Surgeon's Story

In recovery, after my 1st hand surgery.

Yesterday, I went to see my surgeon, Dr. M., for another follow-up visit to assess the ongoing rehabilitation of my hand after I broke it last fall.  The visits tend to take between 30 minutes and a hour, not because there is much to assess, but because my surgeon is an avid and masterful storyteller.  As in previous visits, Dr. M. was accompanied by a surgical resident, who was shadowing him during his patient visits.  Although Dr. M. describes himself as an atheistic Hindu, he and I have much in common and great respect for each other.  He honors my life and vocation as a priest, and I honor his as a healer and a humanist.

Now, Dr. M. began with one rather involved story of an uneducated woman in the Bengal area of India who became a grass-roots activist and successfully challenged the violence and corruption of the regional government.  So successful was she, in fact, that she and her supporters won a surprising landslide victory in the Bengali elections and initiated an impressive series of reforms that improved the culture and economic prospects of the area.  It was an interesting story, and I thought he would end there, scribble a few notes in my chart, and write me a new prescription for therapy.  But then, Dr. M. continued with a story I had heard a couple of times before.  Knowing that he wanted to tell it again for the benefit of the resident he was mentoring--who politely feigned interest--I abetted and encouraged his storytelling. 

An infant with a cleft palate.

Dr. M. explained that he often traveled to developing countries as a volunteer to perform surgeries on poor people who could not afford health care.  He noted that his specialty was cleft-palate surgeries, and he would perform 100-200 of these procedures on children over the course of a two-week visit.  Hospital administrators and CEOs, he lamented, don't often have an appreciation for the human side of medicine, and so he would bring them on these humanitarian trips.  The first couple of days they would be really pissed off, he said--Dr. M. never minces words--because he'd make the CEOs and hospital administrators participate in the manual labor of cleaning, setting up equipment, and performing tasks they apparently considered beneath their dignity.  Yet when the surgeries started, Dr. M. would ask the CEOs to pick the kids up from their mothers, bring them in for surgery, and observe the procedure being performed.  Then, he would ask these bureaucrats, so obsessed with the bottom line and operating margins, to deliver the children back to their mothers after surgery.

About 99% of the time, Dr. M. said, the mothers would burst into tears when they saw their children transformed by the surgery, and they would thank the CEOs profusely for their kindness and compassion, hugging them and weeping on their shoulder in thanksgiving.  By the third or fourth time this happened, the CEOs would be weeping, too, and by the end of the two weeks, they didn't want to come home.  They wanted to stay where they felt that they were making such a profound difference in the lives of very poor people.  Dr. M would consequently advise them, "remember what you have experienced here, the lives you've changed, and rebuild your hospital according to that image when you get back to the US."  Most CEOs, he declared, were transformed by their experience.  Of course, there is the odd one who was not, he told me yesterday.  "One guy was a complete a**hole," Dr. M. sniped.  "This guy was invited to tea by one grateful mother whose son had had the surgery, and he complained that her house was too shabby and run-down.  He couldn't believe she had the gall to bring him to a place like that." He paused, and then added, "I couldn't get through to him at all."  Dr. M., exasperated, sighed heavily in frustration.

This was an amazing witness.  It is stories, such as this one, that articulate our values, that say who we are at our core.  That is why Dr. M needs to tell it so often, to different people, and even to people that have heard it before.  It is his way of saying, "this is the kind of doctor I am; this is the kind of person I am."  That is why I didn't mind hearing it for the um-teenth time.  It is a ritual that continues to impart meaning and purpose to one's daily existence, and this should be honored and cherished by attentive listening.  In this holy season of Lent, we are called to remember our common humanity, our common call to love and care for one another.  May we recognize Jesus' commandment to love God and our neighbors as ourselves in the sacred stories others offer us, for they may come to us from unexpected quarters.  Listen carefully.

Re-thinking Lenten Fasting

The traditional Lenten disciplines are prayer, charity, and fasting.  Many people have practiced the last of these three by giving up luxuries, such as chocolate, meat, or alcohol, for the forty or so days of the season.  I myself have done the same in previous years, but I was thinking recently that giving up such things rather trivializes the spiritual discipline.  Fasting is not about depriving oneself of luxuries, but about stripping away both non-essentials and essentials, even those things on which we depend for our survival.  Pride is one of the worst human failings, and it is very easy to perceive ourselves as self-sufficient when the sacrifice we adopt doesn't cause us much discomfort.  As the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness evinces, the evil one's main design is to get us to put ourselves at the center of the universe and to deny our dependence on God.

I would also contend that fasting that causes us discomfort, and yet does not benefit anyone else, may fall short of the possibilities that fasting offers.  If the fasting only results in my focusing on my own condition, then I remain self-involved, self-obsessed.  Wouldn't it be better, I thought, to fast in a way that would emphasize my responsibility to others and my ultimate dependence on God?  Who cares if I give up chocolate?  What good would that do?  I don't eat enough of it for it to qualify as a sacrifice.  But I do take much for granted, particularly basic things like clean water for drinking and bathing and electricity to light my home and keep me warm.  Clean water and electricity are inaccessible to a large share of the world's population, and I should give thanks for them by being abstemious in their consumption.

So, my Lenten practice of fasting, abstinence, or whatever you want to call it is to intentionally reduce my use of and dependence on water and electricity, which to me are essentials, but to many others, are luxuries.  I confess that I often leave the water running doing dishes and take long therapeutic showers after the gym.  I often leave the fan and the A/C running in my bedroom, the lights on in every room, and the TV on even when I'm not watching it.  It may not be physically wrenching to show some care in how I use water and electricity in Lent, but it's intentional and disciplined.  It is a practice that will hopefully retrain me to live better throughout the year, benefit the rest of the planet (perhaps only a drop in the ocean, but it's a start), and remind me that I have a responsibility to be a good steward of God's resources.   The notion of human dominion over Creation is a dangerous theological assertion that not only denies the sanctity of the rest of Creation, but also supports industrialized nations' monopoly of the earth's resources and the enduring poverty and suffering of the Global South.

Reciting the Kaddish for Rose

Rose Polsky. Rest eternal grant unto her, O Lord.

Spiritual journeys are remarkably untidy things--at least mine has been.  Whenever I describe to people the path that has led me to the priesthood, there's part of me that's a little embarrassed by the meanderings and false starts, inconsistencies and contradictions, tensions and turbulence.  It's as if I feel I have to explain away the messiness of it all.  But I can't deny that it's authentically mine, and I suspect that I may not have gotten here if I had actually plotted out this destination ahead of time. Don't ask me why; it's just a hunch.  As I live into my priesthood, I discover that I am being called to dig more deeply into myself, to root around into dark corners, dusty boxes, and oft-neglected bits of my identity.  A situation or need arises that urges me to seek a resource I forgot I had.  I'm both delighted and befuddled when I recognize it.  I blow the dust off it and turn it around in my hand nostalgically, but awkwardly, uncertain if I still know what to do with it.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail informing me that a member of my weekly Bible study at Atria Senior Living next door to the church had unexpectedly died.  Rose Polsky was among the most faithful and engaged of my spiritual companions in the class; and she was an absolute joy to know.  Rose was almost always smiling, quick with a kind word or an incisive observation on the Scriptures, a careful listener, and a source of social cohesion and stability.  She was the person that welcomed new residents, encouraged her neighbors to come to social events, and served as a leader of the community.  Many of the residents, her friends, were therefore taking the loss rather hard, and so I was asked if I could come over and grieve with them.  I asked the staff, "how can I be helpful to everyone?"  "Just come and be a familiar face, and let them talk about Rose," they said.  So, I did.  As I expected, the room, like my Bible study, was mostly filled with Jewish women, some of whom I knew, but many of whom I did not.

The mourner's Kaddish.

You might think that an Episcopal priest might not be the most suitable or helpful spiritual presence in such a situation.  But, even as Fr. Ethan, these folks knew me as the person who read and studied the Scriptures with them week after week.  Everyone talked about who Rose was, what she meant to them, and the important role she fulfilled in the community's life.  And then, one lady turned to me and asked if I would say a prayer.  Fortunately, before leaving the rectory, I instinctively grabbed the Jewish prayer book I had used as a child off my bookshelf.  Channeling my inner Jewish teenage self, I opened the prayer book to the page with the traditional Jewish mourning prayer, the Kaddish, and began to recite it in Hebrew, as I had done countless times as a kid.  I was surprised at how easily the words tripped off my tongue, barely even looking at the page.  I then recited the English translation on the opposite page, the assembled mourners joining me in the Amens.  It was odd, and yet oddly familiar.

Administering ashes on Ash Wednesday, 2012

In the end, I was deeply grateful that I was able to still be useful as a priest in a moment when I wasn't relying on my Christian heritage, and yet still drawing upon an authentic part of my spiritual self.  Had I not been raised Jewish, I might have felt wrong about appropriating a tradition not my own.  But it was a part of me, the result of the many weekday Hebrew School classes, bar mitzvah lessons with the cantor, and long Saturday Shabbat services.  It was a stage on the path to my becoming a priest, and it seemed right that I should own it.  This situation reminded me that being who we are, whether as a priest or something else, involves embracing the meanderings, the contradictions, the tensions, and all the rest of the spiritual untidiness swirling around inside us.  As a child, I had wanted to become a rabbi, but I became a priest instead, and yet, in the weirdness that often accompanies God's grace, I came full circle nonetheless ministering to this group of predominantly Jewish women.  If ever there were a moment in my life of interfaith solidarity, this was it, and I couldn't be more thankful that it came a few days before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.  As one Roman Catholic member of my Bible study said yesterday, "We are all God's children," which means that we must minister to each other through all of the events of human experience, including death.  Whether Jewish, Catholic or Episcopalian, we share a common humanity.  We are all dust, and to dust we shall all return.

Actually, Young People Do Like Traditional Liturgy

Consecration of the chalice on Corpus Christi 2012.

There is a facebook group called, "Actually, young people do like traditional liturgy," to which I and several of my young churchy friends and colleagues belong. It serves to challenge the longstanding assumption (usually held by the ecclesiastical elite in their 40s-60s) that what young people want in the Church is edgy, hip, and experimental worship and music.  Some undoubtedly do, but there is also a large proportion of young people who are attracted and compelled by things traditional. This is a pattern that the Church cannot afford to overlook and ignore.

Now, let me just clarify that what I mean by "traditional" is not stuffy, uptight, or dull.  The problem with many folks' understanding of traditional is that they picture out-of-touch preachers droning on incessantly about dogma, dirge-like hymnody, and ritual that is either watered down to the lowest common denominator or absurdly precious.  Traditional liturgy need not be any of these things.  I serve in one of the most traditional churches in the world, and we regularly attract young people that are smart, hip, and unconventional, who love what we do.  Moreover, many of my young friends worship in Episcopal churches that bust out the incense, chant the mass, and pray novenas with passion.  Christ Church in New Haven, Connecticut put it more or less this way: "this is not your father's church (yuck!), this is your great-great-great grandfather's church."  Despite what Boomers may suggest, tradition can be cool.

College freshman, Max, at throat blessing, St. Blaise's Day 2013.

But in all seriousness, I don't care if traditional liturgy is cool or not.  I need it to be deep; I need it to be Spirit-filled; I need it to be authentic; I need it to be transformational.  And despite the mockery sometimes directed at Anglo-Catholics and other high-church enthusiasts, I am proud that there are congregations dipping greedily into the well of our traditional liturgical heritage. After all, it is no accident that many of these traditions have endured for hundreds of years.  They connect us to the faith and countless generations of the faithful in a way that emphasizes the continuity of the Christian story and the universality of the Church. The Oxford Movement, for instance, emerged in the 1830s, because the worship and spirituality of the Church of England had become so anemic, lethargic, and perfunctory.  It needed a transfusion of spiritual blood.  The Catholic Revival began by rediscovering our theological roots, and then expanded to reclaim the richness of our liturgical, cultural, musical, and architectural heritage.  The cold rationalism of the Enlightenment softened to allow a sensory and affective experience of the sacred that had been lacking in the Church.

I think one of the reasons many young people are drawn to traditional liturgy these days is that postmodern society has a tendency to isolate and disconnect human beings from each other.  In an age where life is frequently too in your face, many young people are yearning for connection with the transcendent.  I remember Diana Butler Bass once writing that we need to "reenchant the universe" for this generation.  Amen, sister!  Indeed, Roman Catholic parishes that offer the Latin Mass are finding their pews filled, not with elderly folks who remember the Tridentine Mass from their childhood, but with young families with children.  In the Anglican tradition, younger people are finding in the dignified poetry of classical English, the mystery of incense and bells, and the ancient, enduring ritual of the universal Church a stabilizing force within the maelstrom of postmodern rootlessness.   Last Sunday, a traveler in her mid-twenties came to the 8 a.m. low mass with her backpack on her way to the museum, and shared with me afterward how deep and beautiful she finds the traditional form of the Mass, especially the Last Gospel.  This is only one of many such conversations I have had with college students, young professionals, and families with young children.  Although I am very interested in contemporary and emergent forms of worship,  I have been convinced through such conversations that the Church needs to promote traditional, as well as contemporary and emergent worship, by retaining what is good in it, while reforming the outmoded and oppressive theology that has often accompanied traditional worship.  For my part, I don't know if it gets any better than the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ's Church.

Sebastian leading clergy procession at my priestly ordination.

But good (not just traditional) liturgy requires intentional formation and lots of practice.  I confess that I'm disappointed when I see churches, for fear of being perceived as pretentious, put so little effort into liturgy and priestcraft.  At the 2012 Maundy Thursday service at Philadelphia Cathedral, for example, I witnessed a brother priest in the front row of chairs across from me in a rumpled cassock-alb that was at least six inches too short, slouched in his chair, with his arms folded over his chest and his feet sticking out straight in front of him, as if he were at home in his recliner watching Monday night football on TV.  I don't mean to be uncharitable or judgmental, but such sloppiness conveys to folks in the pews (or chairs) that the liturgy is something we don't take seriously or isn't worthy of our best efforts.  I mean, you wouldn't show up for a family wedding in your pajamas without running a brush through your hair, would you?  So, why should we send the message that God is less deserving of the very best we have to offer?  On the other hand, liturgy shouldn't resemble a military drill, performed stiffly and humorlessly.  Painful rubrical exactitude does not equate with transcendent.  Solemn high mass should be performed as the graceful, choreographed ballet it was meant to be, not grim-faced robots on parade.   So, I end on this note of exhortation only to suggest gently that whatever we decide to do, let's do it well--reverently, joyfully, and earnestly.  Young people are watching and discerning.  We take them seriously when we take the liturgy seriously.