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?