Friday, September 30, 2016

The Ladder

"I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared." Exodus 23:20

Earlier this week, my mother and I teetered precariously on ladders, stretching and stapling wire mesh to screen in the large front porch of her house. The siding had just been replaced and painted, a new metal roof installed, the windows re-glazed, and now we were tackling the porch. We spent all day in the heat and humidity of central Florida, swatting mosquitoes, with our staple-guns, hammers, and X-ACTO knives in hand, trying not to get our feet tangled in electrical cords and the front yard's tortuous vines. It had been a long time since my mother and I had done a project together, and we discovered to our surprise that we actually worked quite well as a team. We had a delightful time despite the sweat and fatigue of the project, which didn't always go to plan. Getting the screen up perfectly taut without any ripples or gaps is challenging; it takes great patience and persistence. Sometimes we had to take a few steps back, unstaple the screen, and start over. After seven hours in the heat, it was a minor miracle that we were still speaking to each other. 

I came to Florida this week, not to staple and hammer, but to celebrate my sister's fortieth birthday and my niece's eleventh. When I think about the good relationships I have with my family now, I also remember those days growing up when they weren't so good: the misunderstandings, the quick tempers and tongues, the regret of things said or left unsaid. It took us a long and tumultuous journey to get to the good place we are now. It is not perfect, of course, but there are unexpected moments of grace that make me grateful and hopeful. That day on the ladder was one of them. Many families have similar stories. The good (or bad) relationships we have are fashioned by our choices and experiences, and yet I'd like to think that God has some hand in them. The Bible is full of stories of divine messengers (from the Greek, angeloi = "messengers") or angels communicating God's word and will to humans. I'm sure there were hasty moments when I did not heed God's advice to hold my tongue or to bear with patience a difficult conversation. There were undoubtedly urgings from God that I ignored in order to follow my own flawed judgment. I bear full responsibility for those failings, but I am grateful that God did not give up on me and continued to whisper in my ear and inhabit my dreams. And so does God with us all.


"Jacob's Dream" by William Blake, 1805.
The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels this week, which emphasizes God's desire to speak and be present with us in our daily lives. In joy, pain, confusion. All of it. Whether the traditional image of gossamer-winged messengers resonates with you or not, the idea that God seeks to encourage us to walk in paths that lead to abundant life can serve as a source of comfort and strength. The decisions are ours to make, but God offers us a vision of what could be and guidance to get there. In the famous passage from Genesis 28, God speaks to Jacob in a dream and presents a vision of a ladder to heaven on which angels are ascending and descending. Jacob's ladder was probably grander than the aluminum one on which I worked and sweated this week, but both have been symbols to me of deep relationship. I have always imagined it as a metaphor for the back-and-forth communication between God and creation. It is an analogy of our ongoing relationship with a Trinitarian God that seeks us out in the unfolding of creation, the bread and wine and sacramental life of the Son, and the sanctifying guidance of the Holy Spirit. And as a people that participates in God's activity, we are often messengers of God to each other, as well. When we offer words of comfort, assistance in time of need, or nourishment when we are running on empty, we bear God's message of new life. Sometimes, God leads us forward through each other to the place God has prepared for us. Sometimes, it takes a person or a family quite a while to get there. When we sing the classic hymn for St. Michael and All Angels, "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones," we should not only command the ranks of angels to sing God's praise, but challenge each other to be God's messengers in the world.

The Lord is glorified in his holy ones; O, come, let us adore him.

Abundant blessings,
Fr. Ethan+




Thursday, September 8, 2016

Of Giant Crosses and Ketchup Bottles


One of the great joys of being between parishes is that I now have time to read, write, and travel. As my husband and I drove through the endless corn and soybean fields of southern Illinois a couple of weeks ago, we stopped at a few curiosities along the way: North America's largest freestanding cross in Effingham, the world's largest ketchup bottle in Collinsville, and a vintage Route 66 service station in Mt. Olive. Fun and kitchy, to be sure, but also reminders that people find identity and meaning in all kinds of unexpected things. They are markers of a people's history that have become cherished across generations, and so, are worthy of study. These three detours provided a thought-provoking contrast to the much grander stops on our itinerary, such as the St. Louis Arch and the Lincoln Presidential Museum. The first, where I became reacquainted with my fear of heights, serves as an awe-inspiring monument to engineering ingenuity and prowess. The second chronicles the life of one of our most revered leaders during an agonizing period in the nation's history. As signs of human achievement, and national crisis, and local pride, all of these markers of our lived experience have the potential to teach us something important about our faith.

"Fall Plowing" by Grant Wood (1931)
One of these insights is that we need to study subjects that we don't tend to examine through theological lenses. This became abundantly clear last week when viewing the special exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, "America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s." The exhibit was a commentary on the multiplicity of American artistic perspectives in response to the Great Depression, including the agrarian Regionalism of Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, the Realism of Edward Hopper, the Modernism of Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe, and many others. What it conveyed to me was the variety and uniqueness of these lenses through which artists attempted to process America's economic time of trial. Images of agrarian abundance and industrial might, for instance, were expressions of an American ideal of prosperity, which served as both aspiration and nostalgic escapism. But in periods of adversity, those symbols of life on the other side of want and barrenness are important for survival. Americans in the 1930s must have felt defeated and hopeless, and yet some found ways to cope.

"Crucifixion" by Jan Provoost, 1500
The same was undoubtedly true for those who witnessed the Crucifixion. The Cross on which our Lord Jesus hung must have seemed so overbearing and oppressive that artists throughout the centuries have been deliberate in depicting it as insurmountable. And yet, there was life on the other side of death. What was an instrument of defeat, the Cross, was transformed into a sign of God's victory. The planks of wood nailed together in Provoost's painting at right represent a criminal's shameful death, and yet the meaning doesn't stick. And even the tomb is not able to contain the new life of the Resurrection; it becomes a sign of the destruction of death itself. Later, in the midst of Roman persecution, the early Christians must have found signs of new life in both the trivial and the important to bear their sufferings.

Things are not always what they seem. A giant ketchup bottle or vintage service station may be a community statement of civic pride. A series of abstract strokes of color on a canvas may express the anxiety of a lost generation or a tortured conscience. When we examine the world, we should be careful of accepting what we see at face value. And we all may see those same things differently. Signs of decay may hint at signs of life. The trivial may point to the important. The crucified criminal may point to God.

Abundant blessings,
Fr. Ethan+