Out of Silence

Many years ago I read a book by then contemporary author, Elizabeth O’Connor. Journey Inward Journey Outward was title of the book (Harper & Row, 1968) and it gifted me with a framework for my spiritual journey and also professional understanding which moved my life in ways I had not dreamed of as possible. I had an early entry into pastoral ministry, but even after a few years of experience and seminary graduation under my belt, I had need of what was provided at that crucial point. O’Connor’s book is simply a story of Church of the Savior in Washington, DC and its innovative ministries. She wrote of this church’s vital balance of engagement with self, God, and others (Journey Inward), and how it proceeds from this to involvement with the needs of the greater community (Journey Outward). I was hooked, consumed this book as well as a number of others by this author, also began reading another prolific author, Father Henri Nouwen. Interesting how resources from beyond sometimes provide just a little more than we know we need! Anyway, I was taken in by O'Connor's convincing thesis that quietude is absolutely essential for any person or any faith community of any kind to have a breath of life. There is death if we are dependent on ideas only. I already knew at that early stage that my ministry would falter very shortly if somehow I did not learn something more about this.

I remember like it happened yesterday. I was appointed pastor of a brand new church-plant, a very positive process of discernment and cooperation with a parenting church which eventually provided occasion for a daughter church to begin in another part of the city. A great gift in that formative situation was that there were some very enthusiastic participants with vision and literally a willingness to do ‘whatever it took’ within this new fellowship. And mercifully it was not all rah rah, even though we were surrounded by many cheering sections from other churches as well as our denominational leaders. What a privilege to be a part of such a supportive community. Within that group among those willing workers there was also what seemed to me like a supernatural yearning for something beyond the enthusiasm, the lively singing, the ball games and small groups, etc. This yearning was kind of ironic because outwardly there was nothing missing. We were a bunch of young families with lots of noisy kids and teenagers along with many activities providing a fine opportunity for me to write some nice pastoral reports the first year or so. The environment was anything but silent. We made a lot of noise and I think I preached quite well among all of that. Yet several within our hardworking deacons group were advocating for something deeper.

Being a hard worker myself, and also kind of socially apt, able to hold up my end of conversations both loud or quiet, I sensed this ‘voice’ among us was probably of God, needed to be heeded. That is how we became acquainted with the story of Church of the Savior. In short order there were some of us, along with a number of persons in other churches of similar interest, participating in Silent Retreats with resource persons from that unique church all the way down there in D.C. I still don’t know who paid travel expenses for the resource person because the retreat costs were quite reasonable (Probably a supportive benefactor or two writing a few good cheques). At any rate these retreats I believe became a godsend for our congregation. It is within silence that we began to listen more deeply to one another. It enabled us to hear one another and it provided confidence for those leaders working with the pastor to do what needed doing, even modeling considerable transparency including both pains and inspirations. There was a growing comfort in being with one another regardless of what was being spoken or not spoken. We began to experience some faith commitments and requests for baptism and membership even from those who still had considerable questions. They became members of a church still in formation. The church started to grow!

As the pastor I was encountering a mysterious paradox. The congregation included a considerable portion of persons who liked proclamation, ie strong unapologetic evangelical preaching, as well as those desiring a more meditative liturgical worship experience. I found these both personally acceptable, actually quite comfortable in both worlds 😀 fully convinced that Jesus’ powerful teachings and miracle works came out of essential quiet times (Mark 1:35; Matt 26:36) this also with good O.T. support (Isaiah 32:7) as well as N.T. epistles (eg Eph 5:21; 1 Pet 5:5). Both ends of this preference spectrum seemed to be acceptable in our fellowship - even for the ones of no fixed opinion! Services were always planned carefully by pastor working with rotating worship leaders as appointed by a worship committee. In hindsight I attribute the church’s early growth to the people’s comfort with both ‘holy preaching’ and ‘holy quiet'.

Silence is still a mysterious go-to this many years later. Many churches are now in the empty pew syndrome. Even as Sunday morning attendance is waning I observe some hints of longevity, which seem to be new discovery or possible recovery thanks to ... silence! For instance, a women’s group in our church continues with a recently identified clarification that they love to sit with, to be with one another – actually a book study which includes sharing which grows out of quiet. This method of being together seems to be surviving pandemics or leadership variations or styles or what have you. Interestingly the church in Acts at its beginning experienced that very thing (see Acts 2:46-47). This is a usable transferable reality: My son’s mother-in-law meets weekly with a group of fellow seniors in Peterborough, ON. Pandemic Zoom meetings only strengthened their commitment and belief in God’s presence in their Friday meetings – always beginning with silence, and nobody ever getting anxious even with long stretches of no chinwag. What emerges out of the quiet is always gratefully received and considered, not lectures or debate but up-building one another.  Humor is there, but it shows up naturally, not because of noisy entertainers. It’s been a pleasure to join them several times.

Retirement involvements here in Calgary have brought me into the world of Interfaith, including city-wide participation in a yearly Worldwide Interfaith Harmony Week, regular meetings of Sacred Text discussions, and varieties of joint service projects. These all provide excellent opportunity to ‘be’ with one another even alongside considerable difference of worship requirements and styles including current and historic differences. These have become for me a fresh occasion to remember the things discovered during those early years in Edmonton. No matter the location or the decade, God, Allah, Creator is  present with and among us all. 

Recently our local grouping of this Calgary Interfaith Council enjoyed a potluck meal for any who wished to share food items for a Food Pantry for students in a Catholic University located in our neighborhood. The gathering seemed to be sacred quite beyond our various orthodoxies or even orthopraxis. Interfaith experiences provide opportunity for what I would call holy quietude with new friends (old friends?) ironically also including clergy from the Roman Church, that same denomination of colonialism so critiqued by so many here in Canada these days. I have come to appreciate the blessed thoughtfulness, some humility and the healthy participation of this Church in exemplary ways in our communities (cf my blogpost "Using the Church", April 13, 2022). Let those of us in our churches without sin (John 8:7) cast the first stone. And the Indigenous? Always fully present and onsite, to wit: an ordained United Church Minister from the Chinook Winds Region, simply one of the gang.

I conclude with some reflection gleaned during the years toward the end of my pastoral ministry when I retreated to the safety of wide open highways as a longhaul trucker. Actually this was a retreat into what I mention above – what I had tasted early in my profession. Although I received professional mental health assistance to navigate a considerable mid-life decision, I knew my best therapy was going to be connected to what I had learned in those earlier years of pastoral ministry. My mental health needed silence. Even as I envisioned endless highway miles, I knew I would not survive driving team. I did not need a driving partner, especially not a yappy one. I needed the silence of a quiet obedient truck, which is why in short order, with the assistance of my financially astute wife, we purchased the needed truck. The spiritual journey was able to continue for another 20 years until retirement! Had I not identified that early need for silence I would not have recovered as I did. Also, I know this was a key to my enjoyment of life in this present ministry of retirement.

²⁶ I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” (John 17:26)

 

Cleaning Up

 

Seasons come and seasons go. Some things change, some things do not. My daily walks, even as they continue per usual, now accompanied by the crunch crunch of autumn leaves and an occasional morning with my slightly heavier jacket. I am reminded of a blog I posted a couple years ago. It was entitled “Sidewalk Inspector” (Feb 19, 2021) detailing impressions of my neighborhood based on sidewalks shoveled or not and other related things. This post could be of same title for it is perspective of this inspector who still walks, but I shall be more seasonally specific this time. “Cleaning Up” comes to mind as autumn leaves are falling. 

Autumn leaves make for incredible mess, and also provide interesting vantage on what's important to us. There are those who clean them up slavishly leaf by leaf, and of course those who accept them naturally as a matter of course in windy ordered environment.  [I think I am of the latter category] This has been in my mind these last days as the leaves flutter - not of ultimate importance but ... I think of many things.😉 What a sight to behold; the beautiful green dresses of our huge poplars and birches and other deciduous suddenly ablaze with new colors flowing and floating and blowing all around. Sure enough there he is! This morning it's the sound of my neighbor Richard, gas guzzling air blower corralling his leaves plus his neighbor’s on either side of him into neat piles and then into bags (non-compostable black garbage bags no less … Aargh). It’s his third time out here this year, he says proudly, gotta clean up. “Yup”, I say non-assertively. No need to be sarcastic today. I’ll tease his anality in front of our Tim Horton’s friends one of these mornings.

A little further down the street is another take on cleaning up. This driveway has had little pebble piles and variety of gravel and earth all summer long. This neighbor is so environmentally conscious she is installing a roof drainage system for her lawn and garden so as to utilize rainwater for underground irrigation. And it's a slow process, her trees and garden and driveway looking like a construction site for at least three years by now. I agree with her too - totally affirm her environmental diligence - and also appreciate some pails full of surplus pebbles she has been giving to me. They are now part of the landscaping in my yard!

A couple of blocks down and just around the corner, the other day I discovered another friend. An elderly woman up in her crabapple tree surprised me with the sound of apples plopping into a box as I walked by. My greeting quickly yielded a pailful for an apple jelly project at our place later that evening, plus a few stories of how we used to preserve on the farm back in Saskatchewan (yup we hail from similar open fields), plus in short order she had this younger guy (me) up a ladder to help fill another bucket for her from near top of the tree. I'm thinking her tree has done well this year, just before color change yielding some fine apples and some good neighborliness.

These are specific one by one encounters. And then there is the macro experience. This local sight and sound also brings on a little sentimentalism for me. There is a bigger better picture also in my mind. Who cares who is raking whose leaves anyway? And so what if they don't get all cleaned up? It's better to leave them on the lawns over winter anyway, isn’t it? My wife and daughter certainly say so, reminding me they make a great bed for ladybugs to sleep all winter. 

I live with another set of sensors and leaf memories. None of this Calgary color comes even close to what I gazed upon many times during my long-haul trucking years, especially up and down the Eastern seaboard, Maine, New York, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania; yes also Indiana and Ohio and Ontario – incredible oranges, yellows and fiery reds sometimes right up to top of the Appalachians! Always I was sorry I couldn’t pick up a load of maple leaves and deliver to Calgary Prince's Island Park just for all to enjoy! 

Having been glamorized by those other trees I am considerably less impressed with my leaf-blowing neighbor and all us ordinary leaf rakers. There is no need to get too preoccupied with the temporary mess they make on our streets and curbs and decks. If we don’t get them all raked, no problem. I live next to Fish Creek Park and the wind can blow them in there. It's a natural wild-type habitat, with room even for all of Pennsylvania's leaves, to say nothing of the Calgary leaves we don’t get raked.

It is the season. Short days ago it was flowers galore, some bordered by neatly cut lawns, others with the more 'natural' look. Seasons come, seasons go. My hope is that the next season just around the corner will provide lots of the white stuff to make it all beautiful regardless of who got what cleaned up.

A Lifetime in Waiting

September 9, 2022

Two persons have been uppermost in my mind this last day. One is Prince Charles, heir to the throne of the British Commonwealth, eldest son of Queen Elizabeth, who died yesterday mid-day at the ripe old age of 96. The other is Richard Rohr, best-selling author of many books, including Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass, 2011). According to this book the first half of our lives is devoted to accomplishing something; the second half to reflecting on what has or has not been accomplished!

Charles was the princely boy whom my brother and I watched not like a hero, but as one who would be king someday and who lived his life way out there up there somewhere waiting for the day. That's quite a while ago. And while we were apparently growing up and trying to make something of ourselves, in our mind Charles just needed to show up with his sister Anne, looking handsome and well-groomed and only needing to behave royally. Then Charles changed a bit, as we probably also did during the growing up years, Charles definitely becoming a little more interesting at least according to radio reports and newspaper and journal articles (no sidebars, no social media, in fact no computers yet in our possession)! He was fascinating, somewhat of a free thinker quite akin to many others our age with hippyish inclinations during the 1960s. Then Charles entered into marriage including some behaviors which caused much grief to his beautiful wife Diana, also his parents the Queen and the Duke, and obviously feeding eager journalists and paparazzi with many a juicy tale. The slow maturation of life then included Diana’s tragic death, allowing Charles to marry 'the other woman', quietly enduring the pain caused to his two sons and the ill-repute which has dogged him ever since, even among his own family members. Now at age 74 he is King!

How can a person with spotty personal life, spending an almost total lifetime in training, learning protocol, riding in motorcades, reading speeches written by others, step up to a position increasingly questioned not only by those who idolized his mother, but also wondering about the man who would now be king. I do not blame a people questioning the state of British monarchy, and possibly the state of a monarchy period. Is it an outdated expense for all concerned? Needless to say, the wrinkles and worry lines on Charles’ face suggest he may have already spent considerable time thinking about this.

This begs the subject many have reflected on, many have agonized about, and yes many have made a profitable profession of, including psychologists, psychiatrists, theologians, and of course historians who have provided the story line (?) for our kids in elementary and high schools in the many countries of the Commonwealth. How Should we then Live? said Francis Schaeffer a Presbyterian minister a number of years ago in his famous book of that title (Crossway, 1976), even then already noting the mainstreaming of religion blended into everyday western life. Schaeffer’s still troubling question probably is why Father Richard Rohr's books have come to my mind alongside the Prince. Rohr’s contemporary wisdom of a doing–reflecting life cycle strikes a chord seemingly for many, religious and non-religious, for persons of faith in many religions certainly including Catholics and Protestants, and interestingly with advocates and critics in both the evangelical as well as the liberal versions of Christianity.

I do not believe Rohr's wide popularity makes him a shoo-in winner for all, but I do find his perspective helpful at this particular juncture of our western history; King Charles lll ascending the throne. Rohr begins the lofty topic by firstly speaking of God. "Aagh" says my thirsty soul. As a Christian I need to hear or read somebody saying that. “You can’t weigh or measure or calculate or dole out the infinite” says Rohr. "It’s time for us to recognize a world of abundance, even among all the scarcity being lamented these days – environment, economies, warfaring." Yes, scarcity limits us to who should be doing what and why isn't it being done - the world of politics, newsworld. He goes on “Stop counting who’s worthy, who’s not worthy. It ends you in a hole, a dead end. It’s stupid.”

Rohr's provocative declarations address all of us in today’s pluralistic society, certainly not only his church the Roman Catholics, nor those within the Church of England! So even as Charles at this point, as required, claims 'the church' as his faith, I see in Richard Rohr's words a good instruct to Charles and to all citizenry. It's right there in the Bible, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). The new head of the Church of England and all of us need this abundance. Rohr's reference to scarcity or abundance in trying to describe God is a good reminder about describing (evaluating?) earthly Monarchs. Whether Charles has ever done anything noble or noteworthy is less important than his state of mind at this time. Recognize that in his lifetime he may have acquired the wisdom and the perspective needed to get us all a good look at monarchy and what elements are still essential and what may need to be scrapped. 

Charles lll may now have precisely the experience and the vantage and hopefully the humility to lead the British Commonwealth as well as the Church of England into a more realistic appraisal of its participation in a new world order. "How should we now live?" Francis Schaeffer's question even more relevant today, methinks. We will be best served if we think abundance rather than scarcity as we honor our new King. It certainly behooves all who still believe in a God who is over all creation. 

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.⁵ Therefore one must be subject, not necessarily because of wrath but also because of conscience (Romans 13:1,5 NRSV).

Perhaps in reverse order of Richard Rohr wisdom, our King’s lifetime of waiting, of reflection and/or acting out may well be what has equipped him for the role he now assumes. May our Creator God grant him the wisdom and the courage to be and to do, significant actions toward the end of his days.

God save our gracious King.