A Season for Deletion

 

Let’s delete Christmas. 

That’s the thread that was running through my mind in the closing minutes of the work day today, a day of serial meetings, one flowing into the other, management team into leadership team, noodles in the lunch room which is a sort of meeting, then into convention planning followed by DDB event planning (Diana Butler Bass). This day, Wednesday, was an interruption in the normal work flow. A big interruption in the sense that very little work flowed out of the communication office.

Just two weeks ago Wednesday was a very different day as well, but one not as at odds with the regular rhythm. We met and then we went to liturgy to pray, reflect and receive ashes. Then returned to the business of applying prayer and reflection to effecting mission. It all seemed to fit, to be in concert.

The fact that the days were consistently gray, the snow covering persistent, and the temps traveling in a very narrow wave band could have played a big role in buttressing that rhythm. The sun was out in a major way today, blazing in a blue canopy, and working well past its normal shift of a month ago. That for me was a little disturbing, interrupting as it did my accommodations to an interior season, one more oriented to the interiors of our homes and our minds.

It’s not a season I relish in late September when I am counting the weeks left for green leaves on branches, and blooms in the beds. There’s definite dread in the countdown to a landscape of ashen gray and bare clay. It’s not just about losing color and scent and daily recreation. Or about the ache of witnessing six months of labor undone in two hard freezes. It is knowing that I now have to shift perspective and expectation. Put familiar tools away, and take out others shelved six months previous.

Gardening is about faith, of subscribing to the experience of dying and rising, year after year. Each dying and each rising is a decision, a painful one. We let go of one assumption, one perspective, to take on another, knowing full well it has a pretty short sunset clause. But not so short that we can’t reach accommodation, enter into a new mode of being. Trowel is exchanged for snow shovel; hiking boots for ski boots; porch light for lamp light.

And that’s why Christmas has to go. It comes too soon, arriving in mid-transition of fall into winter, and working against the score begun in Advent. In Advent we set a rhythm that should run clear and fluid to the shoreline of Easter, expanding in time with the rising arc of the sun. But Christmas juts in with a brassy score, out of tune with the themes of reflection, reconciliation, renewal. It’s a season of celebration at odds with the meteorological season and the spiritual one. For me it’s the shamwow commercial interrupting Schubert’s Symphony No. 9.

And much of it is sheer manufacture:  the shepherds, angel, star, magi etc. The Puritans of Boston did not find much endearing about Christmas, and chose to ban it with a law that stood for 22 years, and custom that lasted into the early 19th century.

. . .it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county."  -- the General Court, Massachusetts Bay Colony May 11, 1659

Granted, there is not much endearing about Puritan perspective. But in the case of Christmas, I think they were on the right track, if not for the right reasons (resentment towards the Church of England). It is just 12 days long but long enough to disrupt the flow, and short-circuit the current that began flowing in First Advent. Epiphany becomes an afterthought, or roundabout for redirection. And instead of one culmination of the church year, Easter, we have a second highest holy day in which to certify our piety. 

Deleting Christmas does not mean deleting the Incarnation. That must be brought back into Advent, its proper birthplace, and woven into the salvation story score. Just get rid of the other trappings, liturgical, ecclesiastical, and most definitely commercial. Otherwise, we just risk perpetuating an abbreviated experience of Christ’s journey to the Passion, reducing it to something like: He’s here! He’s great! He died! He’s alive! See you next Christmas.

How hard can it be, assuming you are not on the Altar Guild or the Standing Commission for Liturgy and Music, to forgo assembling Nativity scenes and orchestrating pageants, or to cancel caroling, and lay off the greening and de-greening? Okay, pretty darn hard if you have to face the pleas of your kids or the kids in Sunday School, or an irate music director. But it can be done, and in a way that incorporates all sensibilities.
 
Imagine four distinct but interwoven seasons: Advent-Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost. Each timed to the arc of the sun and the track of the jet stream. With one breath you fall from autumn into winter, and it carries you through to spring. Submerge and reemerge, wade into the Jordan and walk out drowning in the Holy Spirit, anointed with Good News to share on the shores of Galilee.

Standby

A year without a word may seem counterproductive for a product that supposedly has a shelf life measured in minutes, not months. But this production has been stalled at Act Two, Scene One, the better part of a year. Partly by procrastination, at least for the first quarter; and then gradually, and more assuredly, by intent.

Sabbaticals are usually seen as a time to stand apart from the ordinary commerce of your daily life, a time carved out to study, assess, reflect, and refresh. Then return to reengage whatever pastime or responsibility you needed relief from in the first place. Who takes a sabbatical from a virtual wayside on life’s expressway. I guess I do.




Last April at O’Hare I was on standby for a flight to Camp Allen Texas for four hours. An unplanned, and, at first, underappreciated four hours. I spent the first hour trying to cut my idle time to a minimum, and the rest realizing it was more of a pardon than a sentence.

Given a choice, which is more precious: our time (our being) or our status (our standing)? In this era of social media and 24/7, standing apart is easily outshined by standing out. No one on Facebook or My Space or Blogspot or LinkedIn or any other avenue of self-expression is laboring incognito, even under a pseudonym. We want to be noticed. We want to read. We want to be affirmed. And so we post, telling the world—or our tribe—what we plan, what we have done, or what we have lost.

Tagging and tweeting and texting can be lifelines—as we have seen with the world’s response to the cry from Haiti. Or avenues for forming or feeding community. Or just diversions from doing our laundry, or alternatives to living with the stillness, learning to just be.

So for a little over a year I have chosen to be on standby; standing down and standing apart, letting the remnants of last year’s trauma lie fallow, while attending to other fields and avenues. This is not in the footsteps so much of Thomas Merton’s epiphany in blindly picking a line from the Gospel of Luke: “Behold, thou shalt be silent.” It is, though, in concert with the Cistercian principle of avoiding unnecessary speaking, a practice that opens pathways for prayer, and clearings for presence.

I cannot point to any profound epiphanies during this recess from Tidings. That should not be surprising since the point is to leave a place fallow, untended, untilled. And it was a limited sabbatical. My keyboard was quite active on other accounts.

Everything that needed to be said in our loss of our companions, Suki and Milo, was said a year ago. More is being written in the embrace of new companions, Shiro and Misty.


It’s time once more to stand up. We are cleared for takeoff.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats

Shattered

Our hearts are shattered. At half past noon on the last day of 2008 we whispered our final prayers for Milo and wrapped him in our last embrace as the overdose of anesthetic drug traveled through the tube that for five days had been his lifeline.

Nineteen days ago my wife Joanne and I drove him home from western New York where he had been in the care of a rescue organization, and three days later we were in an examining room at the Animal Emergency and Treatment Center in Grayslake, Illinois. He was losing weight and refusing to eat, no matter what we proffered—raw hamburger, tuna, chicken, and Gerbers augmented with chicken broth. At 35 pounds when we picked him up he was small for an American Eskimo and Samoyed mix, and getting smaller. Depression response, so we thought, and with fluids, Pepcid, and anti-nausea meds he might come around. But he didn’t, and back it was to Grayslake for a three-day stay with more fluids and monitoring. The day after Christmas he was back again, having still not eaten, and the next day an ultrasound revealed the problem: an obstruction in his stomach and small intestine. The surgeons found four perforations of the bowel along a critical stretch of the intestine between the pancreas and the bile duct. The culprit was a small towel or washcloth that had worked against its purpose, puncturing his intestinal tract and fouling his abdominal cavity. That section was removed and Milo seemed to be recovering better than anyone expected. But 36 hours later he had fluid build-up and a fever, and we faced the decision to authorize a second surgery that promised at best a 30 percent chance of success.

Be it a sliver of hope, or a prayer of a chance, we are not inclined to surrender a soul companion to dire odds or cost-benefit analysis. So we said yes, proceed with surgery. It went well, as before. Milo, for all he has been through, beginning with his first year of life in a puppy mill, does not give up. He showed us an enormous need to be companion and be companioned, but he could not defeat the odds or the infection. At the same point as before, the early hours of the second morning post surgery, the fever returned, he vomited, and the culture confirmed our fears, the repair was leaking into the cavity again. Not enough space was left of good tissue to give any chance for another surgery. So we made that ultimate decision to remove Milo from any more pain, any more invasions, and any more life. It was peaceful, and sacramental as we surrendered him to God’s boundless grace.

The night before, a dinner plate I was heating in the microwave popped, and a chunk was broken off the rim. A signal of what was coming that morning? All I know is life is fractured by the heat of our transactions with one another. We beckon, we bind, and sometimes despite our best efforts and intentions, we break apart, for what we have done or left undone, or we simply are undone by actions beyond our agency or authority. Solace proves elusive in the roundabout of grief and regret.

We scrape up the broken bits, and reassemble what we can of our confidence and convictions, much as we did a month before in the loss of our first rescue, Suki. Healing, we know, is at the threshold, and somewhere not too distant the breath of hope. As we heard last Sunday in John: “What has come into being in him was life; and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

A Season for Addition

Advent tends to be a season of subtraction, or at least that is the theme of the lessons. Two Sundays ago we heard John the Baptist quoting Isaiah to the Levites: “Make straight the way of the Lord,” the subtext being clear out the clutter, remove all impediments to God’s action in the world. And what action it will be: delivery of the Word incarnate.

In southern Wisconsin our household has been removing impediments, namely snow, lots of snow, in making our driveway straight for the important but more prosaic deliveries from USPS and UPS. And that has meant a lot of subtraction through heavy lifting.

But Advent for us has been more about addition than subtraction. Meet Milo, a two year and three month American Eskimo with some possible Samoyed genes, who was raised in an Amish puppy mill (yes, we also had a double take).

He spent his first year there and was on the kill list when Joyful Rescues out of Cuba, New York picked him up and nurtured him, until we arrived December 12. A harrowing 600 miles later through lake-effect snow most of the way we were back in southern Wisconsin with our new addition.

Like Suki (who passed away November 21) we met Milo on the internet, and lost our hearts to him. Their resemblance is so close it almost is as if Suki is looking at us through Milo’s eyes. But Milo is a very different dog. For one thing, he is more fearful, a common trait among puppy mill dogs. And more anxious about change, which has landed him in the emergency animal hospital in Grayslake (where Suki was treated for lymphoma). Gastroenteritis, mouth ulcers, and a loss of appetite (presumably because it hurts to eat) has put him on IV fluids, and in the intensive care unit for three days. Today we bring him home, and hope and pray the drugs and our love will ease the pain and restore his appetite. Not just for food but for his new family.

The snow is now pouring out of the cloud cover, erasing yesterday’s efforts, and challenging us to locate the path that brought us home, let alone straightening it. It is Christmas eve, and some 2,000 years ago as the story goes, a family left the byways for a shelter, and delivered to us the sum of all our hopes. So let us praise addition.

Requiem

She is gone. Suki, our Samoyed-Golden Lab companion, yard monitor, foot warmer, pillow opportunist, and front door herald has exited this stage with lines still waiting to be delivered. At Grayslake Animal Emergency Treatment Center they call her their ‘miracle dog’, a testimony to her resilience as a stage 5B (there is no stage 5C) lymphoma survivor. For five months and 20 some chemo treatments she held off and beat down the renegade cells to the point where she could be recognized, however tentatively, hopefully, as in remission.

Remission is not cure. We knew it would be a matter of time, but not this soon, not this sudden. Cancer doesn’t serve notice with much regard to the commerce of daily life—whether it be a backyard barbecue, a roadtrip for reunion, or in the case last week, the Annual Convention of the Diocese of Chicago. She was clear of tumors in all the vital organs, but the cancer found an opening where blood tests won’t work, her central nervous system.

At Evening Prayer on Friday, perhaps during the Phos Hilaron or Psalm 107, as the voices sanctified the Westin Hotel’s Grand Ballroom, my wife and I were in our room, juggling the consequences of owning or evading the decision to administer the drugs that would take her life and the life of the cells that had betrayed her. There was no doubt what was the right choice—she was unresponsive, her central nervous system totally compromised, and no arsenal of drugs at hand that could fend off or forestall the inevitable. The steroid injection that morning had been the last volley, to little effect. So we said yes, for her and not as much for us.

By saying yes five months ago when she collapsed on our porch and we rushed her to the emergency treatment center, we had given her a fighting chance to beat back the cancer and live. Which she did, a reflection of her tenacity and devotion to life. We had said yes to her five and half years ago when on a whim we stopped at the humane shelter in Pontiac, Illinois and invited her into our life, our home, our hearts.

There is awesome power in that simple word, yes, whether it comes as a signature on an adoption form, or in a phone call authorizing the ultimate intervention. When we drove her home the first day of the New Year 2003 we had some inkling we were acting the part of angels, or angel helpers, and that was occasionally reinforced when she found a way to be snared in the rose bush brambles or caught up in the wire fencing. Last June though we realized with far more trepidation what it means to be the agent for sustaining life.

Any interaction with creation is by nature, at some base level, sacramental, and more so where develops a deep, abiding relationship. That is what we had with Suki. She entered our lives, and purchased a portion of our souls, and we the same. And she and we were changed.

There is a void in our house and about our yard, but not in our hearts. There she still prances to greet us, there she still barks at the neighbor dogs, there she still moans when dinner is late, and there she still nestles at our feet on our patio or on our bed. She did not ask to be saved five and a half years ago, or five days ago. All she said was, yes, let us be.

Standing on the patio now, the beds now filled with the brown and gray bones of a season ended, I find myself still anticipating the pop of the dog door flap and scrape of nails on paving stones. The silence of this season is all pervading. But it will change. Soon our other rescue Samoyed, Christopher, will come out to survey the space, do his business, and maybe even pick up the patrol that Suki would have traced the full perimeter of our yard. For now, I whisper the words and harvest some assurance from the commendation: All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Reemergence

I am finding gardening to be a hit or miss proposition--missed opportunities, inopportune monsoons or droughts (while on vacation usually), missed minor infestations of weeds or disease that loom to biblical stature, much like the zebra mussels blanketing Lake Michigan, and the occasional serendipitous emergence.

A year ago this August I capped my stream embankment creation with three spindly toadflax plants as a backdrop for the streamside rocks. Good to zone 4 with perfectly supple stems to create some movement in the breeze, and, if I had read more of its bio, prone to spreading. Toadflax is a European transplant, adapted to Mediterranean climate, and just the thing to fringe a patio striving for echoes of Tuscany or the Peloponesian pennisula.

Then spring came and the steady emergence of all those perennial investments (a perennial gardener is one who is perennially investing). Except the toadflax. In their designated parish nothing was emerging from the winter kill stem clumps. So I wrote them off and later deposited some husker penstemmon, which didnt so much flow as slump before the wind. This was after vainly searching the nurseries for toadflax and finally deciding I wouldn't be suckered again into a plant of ambivalent constitution (like the butterfly bush).

Come July the Japanese beetles arrived with an appetite for our Lindens, willows, roses and primrose. And as they multiplied I noticed some spires erupting all over the streambank, and the pond beds and around the porch stairs: the progeny of the late toadflax. Hundreds of shoots, crowding the penstemmon, and poking up through the primrose and cranesbill. The legacy of those half dozen stems making music with the breeze.

Purple toadflax, Linaria purpurea native to the Mediterranean basin and cultivated as a garden plant in North America. Grows to three feet when mature. Purple to pink flowers appear in mid-summer. Prolific self-seeder. Medicinal use as a laxative or an ointment to treat hemorrhoids and ulcers.

There are other wonders, testimonies to nature coloring outside the gardener's preconceptions. Those butterfly bushes? My first three did expire, seemingly, but a year after moving a dead stalk to my island bed one came back. In that same bed another butterfly bush, different variant, appeared one spring, and who knows how that was parented?

Somewhere in this is a lesson on church planting and revitalization. A money stream, deep research, creative and inspiring leadership, and support from local churches is no guarantee the plant will take root and thrive. Sometimes a congregation takes root in unexpected but fertile soil; or reemerges after being given up for lost. Careful planning and resources do work, as seen every Sunday at Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Waukegan where worshippers fill every pew and spill out into the narthax and beyond,the result of a partnership in planting between area churches and the diocesan office. And now in Grayslake at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church the congregation of Nuestra Senora has provided the rootstock for an emerging Hispanic congregation there, one that was not part of our five year strategic plan in 2003.

So with the garden I continue to plot out arrangements; match plants to sun, and soil, and drainage; and, hopefully more often, allow more space for resurgent toadflax.

Just do it!

Hospitality, welcoming ministry, or more technically—reception process—are in vogue as the church continues to test its aptitude for evangelization. We plan for it and program it, and unleash ad campaigns (Hungry Hearts,We're Here for You, We Live in Very Complicated Times, and most recently, Put Your Faith to Work); and grand ventures (Decade of Evangelism, 20/20). And having lived through all of these, I think we would be better off with Nike’s approach: Just do it.


On a flight into Portland, Oregon this past Thursday night, my wife and I found a church just doing it (maybe that’s the thing in Nike’s corporate home). We stayed at the Quality Inn near the airport for a little rest before driving on to Walla Walla, Washington the next day. The staff were responsive and friendly, the rooms well-tended and clean, and free breakfast offered at the inn’s café. Not that unusual for a well-managed inn, particularly one with a high aspiration name, but this particular lodging is owned by the Eastside Four Square Gospel Church.
The connection was clear but not over the top: just a sign below the marquee and a plaque in the inn lobby. And in the lobby a patient and friendly clerk, and beside the counter an easel with poster inviting guests to add a donation to their bill to support a transitional housing ministry in Portland, My Father’s House. Which we did (point of sale does work in the right setting). No testimonial flyers with your room key card, no bibles on the pillows, and no invitations to attend Bible study or prayer services. Rather low key for an evangelical church.


Across the driveway is the Eastside Four Square Gospel café offering free breakfast (waffles, biscuits, muffins, cereal, hard boiled eggs, coffee and juice) to inn guests, and again friendly, even eager, service. The only church goods present there are the literature in a tract rack. It’s all about hospitality and comfort, just as the names of most chain inns connote. Walking out the door, you leave with two impressions: welcomed and well-fed; and your measure of the people at Four Square is much more positive than if you had been blanketed with doctrine and devotional pitches. No one invited us to attend a service or a meeting, nor did anyone hand out literature or point out the tract rack. The whole focus was on service and welcoming. This may reflect the religion averse nature of the Northwest, but I suspect the approach would be on target in Bucktown, Bolingbrook or Buffalo Grove. It’s what is known in emergent church as contextual faith: orienting the church to the community it serves. We are doing this to some degree in the Diocese of Chicago—All Saints in Ravenswood, St. Gregory’s in Deerfield, Epiphany on the Near West Side, and Trinity, Aurora come to mind—but we could do more, much more.


So your reading assignment: Radical Hospitality, and Take This Bread.