British Evasion #11, August 13, 2015

British Evasion #11

On Sunday I took a break from my studies on St Augustine here in Oxford and made a day trip to London.  I left out on a bus early in the morning because I wanted to go back to St Martin in the Fields and see Sam Wells who was dean of Duke Chapel while Irie and I were in Durham and is now priest at St Martin.

After getting off the bus at Victoria station, I made the walk past Buckingham Palace, down the Mall at St James Park and right into the hustle and bustle of Trafalgar Square. It was amazing to me at 9am on a Sunday how busy the city already was with cars, and trucks, buses and masses and masses of people all negotiating the traffic lights and making their way around the square. And on the hill overlooking the square, high above all the din of traffic crowds stood St Martin with its carillon of bells chiming the hour and summoning the people to worship and to sanctuary. 

I made my way around the square, making sure to look right and then left for oncoming traffic and not left and then right as I would in America. Around me were scores of Chinese tourists, some wearing masks.  A group of protesters were shouting slogans with placards saying "Black Lives Matter".  A bagpiper dressed in a Scottish kilt was playing over the top of the protesters. I moved up the hill towards the church and could then see the homeless just beginning to stir from the shop alcoves they called home the night before. There was the feint smell of urine in the morning air. A beggar asked for spare coin.

I came to the the giant granite steps of St Martin where a dozen or so people were seated looking out over the square. Some were obviously homeless. Others were tourists. Perhaps some were waiting on the steps before entering the church to worship. All of there in the porch were street people. 

I ascended the steps and was caught of guard, stunned even, by the centerpiece image I saw carved out of a rock standing in the middle of the church's covered porch. I was surprised at my reaction, as I had seen the image before on my first visit to St Martin's two weeks ago. But it is just so breathtakingly stunning and graphic even. A life-size newborn baby, with umbilical cord still intact, rising up out of the monument as if cradled in he rock. And beneath the child, words from the Prologue of John's Gospel stretching all the way around the sculpture: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh and dwelled among us."

I stood over the monument and looked out over the square and what I can see of the city beyond with all its busses and taxis and masses of people. "This," I thought to myself, "this is why he came --to be one with these people, the people of these streets.  He took on flesh for the sake of their salvation, their redemption, our redemption."

I turned and walked inside and a friendly, African-looking woman handed me an order of service with a smile.  "Welcome," she said graciously in her African accent.  I sat down, trying to be as close to the end of a pew as possible without either sitting in the center aisle or on the wings where I might be staring at a column the whole service. I gave up on the hope of being on the end, and settled for scooting down right into the middle of the pew.  I looked up and then noticed for the first time the diversity of the congregation inside this sanctuary.

There were more dark-skinned, African looking people -- mostly women wearing beautiful dashikis of every color. There were more homeless scattered across the pews, some who looked to be there as a part of the worshiping community and others who appeared perhaps to just be looking for a quiet place to rest. There were young and old, with an especially large number of pilgrim-like tourists carrying backpacks and looking to be somewhere in their late 20s.  There was what appeared to be the older, regular community of typical Anglican worshipers who greeted and chatted with one another with familiarity. Then, most curious, in the front row, just left of the chancel was a woman dressed completely from head to toe in a bumblebee outfit. I tried not to stare, but wondered if it would be inappropriate to take a quick picture.  I thought better of that, but then made a little joke to myself about what she might say if maybe I asked her later why she is dressed this way. "None of your beeswax," she says back.  I smiled.  All the people from the streets are now here as the organ prelude begins.

I looked down at my order of worship and Was disappointed to see that Dr Wells would not be preaching this day. "What is it about these Anglicans," I wondered to myself.  "Their priests only seem to preach about half the time."  I then began ruminating on the actual meaning of that, concluding that there's something important being said in that: That the sermon or the preacher isn't what it's all about.  That something else is going on.  Something perhaps deeper.  Something beyond words.

Yet, it's words which then leveled me in the next moment -- words, not from a preacher or priest, but from one of the people who had come into the church from the streets sometime in the past few days. I was reading through the parish newsletter inserted in the order of service and there was an article from Dr. Wells.  In it he writes about readying himself for morning prayer and thumbing through the prayer requests left by visitors on the board which are to be offered to God in the service. One is a prayer from someone homeless.  Another is a prayer from someone who has lost their husband. But then Wells says his eyes fell on this prayer:

"For the baby I aborted: I love you despite never meeting you.  I hope you're with me until I have the chance to explain why the timing wasn't right in person. Until then, I must let go. xxx"

The words overwhelmed me. Their pain, their sorrow, their lament, their truth. I sat with the words as the prelude ended and the service began with the first words of the opening hymn: 

 

"Author of life divine . . ."

And then words of confession:

" . . . For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past . . ."

Then absolution:

"The almighty and merciful Lord grant you pardon for all your sins."

The woman's words remained with me throughout the rest of the liturgy and singing.  The sermon, which was from a newer priest, Rev Alistair McKay, was about the alienation he felt growing up and his struggles to believe in God in the face his own painful experiences of exclusion as a child.  This sent him on a prodigal-like sojourn in the far country, which he described as an attempt to fill what he called a deep "hunger" he had for God.  Then somewhere about halfway through the sermon Rev McKay quoted the words of Jesus from the day's Gospel lesson: "I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will not be hungry."  

The amen was said and the collection bag went round, but the words stayed with me -- those both of the woman in her prayer, and, most deeply, one single word from Jesus: "Whoever".

The preparation of the table began and as I prepared myself to receive communion I suddenly remembered something Augustine said in the "Confessions" that we talked about in class the week before. He asked the readers of his book that they might remember his mother Monica before the altar to take the sacrament.  As the Eucharistic Prayer began I remembered Monica.  Then I remembered the woman with the prayer. Then I begin to remember the names and faces of other women who have confided in me that they've had an abortion. I remembered them in that moment-- their pain, their sorrow, and their struggle to find peace.  I held the images of their faces in my mind and remembered them also before God.  And then I did what the woman in the prayer asked the church to do, I remembered  the baby she aborted. I had no image to see in my mind for this baby and it troubled me; but then the image of the baby in the sculpture outside the church came to my mind.  I could see him in my mind.  He was there, like some kind of an icon -- an image of all babies, everywhere, rising up from lifeless rock into flesh with umbilical cord still attached -- forever attached.  

I sat there in the pews and remembered all these before God -- Monica, the mothers, their babies, and all others I could think of who might want or need to be remembered.  Then I fell to my knees with the rest of the congregation and together we prayed the Lord's Prayer:

" Father, who art in heaven . . . Give us this day our daily bread . . . Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us . . . For thine is the Kingdom . . . forever."

After the prayer Dr Wells stood before us and broke the Host saying, "The body of Christ broken for the life of the world."  Then all responded, "Lord, unite us in this sign."  Then we began to sing the Agnes Dei:

"Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.  Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.  Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: give us peace."

With that we rose from our knees and walked forward -- the African and homeless and the regular members and the tourists, and the one dressed like a bee, and everyone else, we came.

"Whoever" came.  All the people off the streets came.  And we brought "Whoever" with us. And we all came processing down the aisle to receive unto ourselves the Bread of Life.

British Evasion #10, August 8, 2015

British Evasion #10

Earlier this week I made an early morning trip up to see CS Lewis' gravesite in Headington in East Oxford about 3 miles from where I am staying. 

There are a myriad number of Lewis-related tours and pilgrimage destinations to see here in the city center (or "centre" as they spell it here in Oxford).  No Lewis fan can come to Oxford without a stopover at the Eagle and Child, where Lewis and Tolkien swapped manuscripts and banter over pints of good cheer. And while perhaps not as alluring as the pub, the schools Lewis was associated with here in Oxford give you some sense of the academic world he inhabited from a boy.

But I was on the hunt for something off the beaten path, something you can't find along the usual tourist trek.  I wanted to see something Lewis-related that is a little less hallowed than the Eagle and Child and something more ordinary than an Oxford University college.  I was searching for something less glorious than all this. I wanted to see something less -- and something more; I wanted to see Lewis' church -- the parish he worshiped in and the cemetery behind it where he is buried.

Apologist and Churchman

It is impossible to fully articulate what a contribution Lewis made to Christianity in the last half of the last century and has continued to make in the first part of this one. Both a Cambridge and Oxford professor and great Christian thinker, Lewis has given generations of Christians a logic and way of talking about faith that has helped them to make belief in God a reasonable choice.  In the shadow of two world wars, Lewis did his theology in what Bonhoeffer called "a world come of age".  An intellectually robust faith was necessary following the deaths of so many millions of people and the near destruction of a whole civilization. Lewis' writings gave us tools of metaphor, analogy, and story which allowed us to go on thinking and believing in God, trusting in His goodness, and hoping in His ultimate victory over the dark powers of evil.  

Perhaps this Lewis theme of faith in the Good is most beautifully captured in his book "The Last Battle" when Tirian says to Jill, "But courage, child: we are all between the paws of the true Aslan."  To trust that the world is in God's hands even amidst all the horrors of war and human cruelty was a much-needed word in the 20th century. It is still a needed word today.

Lewis' writings were extraordinary helpful to me personally as a young man as I endured my own soul-wrenching struggle to believe.  For Lewis's help in this most difficult part of my journey I will forever be thankful. He came to me just when I needed him most, just as I was ready to give up entirely. As I have spent the last week submersed in the Anglican tradition that Lewis was himself a part of I can see that they have an ever-present language to describe what Lewis did for me. They call it the communion of saints.  

Now, however, 15 years after my own participation in the archetypal battle to believe, and 10 years into the vocation of serving as a pastor, I have different, now even greater appreciation for Lewis. I appreciate him now not only as a great apologist for the church universal, but even more so as a congregant in the church particular.  In other words, I appreciate him now perhaps most deeply as a churchman.

It's Very Ordinariness 

Holy Trinity Church just isn't that easy get to -- or even know where it is. I left about 6:30am following the map on my phone and headed East across the Magdalen Bridge, into East Oxford, and then up the very steep hill toward  Headington. Once up the hill I went another mile or so into the Headington Quarry neighborhood where the Lewis house "The Kilns" is and where his parish was supposed to be.  That's when I discovered the map wasn't quite right.  Assisted by a very generous sign and two smaller but no less necessary signs, I finally made it to the little walking path that bent through the woods and then wound its way out into the back of the church yard. And that's when I took my first, and most-striking mental note: Lewis' church is quite uninspiring -- just like he told me it would be.

Made of grey stone, probably taken from the nearby quarry, small in size, and hidden away in its little neighborhood, Holy Trinity is not anything like all the grand churches I have visited on my British Evasion thus far. This is definitely not a cathedral, but a church for the commoners, a very ordinary-looking building, and probably just about the last church anyone would hope to find a transcendent spiritual experience -- which, again, is just like Lewis told me it would be.

It's a theme Lewis wrote often about. That the sacred is often hidden in the ordinary looking, like a prince princess is hidden among the poor in so many of the fairy tales he loved so much.  But therein lies the test of the heart; its the very ordinariness, the unspectacularity, the commonness of things which mask their inner beauty.  And for Lewis this was true -- perhaps especially true -- when it came to matters of faith.  The inner nature is always hidden, and only the pure of heart can see.  And it there, within the heart, that a battle -- cosmic in nature -- takes place for every individual soul.  Will they stay at it and come to see with their heart or will they be content to only see with the conceit of the eyes?

The Battleground

Lewis first started attending Holy Trinity as he was beginning to change his mind about being an atheist and philosophically accept the idea that there is a God. He was not yet a Christian, but what he called a "Theist" and began going to church out of what he described as a kind of obligatory citizenship or sense patriotic responsibility to "fly one's flag" in declaration of a belief in God.

But the church, it's demanding Anglican traditionalism and liturgy, and especially it's people were altogether uninspiring for the young Lewis.  Here's an important and self-conscious reflection on his view of the church at the time from his memoir of those days of conversion "Surprised by Joy":

"The idea of churchmanship was to me wholly unattractive . . . It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome "get together" affair.  I couldn't yet see how a concern of that sort should have anything to do with one's spiritual life.  To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters. And then the fussy, time-wasting botheration of it all!  The bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing."

For Lewis, a Romantic accustomed to an academic world where performance was evaluated on individual and not collective merit, this whole church thing was at once both much too communal and not near enough lovely.

And that was the battleground, Lewis later made clear. Many of the spiritual insights he later gave us in the plots of a scheming demon in "The Screwtape Letters" come from his reflections on his own struggling experience in the early days of attending church at Holy Trinity.  Here's the demon Screwtape describing to his junior nephew demon Wormwood how he might go about foiling the burgeoning faith of his "patient" who appears a lot like Lewis in those critical days of first attending church and considering becoming a Christian:

"[The patient] sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.  When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided.  You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours.  Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like 'the body of Christ' and the actual faces in the next pew."

Shadows and Substance

"Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response 

Falls the shadow"

These are the words T.S. Eliot penned of "The Hallow Men" who are neither in heaven nor earth. It is in the shadow of these things -- between heaven and earth, war and peace, the glory of things promised and the reality of things received, the sublime body of Christ eternal and the actual, struggling face of Christ temporal that a Christian must learn to live if he or she is to learn to be a Christian. And the place where and the people to whom a Christian goes to learn these things is, according to Lewis, called the Church.  

Lewis stayed with the church.  He kept going even though he didn't always like it very much. But in continuing to go he came to see it as something that it did not quite appear to be at first -- something sacred, and beautiful, and holy. Something heavenly cloaked in something very earthly.  

For Lewis it was there, in the local parish, among the creaking pews and beneath the banal sermons that one comes submit oneself to what God wants to do with them. And what is that?  To do what all Christians come to church to do -- to sit among creaking pews and pray the prayers of ancient people, and sing the hymns of bygone generations, and above all else to take the Sacrament which opens us to behold the mystery of faith and see with our spirits what we cannot see with our eyes.  

In other words, it there in church that we come ourselves be changed in our essence like the bread and wine are changed -- to be, ourselves, transubstantiated.

As Lewis reflected:

"But as I went on I saw the great merit of it.  I came up against different people of quite different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.  I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots.  It gets you out of your solitary conceit."

Call to Worship 

I round the corner into the Holy Trinity graveyard which is quaint and still, the graves still shadowed by the high trees at this early morning hour.  I walk the yard from north to south but discover Lewis' grave to be just as difficult to find as was his church. It strikes me immediately that there might be some kind of meaning to that. Finally, after walking to and fro for about 10 minutes I get eye of the plot.  There he lies amongst the tombs just as he set amongst the pews.  He is not alone or in just a pair of twos or three.  He is buried there in the same earth and dirt as all the common saints of Holy Trinity, and all the communion of saints everywhere.  

And then it occurs to me what is going on out in that graveyard -- what they're doing. They're doing together in death what they did together in life -- they're waiting. The congregation is waiting for the bell to ring and the call to worship to begin and for what is now only known in part to finally be seen and known in full.

In other words, the congregation is waiting for its hour of glory to begin.

British Evasion #9, August 6, 2015

British Evasion #9

Seven days ago I stood in the midst of what is perhaps Britain's greatest and also most challenging war memorial, the bombed out ruins of Coventry Cathedral.  It has taken a full week for me to process the experience of that place and all the modern nightmare and eternal vision it represents.  Now I am ready to write and to share that experience, to share my own experience of Britain's greatest testament to the hope for peace and for reconciliation amongst all peoples and nations.  And I share it on a day when such a testament is called for, necessary even -- August 6, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

A Story We Can't Ignore

On the night of November 14, 1940, German Luftwaffe unloaded a massive aerial bombardment on the city of Coventry in the northwest of England.  Six hundred civilians died in the blitz which decimated much of the city and brought its medieval cathedral to rubbled ruins.

It was there, amidst the death and destruction, that a fateful decision was made which would transform the life of the Cathedral and its calling in the world. Resisting the desire for vengeance, the Cathedral's leader, Provost Dick Howard, directed that the words "Father Forgive" be inscribed in the still-standing walls of the burned-out Cathedral sanctuary.  Then, just weeks after the bombing, Howard stood inside the ruins and broadcast a Christmas Day message on BBC in which he said:

"What we need to tell the world is this: that with Christ born again in our hearts today, we are trying, hard as it may be, to banish all thoughts of revenge . . . We are going to try to make a kinder, simpler, a more Christ-like sort of world in the days beyond this strife."

Thus began Coventry Cathedral's new ministry as a symbol of forgiveness and hope.  That hope is embodied, Phoenix-like, in the very architecture of the Cathedral, as a stunningly modern and lucid new church rises up above the preserved walls of the old.  The two buildings, side by side make a stunning visual image -- one a memorial to the lives lost to the brutal cost of modern and mechanized weaponry, and the other a sign of the human community's ability to heal from the wounds of war.

Howard's words and the Cathedral's mission are at once inspiring and yet also disturbingly difficult.  But regardless of how unsettling Coventry might make us feel, in the end what is written in the Cathedral literature is deeply true: It is a story we can't ignore.

Service of Reconciliation

While at Coventry Irie and I attended the noon Service of Reconciliation in the new Cathedral nave.  The service is short and led by deacon who tells the story of the Coventry and then leads the congregation in a simple, yet deeply profound Litany of Reconciliation.

The Litany begins with a confession from St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."  Then there is a series of seven repetitions where the deacon names the deadly sins of hatred, covetousness, greed, envy, indifference, lust, and pride, each followed antiphonally by the congregation praying in unison, "Father, forgive."  The service ends with the deacon this time quoting Paul's Epistle to the Church at Ephesus: "Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."  The deacon then invites those present to take the litany and the whole Coventry story back with them to their home congregations.

As I sit here with the litany before me I notice what the liturgy is attempting to teach us in its form.  The service both begins and ends with a reminder that we are all sinners and in need of forgiveness. It is the Cathedral's way of teaching us that all reconciliation must begin and end with our own humility and confession.  This is the way toward reconciliation that Coventry seeks to teach the world; and it is the way toward reconciliation it invites us to go and teach also.

A Place of Images

Yet even more than liturgical words, Coventry is a place of liturgical images. And I leave you with two images from my visit.

The first comes from among the many striking pieces of art to be found in and around the Cathedral. There is the bold bronze of St Michael standing victorious over Satan -- a sign of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, right outside the entry way of the new Cathedral.  Then there is the Charred Cross, made from two medieval wood beams found in the shape of the cross after the Cathedral bombing.  And of course, the whole Cathedral itself is an astonishing work of beauty and art.

But the image I want to share is the sculpture by Josefina de Vasconcellos titled "Reconciliation".  It is the image of a man returning from war to meet his wife at home. Together, they bend or fall to their knees in loving embrace.  It is a beautiful image of both the heartache of separation and loss and also the joy of reconciliation. The reason I choose to share this image on this August 6 day is because as one of these sculptures stands near the back of the narthex in the new Cathedral another twin copy of the sculpture has been placed on behalf of the people of Coventry in the Peace Garden in Hiroshima.  Faceless, yet locked in the embrace of universal love, the couple of "Reconciliation" remind us of the inherent humanity of all those caught up in the tragedy which was World War II and all other wars before and after.

The other image I want to share I myself captured.  I was standing in the middle of the hollow ruins of the medieval Cathedral when I turned to look eastward and was startled to see a young child, perhaps two or three years old, sitting near the sanctuary altar, calm and still on the stone floor just beneath the words "Father Forgive".  The mother of the child was just getting up to come and scoop the little girl up as I rushed to capture the moment with my camera. I made it just in time and this image is for me now my favorite image of all the images from this entire trip to England.

I have had the week to reflect upon the meaning of this child, in all her beauty and innocence, sitting inside the canopy of a memorial to the great human cost of war, the words from our Lord and Savior somehow gathering the two together in a kind of harmony of space and time. What is the meaning of this moment -- of this image, of this child before this altar?  I cannot say what the meaning is for anyone else but for me.  That is the beauty of an image -- it speaks with more nuance and meaning than words.

But as I do speak for myself I speak of two more images which are evoked -- one from the Old Testament and the other from the New. The Old Testament image is from the Prophet Isaiah, who in a vision for a time yet to come spoke of the hope-filled day when wolf will live with lamb, leopard will lie down with goat, and calf with lion; and a little child will lead them all.  And the New Testament image comes from that scene where Jesus sits a little child between his disciples and tells them that if they wish to enter the kingdom they must change and become like the child.

And I wonder if that might be it for me -- the meaning of this child before this altar. That for me this child might have been sent there to as a sign to lead us into some more hope-filled time and kingdom yet unrealized, but only if we are willing first to change first. Only if we are willing to deeply confess our own sin personal and corporate and the cynicism we have about this world, its violence and God's ability to change us.  Only if we are willing to have our hearts changed and believe once again in the hope and prospect of forgiveness and reconciliation within ourselves, our families, our churches, our communities, and our world. In other words, only if we are willing to become like this child, and sit down silently at the altar, and wonder again at the meaning of the words on the wall:

"Father Forgive."

British Evasion #8, August 5, 2015

British Evasion #8

Today I want to take a bit of a break from my reflections on place and give just a snippet from one of the courses I am taking while here at Oxford.

The course is taught by Revd Dr Cally Hammond and is on the life and theology of St Augustine, the person who has had perhaps the greatest intellectual influence on Christianity aside from St Paul.

Augustine is most famous for two quotes -- both from his memoir "The Confessions".  The first comes as a kind of prayer of confession to God right at the beginning of the book and foreshadows for the reader what a wandering journey Augustine's journey will be: "Our hearts are restless, until they find rest in you."  The other comes later on, when the foreshadowing is past and the reader has some real sense of what a cad Augustine really was. It too is a prayer, he said he prayed along the broken road to faith -- "LORD, make me chaste -- but not yet."

For that prayer Augustine is extraordinary.  He is extraordinary, not so much for having prayed it, for many people have prayed the same; but for having had the guts to admit it, for very few would dare to do that. I know I wouldn't -- if I were ever to have prayed such a thing.

It's the guts of it, and partially the prurient curiosities of its readers have made "The Confessions" a classic.

Two images from Dr Hammond's class capture the Augustine journey -- or at least what we have projected on to it. One is from I don't know where, but is a little trashy and comic book heroic, showing Augustine tanned and presumably toned and with very blue eyes -- strange for an African. Dr Hammond compared this image to that of James Bond, who Raymond Chandler once said is the man every man wants to be and every woman wants to sleep with.  That's all mythic, of course, whether it be about Bond or Augustine; but it's part of the allure. And the allure with Augustine is the fact that his memoir leaves just enough unsaid that we can and have filled in the rest with all the seediness our prurient minds can possibly imagine.  We do this, then we say, "If someone like this can grow up and become a saint, then perhaps there's hope for me yet." 

And I suppose that was basically Augustine's point.

The other image Dr Hammond gave us comes from another time, another (and much better) artist, and is a depiction of another, much later moment in Augustine's journey toward sainthood.  The painter is Sandro Botticelli and the work is his fresco "Saint Augustine" painted in 1480.  This is the Augustine grown up, settled down, surrendered to faith in Christ, and now become a bishop -- Augustine of all people.  He is in his study, his mitre rests at his right elbow while books and other instruments of learned knowledge surround him.  These are artifacts from the journey, signposts of knowledge (scientia) which led him to wisdom (sapentia).  His right hand caresses his bosom; this too has meaning -- perhaps the ultimate meaning for Augustine. His heart has finally found rest, and found it in God.  Now he gazes upward toward whatever else is to come, toward the beautific vision.

The prodigal son has come home.  The old man, once young, is dead; the new man, now old, is made new.  This is the arrival of the life of the saint. And I want to leave it right there -- frozen in the beauty of Boticelli's depiction.

Yet, something nags at me deeply, something a close female friend and someone who always brings an interesting light to things said to me a few weeks back when I told her I would be taking this course on Augustine while in Oxford. "Augustine," she said, "did you know there is a novel written from the perspective the woman he dismissed -- his son's mother."

She was talking about Augustine's mistress and the mother of his son Theodatus, a woman who Augustine clearly loved, but who he felt he ultimately had to leave behind in order to go on to become a Christian. And no, I did not know that.  Well, maybe I had heard something about it, but I had never really paused and given it thought. Never read it.  Never read her account. Never heard her story. In fact, I don't even know her name. I don't know it because in all the pages of "The Confessions" Augustine never once mentions it -- never once mentions the name of the mother of his only child.

It unsettles me. It bothers me that I have never heard what she had to say about all that Augustine confessed, about all that God is said to have done in his life, about all that God is said to have done or not done in her own.  Like I said, it nags at me. I want to know why Augustine left her name out.  Out of shame?  Out of protection?  And whose protection? I want to know.  And most especially I want to know it from her perspective. I want to know what she has to say.  But that is not possible -- not really, but only in fiction like the novel my friend spoke of. No, the woman herself, whoever she was, is silent.

So, tonight I am thinking it is proper to add one more image to those Dr Hammond gave to us of Augustine. This is an image, not of him but of her, the woman who loved him and gave birth for him but was turned out for the sake of the church. This is an image of her.

And what is that image, how is it possible to have it since we don't know who she was or even what she was named?  The image I have chosen is simply an empty niche, a placeholder, a vacant reminder that she belongs in this story also, and that she has something to say to us also -- even in her absence.  Perhaps especially in her absence.

British Evasion #7, August 3, 2015

British Evasion #7

Yesterday's worship was at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, which was founded in the 13th century and is one of the most famed churches in Oxford and, I have to say, the first church I have ever been to that served up sherry as a part of the reception right after service.

The congregation was friendly and the sermon by Canon Brian Mountford was at once quite humorous and deep.  It was about the connection between our speech and our theology and the way in which we talk and relate to one another communicates deeply theological assumptions.  I left inspired -- and inspirited.

Canon Mountford has a lot to live up to. Some of the greatest preachers and theologians have ascended the high and dark wooden pulpit St Mary the Virgin and preached truly historic sermons from its platform. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, preached here more than once and John Henry Newman, who brought mind and soul back into campus ministry first in the Anglican Church and later in the Catholic, was vicar here in the mid-19th century. And here C.S. Lewis preached his famous "The Weight of Glory" sermon, wherein he described the force behind our human longing for the beautiful and the poetic and the sublime as but mere expressions of our ultimate desire to be caught up in the glory of God.

Here is a worthy snippet of Lewis's most-worthy sermon about our secret desire for God:

"I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both."

But not all things which have taken place in University Church have been so, well, sherry.  This was also the place for the trial of the Oxford Martyrs -- the Anglican bishops Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer.  The three were tried for heresy in 1555, found to be guilty of being sufficiently Protestant, and sentenced to be burned at the stake.

Cranmer, then Archbishop of Canterbury, might actually have escaped the fate of the other two as he was willing to recant and profess his loyalty to the monarch and to Rome.  But several months later, as he was preaching in University Church he suddenly diverged from his prepared and printed text, denounced the pope, and declared himself indeed a Protestant.  He was then yanked from the pulpit, led to the city centre and burned like the other two.  As the pyre flames grew near he is said to have plunged his right hand first into the fire as an act repentance for having originally signed his recantation.

A memorial to all the martyrs of those bitter years -- Protestant and Catholic -- now stands solemnly inside the nave. I set just behind and looked over it throughout the Sunday service.

How can this be I wonder?  How can a place of such spiritual richness and life also be so vile and full of death?

Then I remember the parable that Jesus taught -- about the wheat and the weeds growing up together in the field and how it's impossible to separate the two until the harvest comes; and how the wheat symbolizes the good of the earth while the weeds the evil, and there they are together in one single place, in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin and everywhere else -- every field, every church, every city, and every country -- also.

And then it makes clear sense what Lewis was saying in that famous sermon -- how he ended it with a sobering and unsettlingly-true reminder about just how glorious or depraved the destiny of humanity really is:
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare."

British Evasion #6, August 2, 2015

British Evasion #6

Today my friend and partner in the Gospel Stephanie Nash will be preaching at Second B. I am grateful for her many gifts and glad that I am a part of a church which believes in the role of women in ministry.

This leads me to reflect on the continually developing role of women clergy in the Church of England.

Just before my arrival here in July, the Rev. Joyce Bennett passed away at 92 years old.  English by birth, Bennett was sent as a missionary to Hong Kong in 1949 and was ordained by the Hong Kong branch of the Anglican Communion in 1971.  After her ordination, she returned to England and shepherded a Chinese immigrant congregation inside St Martin in the Fields.

Though Bennett kept a low profile when at first back home -- she had the title "Reverend" printed on her business cards only in Chinese and not in English -- eventually she became more public. In 1986 she presided over Eucharist a well-publicized meeting of the Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW), which led to denunciation from much of the Anglican hierarchy.  But the tide was turning and as I have made my way in and out of churches all over England women priests are everywhere.

I like what I read Christina Rees, of WATCH (Women And The Church), an advocate for women clergy in England and a friend of Bennett's said about Bennett upon her passing:

"Because she was such a lovely, measured, and inspirational person, she didn't just make women's ordination look like a good thing.  She made it look normal, which was the best thing she could have done for the church."

That sense of normalcy did indeed help change things here in England -- and dramatically so. In January of this year Libby Lane was consecrated bishop of Stockport and the first female bishop in England.

Of course, not everyone is on board with female priests.  There was what looked to be a dramatic scene at Lane's consecration where a clergyman interrupted the proceeding, saying "not in the Bible."  (Watch here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30974547) But Archbishop of York John Sentamu, who was presiding over the service was prepared and handled the whole affair with dignity and repose -- the patently British way indeed.

All this brings me to a quote from Canon Angela Tilby, who will be the program (or as they spell it here, "programme") director for my time in Oxford.  Preaching at a service at St Paul's Cathedral marking 10 years of ordination in the Church of England, Tilby said, "Women priests have not unhinged the world."

No, they haven't. They've just made it all look normal.

That's what Stephanie will do today too I'm sure.

British Evasion #5, Part 3 of 3, August 1, 2015

British Evasion #5, Part 3 of 3

After the cathedral has done its job in reminding us of our proper place in history and cosmos, it then moves us in the opposite direction. Like the liturgy within, the whole thing begins in genuflection towards the altar and the confession of our unworthiness but then raises us up with ancient and holy words, "Lift up your hearts," and the invitation to come and partake -- to participate in the whole drama. There is a summons within the cathedral; the building itself is a call to worship and to work. The very walls cry out for us to rise and do and be about the building of something greater than ourselves.

Those common laborers come to mind, the ones who laid the stonework, or the skilled masons who carved the gargoyles, and the artists who accepted the daunting task of sculpting saints.  There was the pre-imminent architect Christopher Wren, who after the Great Fire of 1666 built 52 churches, including the masterpiece of St Paul's Cathedral.  There was the man and his great monumental vision for the glory of God; and then there were the myriads of now-forgotten workers who raised it up and kept it standing.

These cathedrals are a testament, a symbol of the will of a people and the eternal hope for the city of God.

I am thinking now of the night of December 29/30, 1940 as German bombers continued on their months-long blitz of Britain and Northern Ireland. For 57 nights straight Luftwaffe dropped bombs on the city of London. In all, a million London homes were damaged or destroyed, and 20,000 Londoners were killed.  Yet the Cathedral was spared, primarily because Churchill ordered a special team of firefighters to stand watch atop the dome.  They threw flaming incendiaries off of the roof of the cathedral, as men like them did the same in Canterbury and in other cities throughout the United Kingdom.  And there, somewhere in the early hours of December 30, photographer Herbert Mason stood atop the roof of the "Daily Mail" and shot an iconic image "St Paul's Survives" that captured the not only the monumental resilience of a building but also that of a whole nation.

Who were those firefighters?  Their names, recorded now in some esoteric book about the London Blitz, will one day be forgotten once their children and their children's children pass away.  But the building will still stand. The church will remain.

These cathedrals are a mirror, a look into the soul of a people, their values, their dreams, and their aspirations. They keep us looking up, towards the eternal, towards the coming of the great one on the clouds, towards tomorrow.  They keep reminding us the answer to the psalmist's question, "What is man?"  And his rhetorical answer, "a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and with honor."

Heir of the kingdom 'neath the skies
Often he falls, yet falls to rise;
Stunned, bleeding, beaten back,
Yet holding still to the upward track,
Playing his part in creation's plan,
God-like in image, this is man.

Howard Thurman