is for Simon and the rest of us to learn.

‎"Forgiveness is a selective remembering, in which we keep all the love that was ever given us and all the love that we ever gave. Let all the rest go into the nothingness from whence it came, and nothing but love will remain."

 - Marianne Williamson

May God grant us the ability to do this.

Sermon. March 11, 2012.

Cleveland Park Congregational Church
34th and Lowell
Washington, DC

I will be preaching on the Letter to the Romans today, but I will lead into an exposition of Romans by talking about some events that happened a while ago. I’ll be quoting from people who spoke at these events some 31 and 62 years ago, namely Leonard Rieser, who was both Provost and Dean of Faculty when I was a chaplain at Dartmouth College 31 years ago, and John Sloan Dickey, who was College President 62 years ago. Now you know the cast of characters, the main characters at least. Then I will talk about Paul, his message for us today and then I will focus on this congregation, here and now.

On Monday, September 21, 1981, Dartmouth College held its annual fall convocation at the beginning of the academic year. I well remember the occasion, for I had to deliver the Invocation. It was not difficult - I intoned a few verses of a Psalm, asked God’s blessing on the occasion and got out of the way, for much more important people than an associate college chaplain were ready and waiting to speak. It was the first convocation for a new president, David McLaughlin. He certainly had something to say. As did Elise Boulding, the faculty member chosen, as was customary, by her colleagues to say a few words.

But it was College Provost and Dean of Faculty Leonard Rieser who had the first words, after the invocation, and I have never forgotten them. He began by telling the 3000 people assembled a brief version of what Dartmouth President John Sloan Dickey had said on the same occasion 31 years previously, in 1950.

He began:

“This convocation takes place in the 212th year of this College, the 81st year of the 20th Century. We are little more that 18 years from the beginning of the next millennium. Before the freshmen present here today attend their 15th reunion, we shall leave this century and enter the next millennium. At the half-century mark, in September of 1950, President John Sloan Dickey, addressing convocation, took note of the state of the “outside world” by observing that ‘this particular perch, which we call earth, is rapidly becoming a precarious place for raising human beings.’
He went on to say: ‘What is new is not the evil in man, but the range of its opportunity and the immensity of its consequences. Within the last five years alone, the destructive potentialities of human error and evil have been increased beyond calculation.’
He cited three principal factors in this development: the great ideological conflict with the Soviet Union, the fantastic increase in the destructive power available to man, and the enormous potential of the mass media of communication, ‘to make the emotions and minds of millions the constant prey of the few.’
President Dickey spoke in 1950 from the perspective of World War II as part of the world was again at war. How extraordinarily prescient he was!”

Provost Rieser went on to list a few more examples of how different the world of 1950 was from the world of 1981. The list included no commercial jet aircraft in 1950, a mere handful of truly primitive computers, no interstate highways, plenty of oil . . . Yet, even then, in such seemingly primitive and safe conditions, the President of the College in 1950 saw fit to warn the assembled students and faculty of the dangers in their world at the beginning of the Korean War, telling them that the destructive potentials of their world had already been increased beyond calculation. Then Rieser concluded:

“Today, 31 years later, we still occupy this perch, so vastly more precarious, that it boggles the mind. I introduce this Convocation with these observations, beginning with President Dickey’s remarks in 1950, for two reasons. First to suggest that a liberal education today must include the development of the capacity to understand and address the hugely complex international relationships which will determine whether or not the millennium will be a period of joy, serenity, prosperity, and justice, or even whether it will be. And my second reason is that in September of 1950, President David McLaughlin was sitting where you are – with other members of his freshman class.”

Now I begin this sermon today at a time still near the beginning of Ellen Jenning’s pastorate because on September 21st of 1981 Pastor Ellen Jennings was sitting there that day with the other members of her freshman class.

31 years later, this trio of terrors first enunciated by President Dickey 31 years before still faces us, although in surprisingly different forms. I believe that this congregation, and this pastor are very well situated to respond creatively to these terrors of modern life. Let me briefly sketch out these terrors in their new 21st Century guise; then talk about our Biblical lesson for the day and the response that is already arising here on the corner of 34th and Lowell.

Firstly, the widest chasm of ideological conflict, namely the Cold War, astonishingly ended, but then it just as astonishingly transformed into the ideological conflict between militant Islam and the rest of the world. How this will work out in the future, we have no idea.

Secondly, the nuclear geni remains out of the bottle. The huge stockpile continues to come down, but the number of countries that have these devices continues to grow, so this threat is really just a little less than it was 31 years ago. The famous clock on the masthead of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was at 4 minutes to midnight in 1981. Today it is at 5 minutes. At its best in recent years it was at 14 minutes in 1991; at its worst was at 3 minutes in 1984.

Thirdly, the mass media of communication continue to make the emotions and minds of millions the constant prey of the few, in a staggering array of new ways. Of course, the mass media deliver their blessings as well, but let us say that the task of paying attention to the real world in which we live is more difficult than it has ever been. But it has never been easy. Paying attention, being present to your family and friends -- it’s not rocket science – it’s actually a lot more difficult. It is not a science it is an art. And it is an art that Christianity has always taught is aided by taking part in the life of a congregation.

In a congregation of a Sunday morning, we can come as we are, unplug ourselves from our cell phones, turn off our computers, turn off our televisions, put down our newspapers, suspend, to the extent possible, our media-informed judgments and pay attention as best we can, sing, listen and be neighbors to one another. Such simple activity may be the best way we have to keep the three terrors I have talked about at bay.

So here we are, March 11, 2012, in church; and in spite of all temptations, to be at other stations, (television, internet or otherwise) we are in church today. Is there any word from the Lord? I chose to focus on some words of Paul, whom I call the Apostle of Human Wholeness. Despite being shipwrecked, imprisoned, probably tortured, and attacked by mobs, he managed to praise in nothing short of poetic terms the joy of having a human body and taking part in the life of a human community.

Listen to what he wrote to a congregation in Rome, a long time ago, as if he were speaking to us today; and let him speak, since he lived a long time ago, in language that to us is ancient, namely the Shakespearean English of the King James Bible. I like this translation for it retains the ambiguities of the original and is better English than the Apostle’s Greek.

[1] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
“Present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service.” Present your bodies, not your work, not your wages, not your products, not the fruits of your labor, but your bodies. We would probably just say ‘dedicate your whole self to God.’ This is your reasonable service, adds the Apostle.

[2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Now he says ‘mind.’ Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. ‘Mind’ is singular. He is talking about the mind of the entire congregation, the group mind. Yes, transformation for Paul is not an individual effort; it is a group process. Thus
be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind . . .
that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God . . .
that this entire physical entity will show to others the love and power of God . . .
that (said a more recent apostle) your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. (Walt Whitman)

[3] For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
First, in the Greek, Paul uses the word ‘being’. Thus, ”let every being among you think according as God hath dealt to everyone the measure of faith.”
More importantly, Paul is not telling us to have faith. He is telling us that we already have it -- God has given each one of us just the right amount. Our job is simply to recognize and bring forth what is already there. Faith is not something we’re reaching for: it’s already here. We already have it. God gave it to us, in just the right amount.

Here is what he has said so far: Present your bodies a living sacrifice to God. Be thereby transformed. Be honest with yourself and others. Take a fearless moral inventory. You can do this because God has given you faith.

Now the rest is easy:

[4] For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:
[5] So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
[6] Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.
As within an individual body, each part cooperates for the whole, so also in a congregation, each one of us cooperates for the whole. We’re a team. What is difficult, even impossible for an individual, becomes easy as part of a team. In other words:

“We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Marianne Williamson)

See how deeply this passage has sunk into our culture? Did Whitman and the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous and Williamson and know that they were quoting it, borrowing from it, transmuting it? I don’t know.

I chose this lesson from Paul, because this congregation already gets this. This is what Ellen has been so graciously teaching us, that this congregation can work and sing together, like a choir.

I’m sure that there have been other events – I’ve been away quite a while – but just this last week, we had a discernment meeting after church. Upwards of forty people came. It was nothing special. It required no great technology. But that is how transformation in a congregation begins, with people just showing up and saying something like I’m Joe or Jill and I have been coming here for anywhere from 8 days to over 60 years. Then we shared our thoughts and dreams about this congregation and its future. Like the Kingdom of God, community is like a mustard seed that starts out small but grows into something big. That is what’s happening here.

We are not going to turn the CPCC into a cathedral. We don’t need to – there are three in this neighborhood already. But a small, neighborhood congregational church can be a powerful center of transformation without losing its essential character.

The philosopher Lewis Mumford wrote about the house that he and his wife bought when they were young. It was not much of a house. In fact it was a bit of a wreck. “But,” he wrote, “we gradually fell in love with our shabby house. No rise in our income has ever tempted us to look elsewhere for another house, still less to build a more commodious or fashionable one. In no sense was this the house of our dreams. But over our lifetime it has slowly turned into something better, the house of our realities. In all its year-by-year changes, under the batterings of age and the bludgeonings of chance, this dear house has enfolded and remodeled our family character—exposing our limitations as well as our virtues.”

If we do our work here of listening and speaking, and just being present, the terrors of modern life will fade into the background and the joys of life in community, despite all the batterings of age & bludgeonings of chance, will come foreground. This will be the church of our realities.

Finally, the perfect ending for this sermon appeared somehow on my computer last night. Yes, the mass media do deliver blessings. A distant friend shared the following:

"I'm waiting for a keynote where Apple says, 'We don't have a new, magical iPad for you. The magic was inside you all along. Now go outside.'"

The magic has been inside us all along. Now come to church.

On the American Landscape

Reflections on September 11, 2001

I spent a wonderfully peaceful day house-sitting in the Richmond Hills on September 10th, 2001. I worked on some writing projects in the morning and went for a long run that afternoon in the hills above the Bay, watched the sunset, listened to crickets, talked to some people walking their dogs.

I slept late the next day and found out from the carpenters working outside that something terrible had happened back east and I had better turn on the television.

We all have our memories of that day. Since I was by myself that day, I probably paid more attention to the television than most.

One of the commentators that day solemnly and grandiloquently claimed, as they do on such occasions, that the terrorist attacks had changed the landscape of America.

The events certainly changed the skyline of New York City. They took American policy in a new direction towards foreign intervention. History will judge how successfully. There is also a field in rural Pennsylvania that is changed forever into a site for grieving the deaths and honoring the heroism of the passengers who charged the cockpit of Flight 93.

Some three thousand people lost their lives, including a number of people from foreign countries and many religious faiths, including Muslims. The world economy took a multi-trillion dollar hit. We are still feeling the shock waves.

For Osama bin Laden and friends, it was unquestionably a good day’s work.

Did it change the landscape of America?

No.

President Dwight David Eisenhower changed the landscape of America when he signed the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 into law. That act, the largest public works program in history, forever changed the face of America, connecting this vast land, creating the suburbs, changing where we lived and how we got to work.

Instead of the twin towers, we’ll have a park and a new skyscraper. The Pentagon, a massive brute of a building, was repaired and functioning normally within a year. The memorial park there was dedicated in 2008.

The psychological and financial impact has been far greater, but even so, the financial shenanigans that led to the meltdown in 2008 have hurt America far more. In terms of our daily lives, the only long-term impact of that terrible day is the airport security regimen that was proposed and should have been adopted in the late 90s.

No terrorist act can hurt America as much as we are now hurting ourselves with our bitter and recriminatory politics. As for those killed ten years ago, their loved ones bear a grief too deep for words. All we can do as a nation is honor their memory and take steps to make sure this sort of attack will not happen again. In time, as Robert Kennedy said on the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination - quoting Aeschylus -

“In our sleep, the pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart; and in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.”

Fourth of July Meditation

A sermon delivered at the Kenwood Community Church, Sonoma Valley, California.
By Richard Allen Hyde

Tomorrow, of course, is Pancake Day here in Kenwood. In the rest of the United States it is Independence Day, but here it is Pancake Breakfast Day. If you are here today and somehow do not know about the Pancake Breakfast tomorrow starting early in the morning, or 5k run, or the parade, well you should.

Today I will talk about great events that have taken place around this time of year. I will tell you the story of a remarkable encounter that took place about 75 years ago and use that incident to bring our attention to Abraham Lincoln’s use of scripture in his Second Inaugural Address.

On July 4, 1776, 235 years ago tomorrow, and in the days thereafter a number of distinguished gentlemen signed a document that would have been their death warrant had events turned out differently. Our War of Independence was an extraordinary stroke of luck. General Washington almost captured several times. He came through several battles unharmed after bullets flew all around him. The Continental Army was almost destroyed in Brooklyn. If the wind had shifted and the British fleet been able to move into position, it would have been. The conclusive surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown was the result of extraordinarily fortunate coincidences. A British fleet did not arrive. A French fleet did and army did, and the rest is history.

As Bismarck said, “God has a special place in his heart for fools, drunks and the US of A.” The Iron Chancellor envied the United States and hoped for the South to win the Civil War so that we would not become so powerful.

55 years ago this week, June 29, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. It was the largest public works project in American history up to that time. Perhaps no other act of Congress within our lifetimes has had such a deep and long-lasting impact on the country, changing where we live and work, transforming, for better or worse, our cities, creating the suburbs, and, undeniably, knitting the nation together.

Eisenhower's support of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 can be directly attributed to his experiences in 1919 as a participant in the U.S. Army's first Transcontinental Motor Convoy across the United States on the historic Lincoln Highway, which was the first road across America. The convoy left the Ellipse south of the White House in Washington D.C. on July 7, 1919, and headed for Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. From there, it followed the Lincoln Highway to San Francisco. Bridges cracked and were rebuilt, vehicles became stuck in mud, and equipment broke. The journey took two months. The fact that it took so long and the fact that from Illinois west through Nevada the roads were still unpaved, made quite an impact on the young Ike. When he encountered the autobahn in Germany in 1945 he made a vow to himself to improve America’s roads if he could, and he did.

On this date in 1863, July 3, 1863 the Battle of Gettysburg ended. The three-day battle, involved some 160,000 Americans and led to some 50,000 casualties. It was union victory and the final major Confederate offensive operation. It was as important and dramatic a battle as has ever been fought, with the fate of the nation hanging in the balance.

Just as importantly for the course of the Civil War, the very next day, Independence Day 1864, General Pemberton surrendered the city of Vicksburg and his entire garrison of 20,000 men to General Grant, thus leaving the Mississippi River open to navigation. When he received the news by telegram, President Lincoln remarked

"The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."

These events together marked the unmistakable turning point of the Civil War.

I promise to lead you into a study of today’s scriptures and how Lincoln used them and two others in his Second Inaugural Address. I will lead you into these scriptures and that address by way of telling you about an unusual encounter in eastern Europe in the summer of 1934, a story told by one of my literary heroes, who just died a few weeks ago at the age of 96.

Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor was born in 1915, making him a member of my parents’ generation. He was acclaimed during his lifetime as one of the finest travel writers ever. More importantly, he became a British undercover agent during World War II on the German-occupied island of Crete. There he teamed up with Cretan partisans to kidnap the German commandant and take him off the island to Cairo. It was a great adventure, which was turned into a book by one of his comrades-in-arms and eventually a movie. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, Order of the British Empire and knighted. Always Paddy to his friends, he lived large, made friends easily and knew at least something about everything.

He began his career after being thrown out of school in Canterbury, where I also studied for a year at the local university. He then set out at age 19, in December of 1933 to walk across Europe from Holland to Constantinople, which took almost two years. Taking only a sleeping bag, the Oxford Book of English Verse and a volume of Horace, he walked up the Rhine and down the Danube, sleeping in barns and shepherd huts along the way, finally arriving at Constantinople in 1935.

The two books he wrote - there is a third, unfinished - about this experience, in prose of which John Keats would have been proud, included the meeting up with some Jewish woodcutters in the mountainous forests of Transylvania. They communicated in German. One of the woodcutters was a rabbi – I’m not making this up; this is not a rabbi joke. Together with the rabbi’s sons and assistants they stopped for the evening to study Torah. Patrick Fermor was interested in languages, had a wonderful ability to make contact with people, and recited a few lines of some familiar psalms, translating in his head from English into German as he went. The rabbi and sons then would recite the Hebrew.

It must have been quite a session there in the lamplight of a summer evening in the forests of Rumania. Here is how he describes it:

“Everything took a different turn when scripture cropped up. The book in front of the Rabbi was the Torah, or part of it, printed in dense Hebrew black-letter that was irresistible to someone with a passion for alphabets; especially these particular letters, with their aura of magic. Laboriously I could phonetically decipher the sounds of some of the simpler words, without a glimmer of their meanings, of course, and this sign of interest gave pleasure. I showed them some of the words I had copied down in Bratislava from shops and Jewish newspapers in cafés, and the meanings, which I had forgotten, made them laugh; those biblical symbols recommended a stall for repairing umbrellas, or ‘Daniel Kirsch, Koscher Würst und Salami.’ How did the Song of Miriam sound in the original, and the Song of Deborah; David’s lament for Absalom; and the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley? The moment it became clear, through my clumsy translations into German, which passage I was trying to convey, the Rabbi at once began to recite, often accompanied by his sons. Our eyes were alight; it was a marvelous game. Next came the rivers of Babylon, and the harps hanging on the willows: this they uttered in unfaltering unison, and when they came to ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,’ the moment was extremely solemn . . . After a few more moments like this, the other-worldly Rabbi and his sons and I were excited. Enthusiasm ran high. These passages, so famous in England, were double charged with meaning for them, and their enthusiasm was infectious. They seemed astonished – touched, too – that their tribal poetry enjoyed such glory and affection in the outside world . . .”

This ancient poetry truly does enjoy glory and affection in the outside world, even in these United States, and has throughout our history.

We read the Bible because it is paradigmatic. The Bible contains stories of promise and fulfillment and loss and disappointment; followed by a new promise, a new and unexpected fulfillment. This is the substance of life, as individuals, as a congregation, as a nation: promise, dreams, fulfillment, loss, disappointment, renewal of promise, another fulfillment, hope springs eternal; and so on.

So here we are July 3, 2011, Independence Day Weekend, 148 years after the battle of Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg, 146 years approximately after the Civil War ended, 235 years since the signing of the declaration.

The greatness of Abraham Lincoln consisted of many abilities and accomplishments, but none more important than his use of Biblical imagery, quotations, and thinking to enunciate the meaning and purpose of the Civil War and the meaning and purpose of this nation and our form of government. He did this in all of his speeches, which actually were rather few – a dozen major speeches and a few minor ones - but the two most important are the ones inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address.

It is to the latter speech and the Biblical quotations that we turn. Many have called his Second Inaugural Address the greatest sermon ever delivered in America. And it was only 700 words. I’ve already spoken more than that.

He made four specific references in this speech to scripture. In two places he quoted scripture word for word and in one other, two scriptures are clearly put together and quoted in part.

We’ll begin in the middle, after he has explained the cause of the war and stated
“Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”

Thus he described war as something alien that comes upon; and that is how we usually experience major conflict. We do not expect it; we do not plan for it; and then, suddenly we’re in a raging argument. People’s voices are rising and feelings are getting hurt.

“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.” Afterward, we say “I got into an argument.”

And the war came

By March of 1865 the results were indeed fundamental and astounding. Slavery was over. The 13th Amendment outlawing slavery had passed. There were 180,000 African Americans in the Union Army. There were even a few hundred or maybe a thousand in the Confederate Army.

“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged.” (Gen 3:19; Matt 7:1)

This irenic address does include a smackdown of slavery and for this condemnation he goes to Genesis 3:19 where the fact that we have to work is a direct result of the Fall. Work and toil are the wages of sin. Forcing others to work for us compounds the sin. Then he returns to prayer, the main subject of this paragraph, and concludes:

“The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully.”

We certainly all know this by now. We do get answers to prayers, but almost never exactly what we ask for.

“The Almighty has his own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ (Matt18:7 This passage in the Bible foreshadows the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.) If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’" (Ps 19:9)

God is still in charge. Offenses come. It’s a fallen world. Stuff happens. Bad stuff happens. When bad stuff happens, there is someone responsible, but more importantly, usually, a lot of people are responsible. As we sow, we reap. We created slavery and reaped the benefits. Now we pay the price. Lincoln addressed himself to all Americans, north and south. He made no mention of war reparations or anything of the sort. The war itself was the payment and everyone had to pay up. At the end of this long and terrible war, he concluded simply that somehow it had to happen. No one was to blame and everyone was to blame. There was plenty of blame to go around.

Therefore

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Every single day in Washington, thousands of people, people from all over America and the world, visit the Lincoln Memorial, have their photographs taken in front of the great statue, and read the two addresses on the north and south interior walls. They read these two great American speeches based so much upon the Bible, and draw their own conclusions about their own lives and countries. Lincoln’s words are an echo in still contemporary language of that call from God to Abraham, to Moses, to Deborah, to Miriam, to Jesus, to all the saints, even to the saints here today in Kenwood; a call to live by God’s laws, to love God, to love your neighbor, to forgive, to be forgiven; and thereby fulfill God’s promise and experience the fullness of life

Scriptures:

Genesis 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Psalm 19:9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.

Matt 7:1-5
[1] Judge not, that ye be not judged.
[2] For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
[3] And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
[4] Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
[5] Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Matt.18:1-7
[1] At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
[2] And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,
[3] And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
[4] Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
[5] And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.
[6] But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
[7] Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!

Memorial Day, 2011

The following tells of a a brief ceremony that took place on Memorial Day in Washington, DC, along with a meditation on the day’s lectionary, delivered as a sermon at the Kenwood Community Church in the Sonoma Valley.


June 5, 2011
7th Sunday after Easter

Scriptures from Acts and Ephesians at bottom.

Today I will note what has taken place in history
Talk about Memorial Day
Take note of today’s scriptures
Relate the scriptures to Memorial Day and
Conclude by reading you a story

The theme of this sermon is conflict and conflict resolution, remembrance and forgetting, honoring and forgiving and moving on. It will end with the story of a baptism of sorts, a new beginning.

During this past week in history in 1941, in the Atlantic Ocean some hundreds of miles south and west of England, the British Navy caught up with and sank the Battleship Bismarck. Coming during the darkest days of World War II when Britain stood alone, it was a great morale-boosting victory.

Just to show you how quickly history moves sometimes, the Normandy Invasion took place on June 6, 1944, just three years later; one year after that, the war was over.

Looking back a bit further, our American Civil War both began and ended about this time of year, around 150 years ago. Sesquicentennial celebrations are unfolding. There will be Civil War material all over television and in bookstores for the next several years. Approximately 100 new books about the Civil War come out every year and have done so for the past 50, without end in sight. In a way, we are still fighting the Civil War, fighting over its meaning and significance and will continue to do so for a long time to come.

In the Christian calendar, Today is the 7th Sunday after Easter. The lectionary for today gives us the last words of Jesus to his disciples before being taken up into heaven. I decided to add what were the last words of Paul, these words about girding for battle and so on conclude that his letter to the Ephesians. He was tried and executed not long afterward. Then, in honor of Memorial Day, I decided to add some thoughts about Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War to this morning’s meditations.

I just arrived here in the wine country after spending about four months in Washington, DC. You cannot escape from thinking about the Civil War in Washington. There are statues of a Civil War generals and admirals all over town, in traffic circles and parks; yet more across the river in Arlington National Cemetery, along with the graves of thousands and thousands of Civil War dead, both Union and Confederate.

At the beginning of May, on the day after the death of Osama bin Laden, I attended a lecture by Harvard President Drew Faust at the Kennedy Center. She received an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The award came with a lecture opportunity and she delivered a long meditation on the Civil War, her academic subject, and war itself. Why is war so interesting, she asked? She offered, tentatively, a variety of answers, saying essentially, as I remember, that war is a terrifying and fascinating mystery wherein people do the best of which they are capable, and the worst. And there are consequences, important world-changing consequences.

She quoted Robert E Lee: “It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it.” What inspired Lee was seeing all these men, I believe before the battle of Fredericksburg, advancing in lines, colors flying, subjecting themselves to severe discipline in the face of great danger. Many participants in great battles, from enlisted men to generals, have remarked afterwards on the great beauty of the lead-up to the battle. It is awe-inspiring.

President Faust could also have quoted General Sherman’s advice to the graduates of the Michigan Military Academy in 1879: “I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!”

Of course Robert E. Lee knew this just as well. Everyone in the military knows this.

I celebrated Memorial Day by visiting the Lincoln Memorial and attending a service at the Monument to the First Division. This monument is one of my favorites: a slender eighty-foot column of pink granite surmounted by a golden angel with a flag atop an orb. A plumed helmet crowns the angel's head. One might think it is Michael, the Archangel, but the guidebooks say she is Victory. Modeled after French statue from 1830. Sculptor is Daniel Chester French, who did the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. As the symbol of the division is a big, red numeral one, there is a numeral one-shaped flower bed at the base of the monument, always planted during the growing season with red flowers, tulips in the spring, some other red flowers throughout the summer and into the fall.

I arrived early and rested under the shade of a tree. It was already close to unbearably hot at 10:30. The ceremony started right on time at 11 with a jaunty tune played on a bugle. A few people stayed in the shade, but the sight of several dozen frail veterans, their wives and some widows sitting solidly in the sunshine made me decide to join them and in some way honor those who had endured much worse. The color guard came forward, the chaplain prayed and the speaker stepped to the podium. Retired General Ken Hunzeker promised to be brief as he mopped his brow with a towel. I chatted with him briefly before the service, a large, imposing gentleman. If he were to give me an order, it would never even occur to me not to follow it. What I remember most was stories of three of the Division’s Medal of Honor winners, one of whom fell on a grenade somewhere in Iraq to save his comrades.

The guard retired the colors. The soldiers back in the shade snapped off a twenty-one gun salute. Three quick bursts: Blam! Blam! Blam!

The sound echoed off the buildings. The bugler played taps.

Sun. Heat. Not even the suggestion of a breeze, just the wonderful stillness that follows something important. Finally we arose from our seats and sought the solace of the shade.

The military in services like this functions as a national priesthood, a religious order that connects us to Americans past, present and future. For those few moments, you are certain that you, through your nation, will live forever. God willing, this ceremony will repeat itself every Memorial Day and Veterans Day from now until Jesus comes again.

And now finally, the scriptures. The scriptures today deal with loss and promise. The disciples have lost Jesus. He was executed. Then he miraculously returned and they are about to lose him again. It’s like the last meeting of the class before the exam. Any last questions? So they ask him a huge geo-political, world-historical question:

"Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?"

This is a fantastic story; patently unbelievable in most of its details – unless you have faith - but in this one detail it is true to history as we know it: 1st Century Jews undoubtedly had this question on their minds: When are we going to get our country back?

Jesus replies: "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

And those are his last words. After uttering them, he takes off, literally. As we all know, the disciples fled and cowered in the upper room for a while and then the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth. We’re their successors and we’re still spreading the Gospel, as best we can.

Today’s letter by Paul to the Ephesians, a powerful much-quoted passage, is also a valedictory:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

He uses the language of warfare to exhort his readers, then and now, to fight an even more important battle than the battles we remember on Memorial Day. He has in mind the spiritual battle we all fight within ourselves, the battle to take control of all the forces and temptations in our own minds; not just to fight the enemy without, but to fight the enemy within, namely our own selves, our own hatreds, and projections and regrets. And so on.

The American Civil War was, among other things, a religious conflict. The soldiers who fought were perhaps the most religiously literate soldiers ever to go into battle. Thousands of them died with Bibles in their pockets. Cease-fires were arranged so the American Bible Society could distribute Bibles to both sides. And this, I don’t need to tell you, was a great tragedy and a matter for some reflection and soul-searching, which President Lincoln provided in the greatest sermon ever delivered in America, which is known more commonly as his Second Inaugural Address, delivered just a month or so before the Civil War ended and he was assassinated.

Lincoln said, in essence, that this war was about over; the boots-on-the-ground, musket and cannon-fire war -- that was about over. But now another was about to begin, a spiritual war within every American to enable us to live as one nation again. And to win this war, this war to come, this inner, spiritual war, said Lincoln, we must confess that this shooting war was caused by all of us. It had to happen. Let there be no gloating or sulking at the outcome and move on:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
How do you get over disappointment, hurt, traumatic injury? No one knows for sure. You can search in the self-help section of bookstores; consult the finest psychologists, psychiatrists, clergy, healers; take workshops and seminars. The advice you will get from them is rather hit or miss and will probably boil down to what Lincoln said anyway: assume that this disappointment, hurt, conflict, war - whatever – had to happen for some reason in the divine economy that we cannot begin to understand. It is not a perfect world. Sometimes it just hurts to be alive. Let us therefore do something to make ourselves feel better and strive on to finish the work we are in.
Now I have story to read, by a great travel writer, Colin Thubron, from his book In Siberia. He traveled throughout Siberia about fifteen years ago, shortly after the break-up of the old Soviet Union. One day he found himself in Omsk, a city just east of the Urals, and was invited along to a ceremonial blessing of waters, some time in June of 1997 or so. Listen:
“Next morning, outside the big, unlovely cathedral, which in Stalin’s day had been a cinema, I found a coach-load of pilgrims setting off for a rural monastery. They welcomed me on board. The monastic foundations were only just being laid, they said, and they were going to attend the blessing of its waters. In 1987 and excavator at the site had unearthed a mass grave, and the place was revealed as a complex of labor camps, abandoned at Stalin’s death. The inmates, mostly intelligentsia, had died of pneumonia and dysentery from working in the fields, and their graves still scattered its earth.

As out bus bowled through ramshackle villages, the pilgrims relayed the story with murmers of motherly pity. They were elderly women, for the most part, indestructible babushkas in flower-printed dresses and canvas shoes, whose gnarled hands were closed over prayer-books and bead-strings, and whose headscarves enshrined faces of genial toughness. When a fresh-faced cantor began chanting a hymn in the front of the bus, their voices rose in answer one after another, like old memories, reedy and melodious from their heavy bodies, until the whole bus was filled with their singing.

We reached a birch grove. It was one of those ordinary rural spots whose particular darkness you would never guess. As the women disembarked, still singing, the strains of other chanting echoed from a chapel beyond the trees. It was the first of four shrines which would one day stake out the corners of an immense compound. Inside, a white-veiled choir was lilting the sad divisions of the liturgy. As the pilgrims visited their favourite icons, a forest-fire of votive candle-flames sprang up beneath the standing cross, and two or three bubushkas shuddered to their knees.

Towards noon a procession unwound from the church and started across the pasturelands towards the unblessed waters. It moved with a shuffling, dislocated pomp. Behind its uplifted cross, whose gilded plaques wobbled unhinged, Archbishop Feodosy advanced in a blaze of turquoise and crimson, his globular crown webbed in jewels. He marked off each stride with the stab of a dragon-headed stave, and his chest glinted with purple- and gold-embossed frontlets, and a clash of enameled crosses. He looked huge. Beside him went the celebrant and behind him tripped a huddle of young priests in mauve, and the trio of raspberry-silk deacons.

I fell in with the pilgrims following. It was oddly comforting. An agnostic among believers, I felt close to them. I too wanted their waters blessed. I wanted that tormented earth quitened, the past acknowledged and shriven. I helped the old woman beside me carry her bottles. My feeling of hypocrisy, of masquerading on others’ faith evaporated. As I took her arm over the puddles and our procession stretched across the wet grass, Russia’s atheist past seemed no more than an overcast day in the long Orthodox summer, and the whole country appeared to be reverting instinctively, painlessly, to its old nature. This wandering ceremonial, I felt, sprang not from an evangelical revolution but from a simple cultural relapse into the timeless personality of the motherland – the hierarchical, half-magic trust of its forefathers, the natural way to be.

We reached a place where a silver pipe, propped on an old lorry tyre, was spilling warm water into a pool. A blond deacon, like a Nordic Christ planted the processional cross on the far side, and the archbishop, the priests, acolytes and pilgrims, the babushkas and their bags and bottles, a few war veterans and one mesmerized foreigner formed a wavering crescent round the water’s rim.

The celebrant, clutching a jeweled cross, was ordered to wade in. From time to time he glanced up at the archbishop, who gave no signal for him to stop. Deeper and deeper he went, while his vestments fanned out over the surface, their mauve silk waterlogged to indigo, until he was spread out below up like an outlandish bird. At last Feodosy lifted his finger. The priest floundered, gaped up at us – or at the sky – in momentary despair, recovered his balance and went motionless. Then, with a ghastly frown, he traced a trembling cross beneath the water.

A deep, collective seemed to escape the pilgrims. Again the cavalcade unfurled around the pool, while the archbishop, grasping a silver chalice, sprinkled the surface with its own water, and the wobbly cross led the way back.

But the babushkas stayed put. As the procession glimmered and died through the darkness of the trees, and the archbishop went safely out of sight, a new excitement brewed up. They began to peel off their thick stockings and fling away their shoes. They were all ready. They tugged empty bottles labeled Fanta or Coca-Cole from their bags. Then they clambered or slid down the muddy banks and waded into the newly blessed water. At first they only scooped it from the shallows. It was mineral water, muddied and warm. They drank in deep gulps from their cupped hands, and winched themselves back to stow the bottles on shore.

Then it all went to their heads. Six or seven old women flung off first their cardigans, then their kerchiefs and skirts, until at last, stripped down to flowery underpants and bras, they made headlong for the waters. All inhibition was lost. Their massive legs, welted in varicose veins, carried them juddering down the banks. Their thighs tapered to small, rather delicate feet. Little gold crosses were lost between their breasts. They plunged mountainously in. I stood above them in astonishment, wondering if I was meant to be here. But they were shouting and jubilant. They cradled the water in their hands and dashed it over their faces. Holiness had turned liquid, palpable. You could rink it, drown in it, bring it home like flowers for the sick.

Two of the boldest women – cheery, barrel-chested ancients – made for the gushing silver pipe and thrust their heads under it. They sloshed its torrent exultantly over one another, then submerged in it and drank it wholesale. They shouted at their friends still on land, until one or two even of the young girls lifted their skirts and edged in. Bottle after bottle was filled and lugged to shore. But it was the young, not the old, who hesitated. The old were in high spirits. One of them shouted at me to join them, but I was caught between laughter and tears. These were women who survived all the Stalin years, the deprivation, the institutional suffering, into a life of widowhood and breadline pensions, and their exuberance struck me dumb. Perhaps in this sacred and chaotic water-hole the world seemed finally to make sense to them, and all this aching, weary flesh at last found absolution.”

Whatever your disappointments have been, whatever hardships you have overcome, whatever your hurts, whether they were physical, or emotional -- may this summer ahead be warm and healing; may you all find absolution.



Acts 1:6-10__So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

Ephesians 6:10-20
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, 19 and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

From San Francisco to Washington

January 28, 2011


San Francisco is enshrouded in fog as my plane takes off at 10 AM on Friday, January 28, bound for Washington, DC. Only the immense television tower Mt. Sutro pokes its red and white top through the undulating gray carpet. After a gradual bank eastward, the green Berkeley Hills interrupt the expanse briefly, whereupon it continues to the Sierra Nevada, which are snowy as their name suggests. It has been a wet winter in California. The rain began in mid-November and continued with few interruptions until early January. Water courses out of vast canyons and collects in serpentine lakes behind unseen dams.

Then the mountains show themselves under a think blanket of snow. I know from experience that Yosemite Valley is probably visible from the south side of the airplane. I’m on the north. Yet the canyons and valleys I see are a spectacular sight in themselves.

After a few minutes, the Sierra slide effortlessly by and I am over the light brown and apparently lifeless expanse of the great high desert to the east. Since it is winter, this table land is now marked by what appear to be trickles of water that must be raging torrents brought to life by snowmelt. What in the summer would be dry riverbeds and mostly invisible are now dark blue or gray undulations in the earth’s surface.

We follow Interstate 80, which seems to attract secondary roads and railroads that converge and diverge from it. Then the interstate moves off to the northeast and for about half an hour there is no evidence of human habitation, not a road, not a house, not a power line. Finally a tiny smokestack appears, a single road leading to it, but there are no buildings anywhere near. Who works here? How do they get here? What do they make here - mine and refine something? What else could it be?

An occasional broad, brown valley streaked with wispy strips of snow divides the ranges of white mountains from one another. I imagine that this high desert is something like Central Asia, a territory best crossed on the back of a camel or accompanied by a caravan of yaks.

Ice crystals form on the window. The tiny television screen provided by Virgin America informs me that we are at about 35,000 feet and it is 60 below zero outside, Fahrenheit.

Cloud cover. I pick up my new traveling companion, Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuscinski, one of my literary heroes and namesake, were I Polish. I bought the hard cover at Copperfield’s in Santa Rosa for eight dollars. He begins with his first brief travels outside of Poland in the 1950s, to India and to China. Only after these first chapters does he say much about Herodotus, whom he began to read when he was still at home in Poland, trying to write about countries he had never visited during those years when communist governments were loathe to allow journalists to travel abroad:

“Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks; among the matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks.”

Kapuscinski follows this with an essay on memory and Herodotus as the first journalist, who relied upon living informants, for there were almost no others: no archives, no records, no books. In those days, if one wanted to know about a distant place, as Herodotus did, one either had to go there or talk to someone who had been there. Or talk to someone who had talked to someone who had talked to someone . . . who had been there. Or so he claimed.

Land emerges from under the clouds again and I put the book down. This bleak landscape is transformed by snow into something beautiful, especially when the sun picks up the yellow, red, and orange of these canyons below. I focus on one great canyon in particular, bright red, dusted with snow, and sprinkled with tiny trees or perhaps sagebrush. The whole landscape looks like it could be bent into a Christmas tree ornament or a holiday confection covered with powdered sugar. Here and there a line or two in the snow marks a highway, a railroad, a telegraph line. There is an occasional copse of trees, a pond, an isolated farmhouse connected by a line in the snow to another line.

Meanwhile Kapucsinski, by way of Herodotus, ponders the nature of difference and conflict. Herodotus lived in the 5th Century BC, at a time when the Persians twice invaded Greece, unsuccessfully, yet remained the superpower on the Greek horizon. What caused the hostilities between Greeks and Persians? Or among the Greeks themselves, or all the hostilities since? Why do these people hate us? Why do we hate them? Why do the nations so furiously rage together? One might say that Herodotus walked to the ends of the earth to find an answer to these questions.

The Persians with whom he spoke maintained that the East-West conflict of the day was all started by men stealing women. A man stealing a woman was certainly the legendary cause of the Trojan War. Something had to start it. Someone crosses a line, sometimes a literal line in the sand, or soil and embarks upon a war of aggression; or someone crosses a metaphorical line, a line demarking decent behavior from indecent, beginning a long chain of stroke and counterstroke, aggression and revenge. Kapuscinski writes: “What happened? Simply this: that you have been revenged upon for crimes perpetrated ten generations ago by a forefather whose existence you weren’t even aware of. . . . in Herodotus’s world, (as well as in various societies today) the eternal law of revenge, the law of reprisal, of an eye for an eye, was (and remains) alive and well. Revenge is not only a right – it is a most sacred obligation.” Journalists and historians cover these stories well, for they, not to mention their readers, are drawn to the exceptional and the dramatic. War and conflict also demark both vast periods of time and huge expanses of earthly space from one another, between Persian rule and Roman, between Arab and Turk, between British and American.

Of course there are often vast periods of peace in between conflict. This vast land below, compared in terms of history to Europe, is remarkably uneventful. The conflicts of Europe have been well-chronicled for at least eight centuries and chronicled in some fashion for two millennia before that. There is no shortage of written records and old buildings and walls to sift through. The center of the American continent under the clouds below has been the subject of history for at most a few hundred years. There has been one major conflict, the Civil War. There has been essentially one government.

More clouds stretch out below. I doze off. When I awake, the rocky, arid west has been left behind and we are over the well-marked fields and roads of the Midwest. As far as the eye can see is farmhouses, roads and fields, with occasional stands of trees. We are in the east; east of the longitudinal line through the heart of North America that marks the border between farming and ranching, west of which there is often neither farming nor ranching, nor much of anything growing at all. Despite being east of this line, we call this the Midwest, the land of Central Time, where I grew up and came to manhood, the limitless grassland where, midway through Ole Rolvaag’s novels, the heroines go stark raving mad.

I poke some buttons in front of me and the little red airplane appears in northern Iowa near the Minnesota border. Usually the plane follows Interstate 80 most of the way across the country. Some weather and wind pattern must have made the pilots wander a couple hundred miles north. A carpet of clouds again gains command of the landscape. After a few minutes the first shadows of evening appear on the undulating surface as we traverse Lake Michigan, whose waters accentuate the blueness.

A few seats in front of me an infant begins to cry, gurgles, then carries on as if it were being wantonly strangled. Then just as quickly as the fuss began, it goes back to sleep and all is quiet aboard the jetliner.

As the clouds below carry on their dominance, I return to Herodoscinski and his Niebuhrian meditations on the nature and madness of man, about Croesus and Cyrus settling their differences and embarking upon the conquest of the Massagetae, who lived east of the Caspian Sea. Cyrus wanted to rule over this land, cooking up some story of Massagetaean trespass from generations earlier to justify his invasion. What must the two kings have talked about as they rode along in a golden carriage drawn by horses while the soldiers plodded along, often driven by the lash? Did they talk at all? This Cyrus, whom the Greeks dreaded and despised, whose son and grandson the Greeks despised even more, was nonetheless beloved by the Judeans. Isaiah referred to him with great praise and many commentators claim that Isaiah believed Cyrus to be the Messiah.

Cyrus, for all of his faults, was a monotheist and took pity on the Judaean monotheists his Babylonian enemies had taken captive. On the theory that an enemy of his enemy was his friend, he returned these captives to Jerusalem along with a check for their temple restoration and neighborhood rebuilding fund. I’m not making this up.

The years of Persian domination, roughly 500 – 320 BC, were good years for the Jews. They were good years for the Greeks as well, but in spite of the Persians, not because of them. The Persians ruled Judea benignly. It was after Alexander took over on his way to conquer the world that things really deteriorated in the lands of the Bible. Alexander died of drink – and various other excesses – before he was thirty, leaving a vast empire for his generals to quarrel over. Quarrel they did. Civil wars resulted. Nonetheless, great cultural exchange and development ensued. In the middle of it, Jesus of Nazareth lived and died. Thanks to Alexander bringing the West to the East, his message spread around the world through the common language of the day, Greek.

Cyrus’s expedition ended in disaster. He and his army were slaughtered near the banks of the River Oxus, in the heart of Central Asia, by the Massagetae and their warrior queen, Tomyris. She found his corpse on the battlefield afterward and shoved his severed head into a wineskin filled with blood, saying, “I warned you that I would quench your thirst for blood, and so I shall.”

An occasional glance at the many tiny television screens aboard reveals news of demonstrations in Egypt. Kapuscinski takes me there on a brief trip in 1960: “My initial glimpse is in the evening, as my airplane approaches Cairo. From up high, the river at this time of day resembles a black, glistening trunk, forking and branching, surrounded by garlands of streetlights and bright rosettes defining the squares of this immense and bustling city.” He explains recent Egyptian history: “In 1952, Nasser, then thirty-four, led the military coup that overthrew King Farouk; he became president four years later. For a long time he faced strong internal opposition: on the one hand Communists fought him, and on the other the Muslim Brotherhood, a conspiratorial organization of fundamentalists and Islamic terrorists. To combat them both Nasser maintained numerous police units of all sorts.”

Kapuscinsky then reports in almost magical realist fashion what it was like to live in this police state. He arrived with a bottle of Czech beer, drank it his first night there, then faced the disposal problem: what to do with an empty beer bottle in a country where alcohol was strictly forbidden? He dared not leave it in the waste paper basket in the hotel, for it would be discovered and reported. He decided to walk out in the morning, bottle wrapped in a paper bag, and drop it into the first garbage can he could find. Unfortunately, there was someone eyeing him at every corner, lurking in the vicinity of every garbage can, watching everything that moved.

“The street now turned, but beyond the turn everything was exactly as before. I couldn’t throw the bottle out anywhere, because no matter where I tried, I encountered someone’s gaze turned in my direction. Cars drove along the streets, donkeys pulled carts loaded with goods, a small herd of camels passed by stiffly, as if on stilts, but all this seemed to be taking place in the background, on some plane other than the one on which I was walking, caught in the sightlines of perfect strangers, who stood, strolled, talked, most frequently sat, and all the while stared at what I was doing. I grew increasingly nervous, and as I started to sweat profusely, the paper bag in my hand was getting soggy. I was afraid that the bottle would slip out of it and shatter on the sidewalk . . . “

Eventually, he returned to the hotel, bottle still in hand. He went out again late that night, whereupon, under cover of darkness, he quietly deposited the sanctioned bottle in a garbage can, returned to his room and fell exhausted into bed.

Why did Kapuscinski read Herodotus, whose information was so dated? He provides numerous clues throughout his journey. Perhaps the most intriguing comes at the end, when he quotes T. S. Eliot from a 1944 essay about Virgil:

“In our age, when men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and to try to solve problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism, not of space, but of time; one for which history is merely the chronicle of human devices which have served their turns and been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no shares. The menace of this kind of provincialism is, that we can all, all the peoples on the globe, be provincials together . . . ”

He traveled in order to escape the provincialism of space and read Herodotus to escape the provincialism of time.

The sky fills with color as we approach Washington. We descend through the clouds and the lights of suburban Virginia appear below. There is snow on the ground. The streets glisten, framed by bare trees. The plane makes one big turn as it approaches Dulles Airport, once considered impossibly far from Washington, and we feel at last the reassuring impact of the runway beneath the plane. We have traversed in five hours what Herodotus in his day could not have completed in a lifetime.