Phyllis Tickle: February 2008 Archives

Today is Leap Year Day, and it positively cries out for some religious commentary or other--some treatise on how it got to be Leap Year in the first place etc., etc. Admittedly, all of that is a pretty good story. It is also an unbelievably intricate and complex one. If you don't believe me, go google "Leap Year" or punch it into Wikipedia, and you'll see what I mean.

The truth of the thing is that a lunisolar year like ours is almost [but not quite] 365 days and 6 hours long. As a result, unless we picked up the not-quite-six hours every four years ...4 x 6 is 24, in case you're not tracking here…we would soon have a disaster, or we would in a half dozen centuries or so. Of course, since the six hours is "almost" and not "exactly," we have to correct our over-correction by not having Leap Year in years that are divisible by 100 unless they can also be divided by 400, which is why, should anyone presently living be concerned, there will be no Leap Year in 2100.

And if you think that is complicated, just go look up the math behind it all. Then look up the religion behind the math.

Every institutionalized faith on the earth has tried to modify the natural flow of time and time-keeping to fit with its religious obligations and observances. In Christianity's case, the accommodation presents as the modified Gregorian calendar under which we and most of the rest of the world run our lives [including our blog sites] every single day. We do that so that Easter in the Western Church will always fall on the Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after the Vernal Equinox on March 21st. Were matters not carefully corrected, then who knows when the Vernal Equinox [and therefore, Easter] might show up? So if Easter is to be ever and always reassuringly on point, the sun and the moon will simply have either to conform or to be fiddled with; and we have chosen to fiddle. So too have Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, the religions of China, albeit with somewhat difference excuses for their meddling.

But there is one thing about the hocus-pocus of Leap Year that is handy. That is, there is a centuries-long tradition of using Leap Year Day to honor a person or a historic event of sacred significance that might otherwise not be celebrated; and that's what I am going to do today. Washington Gladden was born on February 11, 1836; but I have held his story until today, thinking thereby to put his mention where I think it belongs: folded into the hallowing of Leap Year Day.

Gladden was a journalist who was driven to the ministry and, in 1860, was ordained. He was to say that he was driven actually to practice "a religion that laid hold on life," and Gladden's Christianity most certainly did lay hold.

Because he had trained and worked as a journalist, he knew how to work the system in a way that few others in the active pastorate did in the late 18th century. Thus, for example, he became the first major Christian leader to support unionization and worker-rights. As Religion Editor for The New York Independent, he opposed Boss Tweed with both ferocity and success, though that was a dangerous thing to attempt, much less to succeed at. He wanted "to realize the kingdom of God on earth," he said. He also believed he could do it, at least in his part of this world; and so he did.

Gladden famously once refused a hundred thousand dollar donation to his Congregationalist denomination, because it was being offered by John D. Rockefeller; Gladden regarded the money as therefore "tainted" and not fit for holy use. He dared, in the early days of the last century, to visit Atlanta University and meet with W.E.B. DuBois, after which he began to stir up public awareness of, and concern over, the deplorable state of Negroes in the Reconstructionist South. He even served for a while as the President of Ohio State University…or he did until he was relieved of his post because of his outspoken demands for fair treatment of Native Americans. In addition to all of that, like many another good journalist, whether preacher or not, he wrote more books than anybody can even remember all the titles of now.

But none of that is why I want to wrap Leap Year Day this year around Washington Gladden. What I want to celebrate is Gladden, the hymn writer, and specifically Gladden as the writer of what is, still to this day, for me anyway, one of the softest, humblest, most persuasive statements of purpose that any Christian ever managed to refine and capture in words. Great man or no, I suspect it really didn't matter to Washington Gladden how our human years would see him. I think what mattered is caught here in these words he left us and that so many thousands of us sing/pray or pray/sing today:

O, Master, let me walk with thee
in lowly paths of service free:
tell me your secret, let me bear
the strain of toil, the fret of care.

Teach me your patience; still with thee
in closer, dearer company,
in work that keeps faith sweet and strong,
in trust that triumphs over wrong.

In hope that sends a shining ray
far down the future's broadening way,
in peace that only You can give,
with thee, O, Master, let me live.

I will be leaving San Diego this morning. In fact, I am in the airport lounge as you are reading this. I commenced this week in Michigan with the women of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper Michigan. I have spent the last three days here in California with several thousand evangelical clergy at the National Pastors' Conference. Now I will shortly be on my way back to Memphis where, God being willing, Sam will pick me up this afternoon at Memphis International. But also, God willing, he will have our car packed with his clothes. We will throw my well-traveled suitcase in beside his and head out, not toward home, but toward south Georgia, where we will be with a Disciples of Christ body in Valdosta through Sunday.

As a travel plan or modus operandi, ten days like this gives a whole new dimension to the word,"triangulate." But it is a beneficent way to spend Lent, because it also gives a whole new depth to the concept, "body of Christ." Transcending all those once-upon-a-time lines of regionalism and denominationalism…even of gender and formal education…is a renewed, envigorated, familial sensibility, and it is emerging everywhere…emerging among all those who are the Church today. One has only to fly back and forth a few times over the old fence rows to perceive that.

We do not all sit on grand councils or even small boards. We do not all determine theology or occupy high office. But more and more we all are praying again and we all are worshipping again with a renewed earnestness and vigor…and that is enough. It is enough to tailor us into being Christian rather than Christianized. It is enough to shape each of us into so distinct a posture that we can again recognize each other, as once the early Christians did. It is enough to make me understand with Dame Julian this Lent that, "It will be well, and all manner of things will be well."

Even so, Come, Lord Jesus!

I am in San Diego at the National Pastors' Conference. It's an annual gathering of several thousand pastors who, in this case, are primarily from the western part of our country. As a group, they cut across all kinds of denominational and non-denominational lines. But by and large, regardless of the church structure from which they come, these men and women tend to be more young and middle-aged than old; and they are all evangelical…or if there is an errant non-evangelical Christian here, I've yet to identify him or her.

This coming together of the pastoral clan is pure joy…joy to speak to, joy to be in the midst of, joy to learn from. "Evangelical" has gotten such a bad rap over the last two or three decades--much of it hard-earned and well-deserved, God knows. Nobody is denying that--that there is something wondrously restorative and reassuring about coming among, and being welcomed into, the body of Christian clergy who are not interested in being co-opted by the political and economic surround in which we all live. Here, among these men and women, the conversation assumes Jesus as the Christ and as Lord. It assumes as well that Christ among us means Christ in each human being who is willing to accept His occupancy. Beyond that--and key here, at least for me--it further assumes that the result of Christ in and among us defines our primary citizenship. As the Christ-occupied, we become "a people set apart and peculiar unto our God," to put the matter biblically.

When anyone is so foolish as to try to characterize or summarize a group of several thousand professional religionists, as I have just done, one is playing with both fire and dynamite simultaneously. There are no generalizations in this world more volatile than those about religion and the religion-determined conduct of a segment of society. Even knowing that, I still am intrepid enough to say that there is devotion here among these men and women, and there is an ever-more-visible citizenship in something other than the local or the immediate.

There is compassion here, too, and everywhere. In the halls and meeting rooms and outside in the breezeways and palm-lined walkways. These men and women are the Church…or they are a huge estate within the Church…a huge cohort within the Church's working crew…and they give me hope, especially in this election year.

The temptation to rent the Church's voice out to the lords of power in exchange for a bowl of influence and a sop of money with a dash of ego thrown in has a history as long and elaborated as is the history of humankind itself. Like all temptations, this one grows stronger every time it is indulged; and it has been indulged many times over of late by all too many of us. Finding the balance between citizenship in the kingdoms of earth and citizenship in the Kingdom of God is one of the greater, trickier, more dangerous chores of adult Christian living, certainly. But I know one thing. I know that I am today in the midst of those who are consciously and vocally, prayerfully and collegially, trying to re-establish that balance. If they do so--and I pray they will--then thousands and thousands of the rest of us will find walking the beam far easier as well as far less remarkable.

I am not a fuss-budget…or I hope I am not, anyway…about kids and how easily we let them make holidays out of holy days. Making parties out of events is part of the magic of childhood, not to mention one of its great virtues. Beside, by definition, holy days are "Feasts" in the rhetoric of the Church, a naming that itself would seem to imply at least some degree of "party," even for somber dates like the feast day of some poor saint or martyr. But fuss-budget or no, I had an attack of restiveness last week; and I have chewed on it ever since.

We were visiting out of town and in a church where we had never been before. The pastor did what is common practice in many formal services nowadays, and invited all the children in the congregation to come join him at the chancel steps for a few minutes of conversation and instruction. Afterward, they were all to go on downstairs to Children's Church. Before they went downstairs, however, they were to have a few, special minutes of their own with him. The theory here is that, if nothing else, such a public time with senior clergy will help children gain some sense of ownership over the whole business of "real" church.

In theory, I think that approach is a sound idea. In actuality, it usually appalls me. That is, I am appalled by how the attendant adult congregation gets all wrapped up in whispering about how cute the children are, in tittering at their innocent responses to the pastor's questions, and almost in patronizing the children for their innocence in scratching an inappropriate itch or smacking an annoying friend or simply getting up and wandering back toward the pew and mother from whence they had just come. My theory is, in other words, that we do this more for the amusement of the adults and the satisfaction of an abstract theory than we do it for the religious formation of our children. It's a minor issue, perhaps, and it only bothers me passingly as a rule…except it bothered me far more than that last Sunday.

It bothered me because, it being Lent, the pastor asked the children gathered around him, what Lent was [they didn't know] and what it was we were waiting for. They, every single one of them, knew to answer to that one: We were waiting for Spring! When that answer proved to be, while correct, none the less not the desired one, they tried again. Finally, one little girl said, "Easter bunnies?" rather tentatively; and the whole two steps-full of children clapped and laughed and called out their approval of this solution to the problem. At this point, the pastor more or less gave up. Making no more than a cursory attempt at tying Jesus to bunnies, he patted two or three of them on their heads and shooed the whole crew on down to Children's Church.

It has been said…biblically, in fact…that out of the mouths of babes and children shall the truth come. It came for me last Sunday. Sanctimonious kids programmed to spout religious doctrine on command are scary to me, because they usually make scary adults. Totally secularized kids, while generally more charming, can be scary as well; for they may never be tempered and seasoned by engagement with the holiness of life and creation. But the scariest of all, I decided last Sunday, are the children who, being reared without lived religious instruction, grow up thinking that the forms, rhythms, and patterns of religion are religion. They are the scariest because they can grow up to become adults who never, ever perceive their own souls' sterility…much like many of the adults we all know, in fact.

It happened again last night just at dusk--that first twilight of the frogs' singing. Sam and I had come in from church and eaten a light lunch, before three friends called to say that they were out for a drive and were coming out to the Farm for a few minutes. Sam, who loves a party the way most kids love birthdays, immediately set the kitchen table for mid-afternoon drinks, easy snacks, and what he obviously hoped would be an afternoon of conversation. He got his wish, and we all had a grand Sabbath afternoon.

By five o'clock, however, it was time to think in terms of ending a good day. Two of our friends--the two who were doing the driving--had to go in one direction, while our other guest lived in quite the opposite direction. Because we really had let the time slip up on us, Sam and I said we would take Barbara back in her house in town, leaving Pat and Jo free to make their way on home in the other direction. The trip into the city was just a continuation of the afternoon's pleasures. We even went in to Barbara's house for a few more minutes, before Sam and I got back into the Subaru to make our way home for supper.

The sun had fully set and the soft darkness of early evening had settled over the whole farm by the time we pulled into our own driveway. I opened the car door, and it was there, all around us, everywhere, surrounding us: From the pastures came the singing of the cicadas and from the pond two acres beyond, the punctuating cries of the frogs.

There are two nights in farm life that matter the most every year: the night the frogs begin to croak and the night when the fireflies begin to mate, lighting the whole of our fields with thousands of frantically blinking lights bent on attracting one another into a reproductive orgy. The fireflies dance, usually in early May, and signal with their fervor that summer has officially begun, as far as Mother Nature is concerned. When the frogs cry, Spring has begun.

Ten days ago, we had driven passed Jones' Orchard up on the highway beyond our farm. As we drove past, Sam said, "The pink is there," and it was. The peach trees weren't in bloom. They weren't even faintly green, in fact. But the haze was there, like a halo or aura over all the rows and rows of them, as if some astigmatic or myopic painter had rendered a canvas more mysterious than photographic. So we knew.

Then last Friday our japonicas birthed out a bloom or two, and the early jonquils had opened Saturday afternoon before sundown. So we really knew. But knowing never quite prepares me for the thing itself. In all these years of living on this land, I have never got over the sheer wonder of it.

Up out of the mud and ooze of a half-dead pond, they begin their annunciation. Nothing…not cold or calendars or human contrivance or distraught circumstances can deter them. Life is, and it will keep its cycles and honor its own courses so long as time runs. And blessedly, in these weeks when "Alleluia" is denied to me, the frogs are driven to assert it. Out of the slime and wet of our winter pond, they raise their resurrection cry: We will be again.

Sam, the son, not the father….Don't ever name a baby boy after his father without contriving an alternative name by which to call him! It was a problem Sam, the father, had raised for all the months this one was...

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