Funeral Homily for Linda Balzersen

From her hospital bed, where Linda had just shared the diagnosis that would eight weeks later end her life, and never being one to talk long about herself, Linda abruptly changed the subject. She began talking pickles. Pickles? I asked. Pickles. Evidently, she had said something the weekend before that she was concerned might have hurt her grandson, Rylan, and she was determined to make it right. Aside: it is impossible to overstate Linda’s love for Rylan and her whole family. Thus the need to make it right. “But it can be awkward,” she said, “to just dive into a difficult thing like that, without context or some kind of safe container, but it’s important that you do find some way to circle back,” she explained. She went on, “Having an occasion can make it easier!” And the occasion, she explained with the biggest of smiles, was to be an invitation to share some fabulous, recently discovered pickles with her grandson. “Because who says no to pickles?” she asked, as if no objection were imaginable. After a pause to consider her plan, she nodded her head, deeply satisfied that she had found a way to make a bruised thing right. To risk love that might heal; Linda believed, after all, that every love takes patient tending, that love is proven in the mending. So many times in this life we let our loves settle for unwanted distance because the risk required to make love true asks more than we fear we have. Sometimes love requires both our courage and careful attention. Daunting for must of us. But good news for Linda. Careful attention was what she did best.

I’m sure you could choose other words, maybe better words, to describe Linda Balzersen, but the two I keep returning to are meticulously wholehearted. Wholehearted. Love communicated oftentimes without a word - through sparkling, frequently mischievous, eyes. Radiant. 

And meticulous. Detailed. Thoughtful. Painstaking. Aware that the prayer shawl laid on the shoulders of the dying, the grieving, of the priest could only become a comfort to a soul though the invisible labor of ten thousand stitches counted. Endless knits and pearls completed. Row on row made accountable to the integrity of the whole, so that, together, they might be privileged to convey the love of prayers that human hands could touch. 

Meticulously wholehearted. Gentle. Patient, at peace with tedium, even. Which surely served Linda well through decades of work in church offices. 

Linda’s life is a remarkable reminder that patience in prayer, contemplative prayer, holy silence, can birth patience with the everyday world, too. And with people. In other words, meticulous wholeheartedness makes so much more than kneelers. Linda loved the Episcopal renewal movement, Cursillo, with its motto “make a friend, be a friend, bring a friend to Christ.” And in those words you can almost see Linda imagining that as handiwork, too, as mending, as making whole the fabric of things the way they were meant to be. Knit together in and by God’s ocean deep love for Linda and each one of us. Every last one of God’s own.

So, dear Linda, today, consider. When, in John’s gospel, Jesus promises to prepare a place for you, you know by now he wasn’t just washing sheets. The Love that knit you in your mother’s womb, who delights in every detail of your being who, in every trial and joy of earth, was with you, prepared for you a place. A thousand thousand pearls and knits stitched in love with the whole of you in mind. 

Dear friend, in the letter of Revelation, too, you know how the promise goes: how, the saints from every corner gathered ‘round the throne, God wipes away the tears from their eyes. Where the promise is not like the old shampoo tagline - no more tears - is not that life’s griefs or difficult parts are erased from eternal memory, lest a single stitch of love be dropped, but the promise is exactly that love’s every grief is seen and touched, healed. Every last tear tended. Patiently. Meticulously. Wholeheartedly. 

That’s when you and I discover that all this time Linda was actually putting those theatre degrees to work! Performing, not inauthentically, but from the truest parts of her, performing the love she knew in Jesus, attempting to point us all, love us all, to the One whose love makes us one. In whom nothing is ever wasted and everything belongs.

Angelic is a word you sometimes hear used to describe Linda. It feels both silly and true at the same time, to say it. Linda wasn’t perfect. But of course that’s not what angelic means. Angelic means a messenger. I remember walking through the hospital door, that last time we spoke. After unpacking the diagnosis with me, Linda looked up at my face. “Jonathan,” she said, “Don’t be afraid.” And suddenly she is the angel announcing resurrection from the vertigo of the grave, through the tears of our grief. Later that day, she shared with me her own surprise that she was not afraid. She didn’t know exactly how to account for this. She could see, looking back, how in every moment, every encounter, with her family, so many of you, by every love and opportunity, God had stitched together a fabric of faith such that she was not afraid. In turns out, Linda Balzersen doesn’t have a monopoly on meticulous attention and seemingly endless compassion. At best she was an understudy. No, the attention and compassion that finally matter most belong to God, to her Lord, whose steadfast love never ceases, whose mercies never come in an end. Not in life, not in death. Whose perfect love casts away every fear.

So today, with Linda and the great communion of saints to which with her help we know we’ve been knit, we sing the love of our Lord Christ Jesus, crucified and risen, our Savior and brother, who loses not one of his own.

Amen.

Funeral Homily for Lane Chambers Nestman

The first thing to say makes sense of the others. The first thing to say is that Lane loved her family. And sought above all to provide for her family. With her family, in her work, at this church, with her friends, she expressed what Matt calls a kindness different from niceness. Does that make sense? he asked me. A kindness different from niceness. It absolutely makes sense. A kindness different from niceness, lived out in ordinary moments. Small moments. Real moments of a life. With others. For others. In ways that made them visible. In ways they’d later call something like an encounter with sweetness.

Matt’s observation about Lane made me think of the early 20th century American singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie. Guthrie one time wrote: Love makes the big world little and the little world big. Lane shared a kindness different from niceness into the small corners of life, and maybe that’s because it’s only the small, ordinary corners of life that can carry love that big. Love that is authentic and real.

Attention to the small and ordinary does not come naturally to most of us, but then I learned Lane was a gardener. This helped me understand. Because gardeners inhabit the world of the ordinary. They’re the original down to earth people. Gardeners trade in the soil from which we literally get words like humility. Depending on things like weather and rain will do that to you. 

Lane loved to plant literal seeds but at some point, I suspect, seed planting became a way of life for her. The way she saw the world. The way she loved her friends, her family and grand-babies. She served over twenty years with the Mortar Board, investing in the flourishing of student leaders. Planting seeds. Those who worked with her at UNT remember both her kindness and that they learned from her. Her seed sowing was as generous as it was gentle.

I don’t know if she was mindful of it, but Lane’s love for the planting of possibilities toward the good and the beautiful, not least for her family, gave her a special kinship with the Lord that she loved. After all, on the first Easter Day, when Mary Magdalene was lost in grief at the tomb, maybe like some of us today, when Jesus met her and she didn’t know it was him, who else did she mistake him for, but the gardener? On the one hand, it was a real mistake. Grief can sometimes make it hard to see. On the other hand, it was the truest truth. Standing with her was the one who had brought God’s children back to Eden. Who broken death open. Who had brought new life to fullest flower. “Unless a grain of wheat fall into the soil and dies,” Jesus said, it remains just a grain. But he became the seed who laid down his life, and the seed became life, became a great tree, with branches reaching wide with the possibilities of God, so that, Jesus said, every bird might find a home there, in the branches of that tree. And I want you to hear the echo of that mustard seed promise in John’s gospel this morning: In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 

And in that home, every grief Lane knew in this life is known. Her last years with dementia, every wound those years contained, along with every tear. All of them, tended, like a tender plant, by the Gardener whose love is life for all people. In the reading we hear today from Revelation, the saints from every corner gathered ‘round the throne, we’re given the promise that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. The promise is not like the old shampoo tagline - no more tears - it’s not that life’s difficult parts are erased, lest some love or rose among the thorns be harmed in the process, but that love’s every grief is seen and touched and healed. Every tear tended. With the compassion of the True Gardner. Church, do you here this? The saints who are gathered are allowed to have tears. Because their tears have become seeds of love.

It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. In quiet kindness, which is different from niceness, with the patience of a gardener, and not without some stubbornness, Lane has waited for the salvation of the her Lord, whose steadfast love never ceases, whose mercies never come in and end. Not in life, not in death. So we sing the love of God today by which Lane has been brought, through Christ Jesus our Lord, from bud to glorious flower.

Amen.

A Pastoral Letter from Father Jonathan

This pastoral letter is taken from this weeks' James Journal, for St. James Episcopal Church.

“We who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” 1 Cor. 10:17

Dear Friends,

When I was a kid, I loved to pretend. My brother and I made the playground next door into an obstacle course of lava. We took turns being Indiana Jones - hat, whip, and all - leaping from swing to swing as we narrowly averted our fiery end. 

As I’ve grown older, I’ve discovered I don’t like pretending as much. When Rebekah and I experienced the first of two devastating miscarriages back some years ago, I realized I couldn’t pretend I was okay. More than that, I didn't want to. My first day back in the office, I gathered my staff in the office and named that I would need to ask their permission and grace to bring my tears to work in days ahead. 

The understanding of my staff that day was balm to my heart, made all the more remarkable because it was for pain they did not feel. I prayed that asking their grace would also make space for them to bring their own whole selves into the space we shared each day. After all, we each carry, in our lives, unique collections of wonder, sorrows, and joys.

Just now, we are two days out of a national election that has left some of us much relieved and others of us deeply grieved. Both feelings speak to anxieties and fears we have carried about the kind of future we will share. Given the circumstances, it would be tempting to pretend that the moment is not as tender as it is. To talk about the weather. 

But I want to encourage you who have been made members of the Body of Christ: our differences, which are many - and so often a source of a diversity of blessing - do not define the limits of our love for one another. Neither is direct experience of another’s pain pre-requisite for holding holy space with them. In other words, in the communion of God’s holy ones, there is room for your whole self: your own unique collection of wonder, joys, and sorrows.

A favorite hymn sings that, “the Love that made us makes us one.” These days, and truly all our days, give us an opportunity to practice with each other a oneness and love that doesn’t make sense apart from Jesus. I thank God for the company of the saints at St. James who constitute a school of holy friendship and healing ground for the possibilities of God. Consider, especially just now, that “it is revolutionary to maintain a soft heart, to practice kindness, to take what concrete actions that you can to ease the suffering of others.”

None of us knows, in one’s life, all that love will finally ask of them. But we do know love’s Source. Walk with the Lord and each other. If, along the way, you need a listening ear over coffee, give me a shout. And may the harmonies we learn in him to sing be a blessing in this world.

In the love of Jesus,

Jonathan

How to be an Amateur

As a priest’s kid, I spent a lot of time growing up sitting around churches waiting for other people to “wrap it up.” I spent so much time in naves, and a fair bit in Dad’s office, too. There, in the office, I regularly found myself distracted (and likely, looking back, shaped) by the title of a particular book he kept on the shelves. I never read the book; it was the title by itself that shaped me. The book was provocatively called, “God is an Amateur.” 

“Obviously,” the cynic might smirk. But the back of the book unpacked the original meaning of the word, which hinted toward the direction of the book, where the word amateur means one who acts out of love.

Before NIL and the 1992 Dream Team, collegiate sports and the Olympics were both thought to be the realm of amateurs: unpaid athletes whose did a thing “for the love of the game.” Looking back, the imagined purity of these unpaid athletes was wildly naive and, as the athletes came to make increasing millions for their backing institutions, also exploitative. Still, the idea that love for a thing in one’s life almost always comes before the profitability of that thing in one’s life feels true. Kobe Bryant was one time asked if the great basketball players had one predictable characteristic in common. His answer came quickly: “That’s easy. It’s love.”

Can I ask you a question? What do you love? What things are you doing when you act out of love?

I spent an hour visiting with Mother Bubba Dailey the other day. Mother Bubba is a retired priest, beloved member of St. James, and living saint of the diocese (who, she would want me to add, celebrated her 88th birthday this past Sunday). She shared stories with me of some of the things she most loved to do working with those without homes, the sick, and the dying, through her work at the (then) Austin Street Shelter. One day, for example, she took a young man to a baseball game - his dying wish. It turned out to be the last thing he did; he died later that day. 

Mother Bubba loves that she was able to facilitate the dying wishes of so many in her lifetime. She loves loving other people out loud, which is to say, with her life. She also loves being present to God’s love for us. “Jonathan,” she said, “if people really sat with it. God’s love for us. For each person. I’m going to cry. The love is so great. If people were to stay present to it, Sundays wouldn’t be enough. It’s all too wonderful to bear.” 

Because God is an Amateur. God acts out of love. 

Even for me and you.

Reflections on the Forthcoming Bishop Election, Jude's Summer Camp, and Avery the Pig

The Episcopal Diocese of Dallas is in the process of discerning its next bishop. So, I received a diocesan survey in my email this week, asking about what I (and others) hope our diocesan life can be like and what I (and others) imagine will be helpful in our next bishop. As I read, I found myself remembering a story of Brother Roger of Taizé, which I include here as a footnote because my daughter says, "It's interesting but not why people will click on the link, assuming anyone does."(1) The short of it: in the 1960s, as part of the ecumenical movement spurred by the 2nd Vatican Council, Brother Roger warned leaders that, in order for ecumenical conversations to be lastingly meaningful, people would have to be helped to see the material, tangible difference ecumenism made to real lives. It couldn't just live in our heads.

As I read the survey, I found myself thinking that the same is probably true of the sometimes vague thing called "diocesan life". The life of a diocese (a diocese is those churches united under a bishop across a geographic region), must likewise be material and tangible, down to the detail of a life. Beyond an annual congregational visit and a financial assessment, I mean. 

In fact, I one time heard a story (maybe apocryphal) about a church in a land far, far away that was basically Anglican/Episcopal in the shape of its Sunday worship but not affiliated with a diocese. An Episcopal priest asked the cleric of the independent church, who was a friend, why, in the absence of any doctrinal differences of substance, he didn't just join the diocese they shared. It would be natural to who you already are, he suggested. "Because," the colleague answered, "The only material difference my people would see is a $20,000 / year hit we just can't afford."

Now, I'm one of the strange ones who loves that our churches are connected by material, financial support. We belong to each other. Let's live that truth generously toward each other and support congregations who need it. So I've got no shade to throw at, or apology to give for, financial assessments. No, the scandal is not that life together would make a material difference to this particular church but that the assessment was the only difference to their common life the priest could see or imagine. Surely, there's more, right? Or, what is the full substance of our belonging?

This is always love's question, made new for each generation: how can invisible bonds of unity and affection, of belonging, be made visible to each other and to the world? How can you make love light up, like a tastefully tacky neon sign?

In the midst of these thoughts, my son goes away to summer camp, Camp All Saints, the diocesan camp at Lake Texoma. (He has a great time.) As we make our way to camp, we turn onto Stanton Way. Bishop Stanton had confirmed me in 1993, I tell my kids. I remember diocesan youth dances and mission trips I attended as a kid, my own kids listening kindly, or at least pretending well. I point out a path down which my parents, with others, helped build a stone chapel some decades ago. I remember, as a kid, being dragged along to so many Cursillo closings (and how, if the service happened to be in Flower Mound, we kiddos would hope to see the retreat center's mascot, Avery the pot-bellied pig). I remember the faces of those attending these renewal weekends and their complete overwhelm at the number of loved ones and strangers who showed up at the closing service to encourage and support them. We are one. 

As we drop Jude off at camp, I find myself at each table of the registration process surrounded by familiar faces from so many churches. I find Nurse Nancy, of our own St. James(!), who has promised to keep a special look out for Jude (wholly unnecessary, but an unimaginable gift to my Dad Heart). And then, a week later, the last day of camp, I get up early and pack up the car with one of the kids, to join other parents and families, with all of the campers, for the closing Eucharist. Bishop Stanton, now long-retired, is there to lead the closing. Jude, I reflect, is twelve, nearly thirteen, the same age I was when I was confirmed. And Bishop Stanton preaches about the history of the chapel we are in. How it had first been a chapel for German prisoners of war in this country. And then a church in Commerce. And then the chapel at All Saints. He tells the kids he thought it was an important story to know: that these walls had only ever been a place for prisoners to know the freedom of Christ. And then he tells a story I thought my dad had stolen from someone else. I think they both stole it from Bishop McCrea, first priest of my mom's home church.

Still at camp, as Thea and I make our way up to communion, I explain to my six-year-old daughter that the bishop will distribute the bread standing up, without a rail to kneel on, so she'll need to throw her hands up high (she's tiny and still growing). She surely does, and (I think) her boldness throws Bishop Stanton for a loop. His eyes grow wide, he takes a step back, then catches my eye and throws me a wink with the kindest smile. This is how we pass it on, I think.

I sometimes worry about diocesan offices (not ours, specifically, but all of them, generally). That, if they're like me, they might from time to time feel the burden of justifying their existence through "ways to be useful." Probably workshops and leadership days. Attempts to give "the rest of us" their expertise, frequently inadvertently underwriting silent assumptions that local churches lack what they need. (I think most just need listening.) Don't get me wrong: workshops and leadership days can be beautiful things, but our belonging doesn't need to be justified. Besides, diocesan life is more like a pig! More like capture the flag on an open field, with eyeblack and camo. Or serving with strangers to build someone a home.

Which is to say, like shared laughter. Joyful tears. Collaborations. Growing circles. Holy friendships. Deep connection. Love that lights up.

I realize I run the risk of sentimental nostalgia. I am growing old. But age means I no longer remember everything, which makes it easier to appreciate the importance of the things I do remember, things that made marks that still linger.

My point isn't to impose my stories as a norm for others. So maybe it's an invitation to tell yours, too. I know I'd love to hear them! What imagination for life together in the faith - church to church, life to life, and across distance - has the Spirit of God shown you? Where did the mercy of God leave marks in your life through the communion of holy ones, beyond only the local, in ways you long to pass on?

In Episcopal polity, the word diocesan functions in two ways: as a noun, it means bishop; as an adjective, it means relating the life of a diocese, which that space, that geographic jurisdiction, a bishop oversees. And in the space the bishop oversees, the Spirit surprises in all of God's people. There is openness of heart. Like Brother Roger understood, "that in order to pass on the Gospel to young people a reconciliation of Christians [is] necessary." Maybe Brother Roger was onto something about the leading of young people (the former university campus minister asks rhetorically). Did you know that, in the Diocese of West Texas, the cathedral (or bishop's seat and symbolic center of the diocese) is Camp Capers? And its vocation of gathering God's people together is north, I believe, of 3/4 of a century now? Maybe diocesan life is the holy play that takes place outside of our walls with one another.

And if you've never been to summer camp or diocesan leadership day, don't worry. That's most of us, I figure. No matter! Remember: we are all a part of this one holy thing. It's the invisible gift of the Spirit! But there's that great question again: Can we make love light up, like a tastefully tacky neon sign? How do individual and congregational Christians smell and embrace that great diversity and variety of wildflowers residing within the single, glorious garden St. Francis de Sales calls God's holy, universal church?

What Makes a Life Good.

A short homily for the opening prayers of this year's Teaching and Learning Institute put on by the Southwestern Association of Episcopal Schools (SAES).

Let me just say again how grateful I am for the invitation to be with you today. I should make two disclaimers at the outset, though: my wife is a Montessori teacher for adolescent students, and my four kids, ages 2 through 14, likewise all go to school every day, one at an Episcopal school, and they’re all of them resident experts on formation and remarkably perceptive about what happens in the community of a classroom. But you did not get any of them today. Instead, you got me. Better luck next time.

The second disclaimer is that the E in the acronym SAES of course stands for Episcopal. And Episcopalians are notoriously people of the lectionary, the cycle of readings assigned to each day and each week. The lectionary means that the same readings are given to everyone who prays today, whether they are on vacation at the beach or have the better luck of being here at the Teaching Learning Institute. I would have liked to have picked you out some happier readings.

Case in point, from Ecclesiastes this morning: Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, that is, before you get old. Before your knees begin to creak and a new layout at the grocery store counts in your life as major news. And terrors are in the road, and you call your kids to troubleshoot the newfangled devices they got you for Christmas, which are obviously defective, and your desire fails; because all must finally go to their eternal home. Remember your creator, before the silver cord is snapped, before the golden bowl is broken, and the breath returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.

As far as classroom motivational posters go, you might steer clear of Ecclesiastes. But it has a way of cutting through the fluff, amirite? What’s it all for? After the GPA. After admittance to the school of my dreams. After the six-figure job that my program’s completion either did or did not land me. After the promotion and the sacrifices that got me the promotion. After the unexpected life change that is as inevitable as it is unpredictable in the life of each of us, after, after, after, at the bottom of the well, when it’s all stripped away, what is it all, after all, for?

What is a good life? What makes a life good? It was Socrates who first said that life wasn’t enough, you didn’t make your life, it was given to you, it’s just the starting point: a good life should be the goal. He said it came through happiness which wasn’t an accumulation of fancy things but a right ordering of existing things toward worthwhile ends. But what makes an end worthwhile? How does a person come to learn that kind of thing? Where did you get your own ideas for it? Maybe this reading is not such a bad fit for a gathering of educators, after all.

As educators, where do you begin to look for an answer to the question when someone comes up to you, between classes, after hours, before meetings, at impossible moments, and asks about the ideal world you would like to see? And can you imagine the privilege of walking alongside a person asking these questions, forming their own answers, as informed in part by your presence and the ways you live your life. Of course you can. You do it every day. Your work is sacred work.

And I get it. Some days it doesn’t feel sacred. Some days it’s just managing challenging parents and figuring out what skibidi Ohio means. But even your patience in that moment is as much a part of the pedagogy you pass on as anything else your student remembers. Our New Testament, then, offers hints toward the good life possible for those whose ends Christ has shaped: marked my a spirit of gentleness, bearing the burdens of others, not growing weary of doing what is right, but imagining in the space of lives whose default setting in the year 2024 can’t help but be myopically individualistic the radical possibility of beloved community and shared belonging. What Montessori calls being citizens of the world. What the letter of Galatians calls living as the family of faith.

Pope John Paul II one time said that the feast of Pentecost, when Episcopalians all wear read, there's fire, languages, crazy stuff, St. Peter swearing he wasn’t drunk yet, JP said that that feast really belongs to the educators. To teachers. To you. Because the miracle wasn’t all the stuff and commotion. The miracle was that in a world of stuff commotion, in a world of my and mine, a new space was opened for deeper and mutual understanding. Each one understood in the language of each. A new community was born! And this, he says, is what you make possible, and as that great educator Fred Rogers might add, just by being you.

So if I am not an expert educator like many of you and literally every other member of my family, let me be a stand-in for the whole church today and simply say, Thank you. God bless you. Thank you for saying yes to your part in the miracle. And let me be your permission today to remember that this miracle is what your work, on less sexy days, is really all about. It’s what all the the work is for. For the fruit of this work in the lives of those you reach is nothing less than the life that really is life.

 

Nothing is Wasted & Everything Belongs

From this week's James Journal, available here. 

This past Saturday, the beautiful day in the neighborhood journey took St. James to Our Savior Community Gardens, where Deacon Joey shared two things he had learned about gardening from his short time at the small farm: “Nothing is ever wasted, and everything belongs.” 

Short and sweet and essential in its truth. It was a twin reality impossible for us to miss, even in our few hours spent in the gardens: how, on the farm, one person’s trash becomes another person’s compost. How compost in a garden is like gold! How every life assists the others and the end that decomposition is so often thought to be becomes the lifeblood for every new thing that happens.

 

In fact, the garden’s founder, Ms. Becky, showed us a small, thriving field of pumpkin plants that is the literal fruit of leftover pumpkins acquired from - where else? - our own October pumpkin patch! The leftovers here have become rich soil there, and seeds in that rich soil there have, in turn, sprung up to become fruit-bearing plants of their own. There’s a piece of St. James growing on a garden in Pleasant Grove! 

 

From the gospel this coming Sunday: Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

 

How wonderful, I am continually reminded, that the flourishing we are a part of is not limited to what we see. Not confined to that for which we might be tempted to claim ownership. Not limited by what I counted as my failures. How marvelous, that pumpkin seeds and other seeds, like faith, bear fruit far beyond our understanding of the work. Perhaps you look back on your own life and recognize fruit of blessing that “stem” from a love planted in you by saints who could have no idea what the seed of their love has become in and for you. 

 

Nothing is ever wasted. And everything belongs. 

 

With a twinkle in his eye, Deacon Joey looked up and rhetorically wondered out loud whether this might be true for more than just gardens.

 

In the love of the Vine whose life makes us one,

Jonathan

A Letter to My Son on His Confirmation

This past Sunday, we celebrated confirmations, reception, and renewals at St. James! Each candidate received a letter like this one, which tries to connect some important themes of confirmation/baptism/faith. Sharing here in case in can be a gift to your baptism and life of faith, too.

Peace,
Jonathan

PS Yes, the letter's last line is an unapologetic nod to / theft from the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry. Sorry, not sorry.

May 12, 2024

Dear Jude,

Congratulations! What a wonderful day for you and the whole church.

On the off chance some of the details of confirmation class slip through the cracks along the way, I hope you will remember before anything else that your confirmation today is a yes to your baptism. And your baptism was God’s make God’s yes to you visible, so you could see it. Before anything you did, are doing, or ever will do, Child, you are loved.

I hope you will remember, too, that, today, you are not being asked to do anything alone. You have been made a part of the fabric of faith, and the rest of us have promised today to do everything in our power to support you. We will count on you to support us, too! In this, you are a gift to bless St. James, the larger church, and the world! It’s a wonderful gift to be knit together as pilgrims in the life of faith.

Speaking of pilgrims. You may have heard of the Camino before. It’s an ancient pilgrim route in Spain to the church of Santiago. Santiago is Spanish for St. James. This is one of the reasons the symbol for St. James (both the saint and the church) is a scallop shell. (The scallop shell is, of course, also a symbol of baptism!)

Anyway, pilgrims would wear the shell to mark themselves along the way as on a pilgrimage. When they found themselves in grocery stores and other places, the shell was a sign to others and to themselves that, even when the path looked ordinary, they were on a pilgrim path.

The same is true for you! The shell you receive today is from the pilgrim path in Spain. I hope you will wear it or put in a place you’ll regularly come across it, as a daily reminder that today is not a finish line but the day you said yes again to the next leg of pilgrimage with Jesus.

Pilgrimage means every day made holy. It gathers everything in your past that has brought you to this day, even the difficult days, and receives them in new light. Pilgrimage anticipates all that God is yet to show you and do in you and offers thanks for the new possibilities of Christ. And pilgrimage transforms every present moment, even this one!, into one in which you are invited to trust that you and everything in it are a part of God’s good work of making all things new.

Jude, I thank God for you. And for your commitment to learn and walk the way of Jesus together. You have been planted on the pathway of faith. Let the days ahead be for growing deep roots and growing far-reaching branches. For seeing and singing the nearness of the Lord.

God bless you. And God keep us all in God’s almighty hands of love.

Dad/Father Jonathan

When the Promise Comes Close: On Earth as It is in Heaven

Bath-time in the Melton home is a beautiful and sometimes also harrowing hour of the day. A veritable roulette wheel of parenting possibilities bending  both time and space, as in, it lasts just a few minutes and an eternity, all at once. The stakes are unspeakably high, regularly marked by life-altering questions, like, “Will this rubber ducky be enough to distract the young child screaming for the other parent?” And, will said rubber ducky, moments later, be voraciously claimed as “no, my ducky,” by rival sibling in the wings? (Spoiler: obviously.) Yet to be addressed are important considerations of correct water temperature and adequate water depth. All before the moment within the moment on which everything depends: the shampooing and washing of the hair. 

Sorry, I need a minute.

The washing of the hair. Forbid it, Lord, that even a single drop of water desecrate the landscape of those precious eyes. A dozen years ago or so, to avoid this great calamity, I came up with an original rhyming formula that 100% of the time works 40% of the time. A little sing-song call and response to diffuse the moment toward the good. “Look to the sky!” I’d say, and child in the water would (ideally) sing back, “Eyes stay dry!”

Let’s try it. Look to the sky, eyes stay dry.

A promise and prescription for peace in the midst of volatility. Not to be overly self-congratulatory, but in addition to being highly catchy and hygienically instructive, it’s also biblical. Consider psalm 121. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Reminder that what is good for the eyes in the bathtub is sometimes equally edifying for those who wait on the Lord.

Look to the sky, eyes stay dry is an apt starting place for considering the scriptures that meet us on this first Sunday of Lent. Look to the sky! There, you’ll see the rainbow in the clouds. The first promise of God to his people. As in, in the whole Bible. This is the first promise of God to his people. A covenant. In it, God breaks God’s tools of retribution and revenge. The bow and arrow are retired. Turned into lawn ornaments. Exchanged for a decision toward peace and forgiveness. The rashness of wrath replaced with the decision to only ever be the God who belongs to God’s people. And the sign of the promise is there, shimmering, shining, in the sky. 

Ever after, looking up to the heavens has been a good and faithful thing for Christians to do. Led by St. Paul, who writes, “with my eyes fixed on the goal I push on to secure the prize of God's heavenward call in Christ Jesus.” When things are difficult in this life, following Paul, we can seek to rise above it. Find assurance in the promise that waits for us out there. Up there. In the heavens. Look to the sky. Eyes stay dry. The beginning of a trust in God.

But then something unexpected happens. And the unexpected thing changes everything. In the gospel today, the heavens that hold the promise of God up there, out there, kept in safekeeping for a far off “someday,” well, they tear open. And the promise falls from the sky. The promise doesn’t break. But the promise comes close; the promise of God comes down from the sky. 

And what you and I are meant to see is that, even though the rainbow and the baptism are two different occasions, it’s the same sky, and it’s the same promise the one sky holds. So when the heavens tear open on this man in the water, that first promise of God pours out on the earth. Shows up in him. And since he’s our brother, bone of our bone, the Spirit is now on us, too. In an instant, eternal life enters this life. The far off comes close. It’s the beginning of the prayer Jesus later gives his friends when they pray, on earth as it is in heaven. The high up and heavenly promise of God has been poured on the earth, not just as God’s restraint from violence, but as God’s presence as our peace. And the Spirit sends Jesus, with this blessing - who IS this blessing - out into the desert.

That last part had to be a mistake right? GPS broke or something. The blessing of heaven comes down and he takes it to the desert? I’m sure he meant to find St. James. Ended up in Oklahoma. Just kidding. But when the heavens tear open and the promise falls into the river, it’s like the waters of Jesus’ baptism bubble up into something new - a spring of living water to reach out and cover, even to heal, every last parched and aching place on this earth.

Church, do you see what is happening? Jesus is changing the lines of hope. It’s not good enough anymore to only “look to the sky,” but now also, to borrow words from the prayer book, we ask God to “open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works, that rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness.”

My friends. This is a significant development. Back when hope was only in the heavens, people would seek to put themselves in position to score a golden ticket through good behavior, maybe. Last train to Harps and Clouds. Only the best of the best need apply. Or maybe the far off promise of God could be a carrot on the end of a really long stick for those unable to change the circumstances of their oppression. Hope for something more, but don’t dare hope for too much here. But now with heaven in pieces and the Son of God out in dry places, those ways of thinking no longer fit. The Spirit has come to the desert! To the entire creation. And all through the scriptures, the desert is full of what you’d expect: struggle, broken things, people who are certain they are lost, forgotten, or don’t count. The Son of God, God’s own Spirit, comes to these. 

One of the most touching desert stories in the scriptures is the story of Hagar, the Egyptian slave, left for dead in the desert with her son, exiled by Abraham, the father of faith. A heartbreaking reminder that the healing of God doesn’t always come only to or through the faithful but sometimes it comes to those harmed or left behind by the faithful. In the desert, Hagar is hiding from her child so she won’t have to watch him die. And she sobs. And suddenly the voice that thunders over the waters today speaks to her. And his word is new life in the desert for herself and her child. After that experience, Hagar gives God a new name, my favorite name for God that you’ll find in the scriptures: El Roi. It means the God who sees me. 

What wondrous love is this? How is it that things which had grown old are being made new? Things that had been cast down are being lifted up? How is it that hope is not only up there in the sky but balm on the earth, poured out to heal the darkest desert, such that the psalmist can sing, “I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yes, I shall see the goodness of our God, hold firm, trust in the Lord”?

Oh church, do you see what God is doing? You and I in the wilderness of this Lent may have at first thought that this was about our getting it together, cleaning up, looking sharp, extracting ourselves from the mess. But it turns out this Lent is about us getting clean but God getting dirty. And inviting us to come and see, in ourselves and in the world around us, on the faces of those we are likely to see without seeing, the least, the last, and the earth, that all of it, all of us, are the landscape of God’s redeeming.

As the late Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon puts it, “The new heavens and the new earth are not replacements for the old ones; they are transfigurations of them. The redeemed order is not the created order forsaken; it is the created order - all of it - raised and glorified.”

This Lent, don’t be afraid of the desert. Don’t hide the hardest parts of yourself and your life. Neither turn your eyes from those you encounter in the deserts of the world around you. God’s promise is for there, too. God’s promise is at work there, too. But listen to your Savior as he calls you with your heart and life to live the prayer - as he calls us with our hearts and lives to become this prayer: on earth as it is in heaven. 

Amen.

Sobriety & Thanksgiving for the Year I did not Expect

Today is January 3, the last day of a good week spent outside of Cleveland with family of my wife’s side. Last night we engaged an annual tradition at the dinner table: naming thanks for particulars of the year just ended, offering hopes and naming challenges for the year ahead. Simple enough, but with so much life to absorb where does one start? Probably with the breath and the pause that says, “Stop. Look back. Reflect. Give thanks.”

Unbeknownst to me, an article I recently read had prepared me for the process. Acknowledging at the outset that life contains multitudes, the article suggested giving yourself a simplifying template, a filter to try on, for either before or after the fact. Example: “2023 was The Year of ____” or “2024 will be The Year of ____.” Imagine yourself filling in the blank, in retrospect, twenty years from now. See what you hope for. What lands as most true?

Reductionistic, sure. But also useful for identifying the location of one’s heart. The way some art forms, like haiku, use the gift of limitation to produce, to lovingly lure out of hiding, creativity, beauty, and truth. 

So it was that I was able to look back on a year and first name these wonderful gifts (not exhaustive):

• the call to serve as rector to St. James Church & School, 
• our family’s purchase of our first home and subsequent relocation to East Dallas, streets and stories of my childhood,
• so much love and support and generosity from family, church, and friends, making both of the above possible, 
• the discovery of good schools for our children, 
• life-giving vocational opportunities for my wife and for me, and 
• acquisition and completion of an as-of-yet-vacant chicken coop.

Having named all of these, I then found myself giving voice to an answer I did not expect. Twenty years from now, how will I ultimately regard 2023? 

2023 is and will be the year of my becoming sober. 

I didn’t set out to give up alcohol this year. But I realized about three months into 2023 that maybe wondering at regular intervals if my relationship with alcohol was serving me was itself the answer I both needed and didn’t want to hear. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a problem to be a problem. Or maybe I get to decide what counts as a problem. (It was a moment not dissimilar from a realization that led me to ditch my smart phone for a time, back in the day.)

Years ago, it was a therapist in Wisconsin who, after patiently listening to my struggles with anxiety and exhaustion, asked if I drank. Yeah, but not that much. “Huh,” he shrugged. “Well, just know it works against your goals.”

For better or worse, my own story doesn’t include waking up needing to make apologies for things I couldn’t remember. I wouldn’t even swear to be being drunk often (or ever). For me, drinking was more of a creeping superstition. A security blanket. An end of day ritual. A six pack a week. A marker of the passage of time. Years later, become a second six pack a week. Become blushing embarrassment in filling out the forms that accompanied a doctor’s visit. Still not enough to prompt intervention. “Just something you’ll want to watch,” the doc would say kindly.

All these years later, and it wasn’t enough. What was I waiting for my relationship with alcohol to show me? That new life was really there, after all, at the bottom of the whatever numbered drink? That I could somehow drink my way to an end dissimilar to the grandfather I never knew, who died, before I was born, of liver disease fueled by drinking fueled by what we now know to call PTSD as a result of service in the Korean War and World War II? To drink and manage to not die like that - would that be my victory?

I share some of those personal details to name the personal shape of the discernment for me, which comes without judgment of those who drink. I admire those who enjoy a drink without thinking of the next one. I’m not one of them. In the end, I gave up. I decided to save the energy I was wrestling away.

Similarly, I’m not bothered to be around drinking, apart from my occasional and embarrassed resentments at society's general lack of interesting alternatives. (Sodas being really bad substitutes because sugar inhabits a relatedly addictive world of its own. I do like Olipops now.) But, truthfully, the hardest aspects of this first year, for me, were felt individually: the first few backyard grill outs without brews; the first Christmas Eve, coming home from services to a sleeping house, without a celebratory nightcap. 

I also share some of my personal story because the stories of others gave me courage to ask questions and take steps toward what I’ve experienced as a healing. Brené Brown’s What Being Sober Has Meant to Me was a gift and revelation. I still return to her description of life’s “sparkle,” which I’ve known on every day - even the hard days - of this journey. I wonder if there are others like me who, because they’ve never woken up wondering where they are, endure a purgatory that, because they know it isn’t hell, never ask themselves if they “qualify” for the sparkle, too. My friend, you absolutely do. 

From Brené, again:

“If you’re struggling, reach out and ask for help. Find a meeting. Get a therapist. Call a friend. We don’t have to do this alone. We were never meant to.”

We don’t have to do this alone. We were never meant to. If that’s not the Good News that belongs to this season of Incarnation, of Christmas, I truthfully do not know what is. 

2024 will probably be the year of something less dramatic for me. I hope so. The year of the chickens? (Finally!) I like it. The year of deep roots and soil quality, metaphorically in my neighborhood and faith community, and actually, in my backyard? I’m here for it. I’m still auditioning possibilities. But 2023, for all its blessings, has just one name for me: the year of my sobriety. I couldn’t be more thankful.