Kirkepiscatoid

^{Psalm 124}

¹If it had not been the Lord who was on our side—let Israel now say—

²if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us,

³then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us;

⁴then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us;

⁵then over us would have gone the raging waters.

⁶Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.

⁷We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.

⁸Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

I have been working backwards through the Psalms as a spiritual exercise, starting with 150 and doing one every day till I get back to Psalm 1.

It is a story of the deliverance of the Jews, but it is a story of my deliverance, also. Maybe it is a story of your deliverance! I like it in its entirety, but I especially like v.7: “We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.”

Ok, I want you to imagine this bird, with a string still hanging from his leg and the noose around his ankle, with a broken end dangling.

I remember this moment in my life. The exact moment. I was 23 years old. Without going into a great deal of detail, I grew up in a sea of alcohol-fueled physical abuse. I was taught to think absolutely bizarre ways of "making children mind" was ok. There was a moment, when I was 23, that I no longer agreed to be an abused child, psychologically. My parents and I were supposed to go out for their anniversary. Dad was drunk. Very drunk. And behind the wheel. I refused to get in the car. At first, I tried cajoling and wheedling to talk him out. It just made him madder. Finally, I said, "No, I'm not going, then."

He then proceeded to launch into a tirade of what he was going to do to me if I didn't get in the car. I still remember my mom crying, begging me to get in the car, berating me for "causing trouble with your dad." I kept walking. He got out of the car and told me if I didn't get in, he would kill me--that he could chase me down and break my neck. I stopped and said, "Yes you can. But I still will not have gotten in the car." I kept walking, shaking, fearing he’d chase after me, but did it anyway. He did not follow. It was the moment I escaped the snare, the string still on my ankle. He never physically threatened me again from that moment on. My mom endured his abuse about five more years, but eventually they divorced. He remarried, I'm sure he still abuses his second wife, but he is a burned out shell of the threat he used to be, an old man who is much more mellow than in those days and far less explosive.

Then you know, years go by and, one day, I looked down, and the string was gone. It rotted off, or the noose loosened enough that I had stepped out of it and didn't even know it. The only thing left was it left a mark around my ankle. A scar.

Can you think back and remember “the moments of your deliverance?” The exact moments? Maybe they are not as dramatic as mine; maybe they are more dramatic, but I bet you can. In that moment, you can still feel the string on your ankle although it long rotted off.

I think about that in the Eucharistic Prayer when we say, “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption” b/c I can still remember those moments. I think about that when we say about Christ in the EP, “to live and die as one of us.” Wow, that means to feel our pain, our tragedy, and also our joy, our comedy.

The other problem with having had that snare on our legs, figuratively speaking, is that sometimes we feel the pain of that snare even when it no longer is real--sort of like how amputees feel "phantom limb pain."

Over the weekend, I had to go through a situation at our church where I did not speak up about something I should have spoken up about. I found myself incredibly angry at myself for not being able to articulate my dissent sooner. I was angry that this person who I considered an integral friend in my life was putting me in a situation where I had to fight that old feeling of "not speaking up to not make trouble." Even though I was in no danger of physical abuse anymore, I realized the old thread of physical abuse checkered my reality and made me cowardly to tell the truth.

But you know, that psalm is not just about our past. It’s about “deliverances yet to come.” Nothing earth-shattering perhaps, just the "cares of the world". They weigh us down. There are deliverances from some of these yet to come. They will feel wonderful. Things just don’t always feel great right this moment.

The bulk of this situation in my life has defused as of this morning, but I know there are some hard realities of it. I will have to deal with the tension it caused. I will have to reconcile some issues with this friend. I am not looking forward to it. But it will be ok. I'm sure of that. Maybe not ok like "everyone lives happily ever after" but it will level out somehow. I just don't like the work of doing it.

Oh, I also wanted to put a link up if any of you all were interesting in donating to help flood relief in the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa. If you use this link, in the comments section you might mention it is in honor of Team Pohick!

Great story to follow...

Every morning at breakfast, Team Pohick did a morning devotional based on Forward Day by Day. Wednesday's lesson was from Judges, Ch. 13, when Manoah and his wife got a lesson in recognizing angels. The commentary in FDBD talked about being smart enough to recognize angels when you encounter them. Here was their devotional lesson for the day (courtesy of Forward Day by Day):

Judges 13:15-24. Manoah did not know that [the man] was the angel of the LORD.

Do you believe in angels? I'm not talking about decorative figurines or the smiling cherubs of greeting cards. Angels are divine spokespersons. Do you believe in the kinds of angels who appear in the Bible?

There are two kinds of angels in the Bible. The first is impossible to mistake for anything else--a knock-you-down, in-your-face confrontation with the supernatural. Such angels usually say, before they get to their message, "Don't be afraid!" They say that because people are terrified of them.

The second kind of angel, like the one in today's reading from Judges, is usually mistaken for something else. Not only do they not frighten us, but we may not even give them a thought, so ordinary do they seem. Be careful, for you never know through whom the Lord will speak to you. Maybe through your child. Or your spouse. Or your boss. The postman, the cab driver, the person next to you in the checkout line, the politician you dislike, the homeless person on the street. Or that irritating, irascible jerk in the next office. Even your worst enemy. "Some have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:2).

Frank was having a bad day on Thursday. He discovered that he was going to have to remove all of the insulation under his house because of the risk of mold, and replace it. We went out and bought Tyvek suits and balaclavas, expecting to have to crawl around in the muck and goo of Frank's crawl space. Keep in mind the ages of Team Pohick range from 48 to 68. In other words, the spirit is willing but the knees, hips, and shoulders are weak! But just as we had resigned ourselves to the task, along came a group of age 20something Americorps volunteers, shown in the picture above.

Well, after that devotional lesson, we knew what angels look like, by golly! They were more than willing to do the work but didn't have the Tyvek suits....well, we supplied them, and it was all good!

If you have a chance, donate to Americorps. These are neat young folks. This group came from Cedar Rapids and although there is plenty of flood damage there for them to stay busy, some were dispatched to Iowa City. Some of them have previously learned about life the hard way, some are single parents, some are just not sure what to do next in life. But they are learning great lessons on volunteerism. We hope we gave them some degree of inspiration on the concept that volunteerism is a lifelong activity. Meanwhile, keep these angels unawares in your prayers.

Meet Team Pohick...well, Team Pohick plus one Missourian and one Iowegian. This is the group I joined up with to do flood relief, from Pohick Episcopal Church, Lorton, VA. The nucleus of Team Pohick has been to Katrina three times, so these people KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING when it comes to flood relief. This team went out on a mission trip to Iowa City the week of Aug, 11, 2008 to help in the flooded Riverside district of Iowa City, IA. Our tasks included painting, yard work, tree/bush removal, disinfecting gutted houses, and removing wet gross drywall and bathroom fixtures, just to name a few assorted tasks.

I figured out very quickly, as the "newbie" to just do what they told me to do!

The guys on Team Pohick are Tom, Mo, and Grant; the women are leader Kathy and Edde (short for Edwardene...what a great name...I'm betting her dad was named Edward????) The add-ons were me and Deacon Martha of the diocese of Iowa.

The photo was taken on "Frank's front porch." Frank was our favorite homeowner in the neighborhood and his story was very poignant. His wife recently became wheelchair bound. He bought this house and rehabbed it to make it handicap accessible, but it flooded before she could move in. Frank and his contractor buddy Roger were rehabbing it all over again from scratch. We did a lot of work at Frank's house, and it's no concidence our "brush with angels unawares" happened at Frank's house (more on that in an upcoming post).

Team Pohick is a "work hard, play hard" team in every sense of the word, and I was honored to be a part of the team, even if only for a few days!

Well, y'all, I am off to Iowa City today to spend a little of my vacation time helping do some cleanup under the auspices of the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa.

It started a few months ago, when B. at our church made an announcement about the severe spring flooding in Iowa and how it had affected her friends, and she asked for our prayers and our donations. I was so struck by the passion of her request, it sort of boiled in my brain for months.

I hope to be able to blog while there but if not, I'll give you all a rundown upon my return. Should be interesting and just a little adventurous!

This week's Gospel was Matthew's "Jesus walks on water, Peter gives it a go, doesn't fare terribly well." Wallace geared his sermon towards the fact this story occurs on the "fourth watch" (3-6 a.m.) and how a lot of the tumult, the stress, the worry in our life seems to hit us at 3 a.m.

The whole “sea, wind, tumult” thing was working on me today. All the talk about boats and waves and oceans and singing about peril on the see made me think of my “ocean of pasture” here in NE Missouri...with wind and thunderstorms and waving hay and green skies and hail, and oh, yeah...tornadoes. When I was sitting outside last night, enjoying the stars and the occasional meteor (after all, it IS the season for the Perseids...I have never outgrown the Perseids!), it was mostly calm, and then the wind picked up and made the leaves on my cottonwood tree rattle and hiss. You could feel the power of an incoming front. I sat out in it a while, even zipped in the house to put on a long sleeved shirt and grab a blanket so I could still sit outside in the reclining lawn chair and be in the middle of it and feel its power.

I can often totally identify with Peter. Every time I take one of those "What Disciple are you?" tests, I always score out as Peter. My friends have heard me say many times, “If you want me to (fill lin the blank), just say so, and I will.” Shades of “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water”! Then Peter gets distracted by the wind and loses his focus on Jesus. Well, I can identify with THAT, too...that things can distract me and cause me to lose my focus on Christ. But Peter, being a guy that doesn't mince words, as he sinks, he doesn’t know much else to do except say “Lord, save me!” (Kyrie elaison). Hey, Peter is a heartfelt and direct kind of guy! No sense having any pretense about what is going on, he’s going to be pulled under in the storm and he’s a direct enough kind of guy to cut to the chase there! Like Peter, I know enough to just cut straight to the chase and admit I’m in over my head.

Fact of the matter is, though, that in our stormy sea of the cares of the world, it is so tempting to think, “Oh, Lord, the sea is so big and my boat is so small.” Well, hell, it IS big sometimes. Even if it’s not that big, it can FEEL big...and lonesome. But just like Peter blurting out “Lord, save me!”, God is there to pluck us out. Now that doesn’t mean we won’t be wet after this whole encounter. I have a feeling the part they don’t talk about in that story is that Peter felt a little like the proverbial drowned rat even after Jesus pulled him up....probably had a little water in his lungs from the stormy blasts of the waves, he’s soaked, he feels like I did the time I almost drowned when I got caught in a rip tide and an undertow out in Baja California, Mexico when I was thirteen. I was always a strong swimmer, but was out swimming probably just a little further than I ought to have been (I was out where the surfers were starting to surf in from,) and that stupid current just took me with it. Two surfers chased me down and caught me. I was in good enough shape to sit spraddle legged on one of their surfboards and ride back in, but I will never forget the feeling of helplessness as I felt my strength failing and was starting to be unable to keep my head above water, or the embarrassment that I had to be plucked out of the water.

One of the surfer dudes was trying to make me feel a little better, saying, “Kid, any of us can get caught in a rip tide if you’re out this far. You just had never experienced it and didn’t realize the thing to do was let go, not fight it. Next time, just let it take you till it dies out further out. You just have further back to swim, that’s all.”

Now there’s a concept...let go, don’t fight.

That is NOT an easy concept for me. 95% of where I got in this old world, I had to fight to get there. Letting go seems 180 degrees against my intuition at best, and just plain “wrong” at worst.

I’m reminded of a story my friend A. tells. He was the doc for the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. That meant he had to do jumps, same as Airborne, as part of his training. They were teaching him a trick where if you need to drop altitude in a short burst to get away from everyone else’s canopy, you can do this by maneuvering the chute a little. The problem is that you will literally free fall 30-50 feet when you do this maneuver...but sooner or later your chute WILL catch air and pull you back up to a normal descent. He said the first time he did this maneuver, his life literally flashed before him, it was that scary, to be free falling and realize you potentially could go “splat” at the end of this free falling. But he said, “I had to trust my instructor, and trust what he told me and sure enough, I didn’t panic and my chute caught air again and everything was cool.” It takes some doing to be ok with free falling in this world, yet knowing at some level that God will catch you and your chute will catch air again. Some of us can never do it. Some of us can. Personally, I’d rather be like Peter, swing my leg over that ol’ boat and say, “Lord, just tell me and I’ll do it!” even if the possibility exists for me to be afraid. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right????

Ok, another secret...I am a Book of Common Prayer junkie. I like collecting them from all over the world, different versions over history, etc. There are always parts of every version that I like to inscribe in my heart. For instance, in the Eucharistic Prayer in the 1661, I really dig the line:

"Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth." (I like the idea of church being militant, revolutionary, etc.)

But post-Lambeth, it was the prayer in the Church of Ireland's BCP for Christian unity that got to me...

FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, the Prince
of Peace; Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are
in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and prejudice, and
whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord: that, as
there is but one Body, and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one
Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may
henceforth be all of one heart, and of one soul, united in one holy bond
of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one
mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.


I like the line, "Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions."

Note that it's not that "they" are in. It's "we". As Pogo says, "We have met the enemy and they is us."

There is a lesson in here for me, although I continue to struggle and pray that people finally "get" the concept of "the inclusive church." This struggle puts me in danger if I do not continue to cross-check my heart. I could let it eat me alive with anger and sarcasm. I can't just get mad. I have to pray, and I have to live in a way that models inclusivity. That is not always easy! It is hard for me to feel inclusive about haughty people, mean people (I really need one of those bumper stickers that says "mean people suck"), indecisive nebbish-y sort of people, people who whine, clingy people, people who can't seem to get off their fat ass and change their life...you get the drift. Being inclusive to GLBT folks is easy for me compared to being inclusive to people with what I consider "dis-likeable traits". But you know what, exclusive behavior stops us from seeing the light of God in people, and if I am going to expect people who find inclusivity to GLBT folks difficult to change their perspective, I have to improve on my own habits of exclusivity.

If I cannot learn to be inclusive to those groups of people, then all my posturing about the inclusivity of GLBT people is for naught. It's all for social conscience and show.

This week, I think I am going to give more attention to praying to change these behaviors of exclusivity in myself and see what pops up. But if I am serious about the inclusive Church, I have to be serious about the exclusive parts of me.