Happy Birthday; Don’t Rest In Peace

Happy birthday, Lady Liberty.  I read this morning that on this day in 1886 the Statue of Liberty was officially unveiled and opened to the public. France had been the birth mother, shipping the statue in 214 crates to be assembled in New York.  Thinking about the generosity through contemporary eyes, I’m astounded by the gift.  Today it’s hard to imagine one country doing anything like this for another, but as the 19th century ebbed to a close the French apparently felt an extravagant appreciation for — maybe amazement at — the love of freedom they felt we held in common.   According to my source, dedication day was inclement, but crowds ignored the chill and the rain and jammed the space.  Responding to mixed signals, the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, who was alone in the statue's crown, dropped the veil prematurely, interrupting the festivities.  No one seemed to mind.  It had been the statue that had drawn the crowds, not the prospect of tedious speeches.  

In the years leading up to this historic birth, the project’s pregnancy was not without difficulty.  Fundraising stalled, delaying the completion of the pedestal on which the statue would be installed.  In 1883 poet Emma Lazarus wrote and contributed a sonnet to an auction held to raise money for the lagging project.  Eventually, in 1903, the poem was cast onto a bronze plaque and attached to the statue’s base.  

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I think of it as something of a baptismal name.  

A post-natal consecration.  

A lens, amplifying it’s intrinsic identity. 

And there she stood, symbolic flame alight, her invitational lyrics sung out.

“Stood.”  It’s a vacant pedestal these days.  We don’t much care for immigrants these days, erecting barriers literal, procedural and relational to bar them entrance.  Only the uninformed or the politically blind complain about our “porous” borders.  It takes years to navigate the system — often decades.  And money.  Unless, of course, you are well-connected, in which case you can cut to the front of the line.  Unless, of course, you are willing to perform a job that no one else wants to do — like cut meat in a meat packing plant, or harvest fruits or vegetables in a scorching hot field — in which case we will turn our head and ignore your presence until that is no longer convenient.  Meanwhile, if you are caught we will cage your children like dogs and send you elsewhere.  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

There is, in the news of recent days, a caravan of refugees — thousands — walking north from Central America toward our southern border.  They aren’t, and won’t be, welcomed here.  I have every expectation that their arrival will be met with resistant, repelling force, if not brutality.  We will collectively, and with a mixture of righteousness and helplessness, assert that we had no other choice.  We have our laws and a border to defend.  And we have all these precious jobs to protect…that nobody actually wants.

And believe me, I do not know the alternative.  There has to be, I acknowledge, some kind of a screening process.  But I have never sensed that the Ellis Island gates through which most of our ancestors passed erected quite such labyrinthian obstacles, and somehow we all managed.

I don’t suppose I really blame the politicians.  They, too, have their job to do; their laws to enforce.  What puzzles me are the good and conscientious church folk who read their Bibles as faithfully as I.  Unlike the varieties of modern topics about which we volubly argue on which scripture only vaguely or ambiguously speaks — and often then only by extension and extrapolation — on the subject of immigrant welcome, the expectations are repetitively clear.  Old or New Testament, it doesn’t matter:  “hospitality” is to be our name.

“Don’t exploit or mistreat the refugee,” commands the prophet Jeremiah.  “Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers,” notes the book of Hebrews, “for some who have done this have entertained angels without knowing it.”

These two among dozens of others.

And so it may well be that as happens on many other issues, our patriotic interests conflict with our Christian obligations.  Sadly, we can seldom tell them apart.

And so it is that on this day, 132 years ago, that the Statue of Liberty was born.  October 28.  It’s less clear to me if there is an equally specific date on which she died.  It just doesn’t take much of a look around to confirm that she has. Lazarus' sweeping invitation has been replaced by our stern warning:

“Don’t even think of bringing us any tired or poor.  Keep your wretched refuse on your own teeming shore.  We won’t have them.  These golden doors are dark.  And closed.”

May she never Rest In Peace.

Pied Piper Beyond the Chocolate Bunnies

It wasn’t a promising beginning. 

In the early years of my Iowa ministry I enjoyed the company of a small, ecumenical clergy group that met regularly for support, friendship, and shared learning.  Someone along the way recommended that we read together a book by Eugene Peterson.  I was skeptical.  Through the years I have vetted authors unfamiliar to me by the publishing companies who promoted them.  Peterson’s publisher at the time was one who raised red flags for me.  I gritted my teeth, bought the book and read along.  It was fine, but my prejudice got in the way.  

Some years later I encountered his writing at a more receptive moment.  I was growing sick and disenchanted with the state of the contemporary American church.  It had less to do with the congregation I was serving at the time — which was pushing mightily against the tide — but the ecclesiastical milieu at-large was becoming suffocating to me.  Seduced by the lure of success; hypnotized by the siren song of the marketing world’s emphasis on “bigger, better, more”; adopting the language of business, fixated on expanding market share and popular attention, we quoted “leadership” gurus as glibly as scripture, designed glitzy programs, gave away chocolate bunnies to the kids at Easter and advertised special guest appearances by “Sky Divers, Beauty Queens and Professional Quarterbacks for Jesus” to draw a crowd; installed cup holders in the theater seats, giant video screens in the chancel, and amped up the praise bands.  Infatuated with flame and fizz, mock-turtlenecked or Hawaiian-shirted pastors waved platitudinal shiny objects and orchestrated constant frenetic movement through the worship space, while the “amazing technicolor dream church” slipped effortlessly into the lifestyle of religious prostitutes, willing to turn ever more unsavory tricks in pursuit of butts and bucks.  I wasn’t any good at it, and it made me increasingly ill to feel the pressure to jump on.  Besides, I looked stupid in a Hawaiian shirt.

And then Peterson quietly but forcefully spoke up from the pages of his current book.  “The church is not called to be a purveyor of religious goods and services,” he cautioned.  And I exhaled.  Throughout that book and the subsequent volumes I hungrily consumed, he mapped a more integral path.  He wrote of his own discovery of the nature of congruent pastoral work — one that led him away from “staying awake at night laying out a strategy or ‘casting a vision,’” and into the lives and souls of his parishioners.  It was, for me, like being handed a cup of cool water.   I found in him not only a life raft, but a literary conversation partner.  Eventually, an actual conversation partner.

Always interested in writing, I was constantly frustrated with my inability to work the discipline into my ministerial life.  Competing responsibilities, tasks and distractions were a constant.  Peterson, I observed, hadn’t seemed to have that problem.  Incomprehensibly to me, he had managed to publish dozens of books while serving as a local church pastor.  How, I wondered, did he find the time and the mental focus?  The only way I could think of to learn the answer was to ask.  I tracked down an address, shared in a letter my frustration, and asked the question.  By return mail I received a two-page, single-spaced reply, outlining first how he organized his daily work, and then how he and his congregation had come to understand and validate that work as an extension of their shared ministry.  It was a beautiful, generous gift, closed with this contextualizing and nudging P.S.:  “Through the years, the most important Christian writing has been done by local church pastors…like the New Testament.”

Some years later, while attending a small conference at which he was presenting, I had the opportunity to express my appreciation, though I almost squandered it.  Finally overcoming my inhibitions late in the experience, I approached him with my copy of The Message.  Usually surrounded by fans, he was in this moment uncharacteristically alone.  I apologized for asking him to autograph a Bible, but confessed that it was the only one of his volumes that I had brought along.  He smiled gently as he took my book, set it in his lap, and replied, “when it first came out, I refused.  And then I thought to myself, ‘Oh, get over it.’”  We both chuckled, and he handed back my now-inscribed Bible.  But I couldn’t manage to say more, until a day or so later, on the crowded ferry back to the mainland, I found myself wedged against the railings next to Peterson.  It wasn’t a perfect setting, but it was now or never.  “I want to thank you for saving my professional life,” I blurted out, and then the rest of the story spilled out into the conversational, wave-sprayed opening.  He patiently listened, smiled, and patted my arm, receiving with uncomfortable grace my gratitude.  And that was it.  

Until a few months ago.  Hearing a replay of a broadcast interview with him from a couple of years prior, I felt again the full weight of my indebtedness.  Rereading one of his more recent books, I once again tracked down an address, composed a missive again recounting his indelible fingerprints on my life, and dropped it through the mail slot.  Truthfully, I had forgotten about it when, a few weeks later while collecting the mail, I shook out a letter with a Montana postmark.  Inside was a preprinted card from Janice Peterson, Eugene’s wife, acknowledging my letter and noting that Eugene wasn’t corresponding much at this point.  And then, in the white space remaining on the card she had handwritten, “I’ve shown him your letter and he has reread it multiple times.  Thank you.”

Two weeks ago I learned that he had entered hospice care, and last night I learned that he had died.  I’ll confess that it feels like a part of me has, too.  And that the church has lost a critically important, steadying voice.  

But only, I know, in a certain sense.  The rest of that truth, perceived through my tears, is that every time I see chocolate bunnies being handed out during a children’s sermon, every time I see the liturgists swinging figuratively through the sanctuary in a tawdry performance of “Church du Soleil,” I’ll hear the humble music of his voice piping us toward a more faithful way.  And he will be moving among us — at least alongside me — again.  

Thanks, Eugene, for the metaphors, the theological poetry, the attention to spiritual integrity, and your rigorous ability to write it all down, through it all encouraging us to live “the Christ life in the Christ way.”

A Few Traveling Reflections

We traveled this month primarily for pleasure — we were celebrating an anniversary and work hard never to take such roadside altars for granted. Since we determined early on that the best gifts we can give each other are experiential rather than material — durable as only the ephemeral can be — we travel. And we do our best to pay attention...to whatever finds it’s way into our sphere of senses. We plan, but loosely; leaving porous places in the days where serendipities can seep in — as, enabled, they invariably will. Which is also to acknowledge that, beyond the simple pleasure of it, travel is intrinsically enlarging. We return as different people.

And so it is, as those different people, that we have returned from a few weeks in France. Aside from the pleasures, what did we notice? With apologies for the jetlag still cobwebbing my brain, a few random thoughts come to mind.

Thought 1:  I came to a new respect and appreciation for my high school friends who studied French. I didn’t. And so it was that, as a language, I found French to be melodically beautiful but functionally inscrutable. I never succeeded in differentiating individual words within the aural sweep of a speaker’s sentences. As a people, however, I found the French to be surprisingly, generously gracious. I say “surprisingly” because we ventured into this excursion having internalized and braced ourselves for the oft-cited slander of French aloofness to — or outright disdain toward — tourists in general and non-French speakers in particular. Our experience was the exact opposite. At every turn we were shown kindness, hospitality, charity and grace — from the jogger in Avignon who ran past us, only to return to ask if she could help us two obviously lost travelers trying to find the train station; to the train conductors who showed us how to fill in the blanks on our tickets instead of charging us the penalty for not having already done so; from the patient shopkeepers who helped us count out unfamiliar currency, to the miscellaneous passersby who volunteered translations. We were given rides, welcomed into homes, and made to feel like family. We were constantly humbled, grateful and profoundly indebted to this consistent kindness to strangers.

Thought 2:   Kindness is one thing; accommodation is quite another — or maybe accommodation is simply kindness at an institutional level. Every day of our travels we were as grateful for as we were dependent upon the bilingual provisions Europeans make — in public spaces like elevators, train stations, airports and museums — but in more intimate ones as well, like shops and sidewalk cafes. Menus commonly included English translations. Announcements were routinely given in multiple languages. Brochures  were always diversely translated. We were never far away from someone or some tool that would help us bridge the language gap. We were utterly and completely at the mercy of these considerations. And I was sobered by the realization of how seldom we, in this country, reciprocate. Paralyzingly mono-lingual, we condemn foreign travelers to their own resources, in so doing condemning ourselves to our own prejudiced or clueless insularity. That they routinely succeed is more to the credit of those travelers multi-lingualism than our hospitable provision. Thank you, France, for extending your hand to help us navigate the stumbling divides.

Thought 3:   I love our home, our land, our heritage, and it was, in any number of ways, warming to return after such a wonderful excursion. That said, it was relief and delight to be away; to gain distance from and perspective on the roiling stomach of this profoundly ill American culture. Left or right, angry or appalled, righteous or repulsed, surely we can agree that we are together in a very unhealthy civic space. Europeans certainly have their own problems and cultural viruses, but blessedly they went out of their way to screen us from them. Meanwhile, in their keeping, we could cleanse ourselves — ever so briefly — of the moral, political and social vomit that is drenching us these days. And now back, to consider fresh avenues for wading restoratively back into the stench.

Thought 4:  I was, through all these steps, mindful of things we, in our country, do well. As one example, I don’t really know how people with mobility limitations function in the areas we visited. Rarely is there a ramp. Routinely are there steps. Occasionally there are handrails, but just as often you wobble at your own risk. One of our apartments required stooping and almost comically careful contortions to access. Anyone with crutches or a wheelchair would be sleeping in the courtyard. We have passed laws to look after such loved ones. Where we visited in France I suppose such people just stay home.

On another occasion we were spending an unexpected afternoon learning from an older gentleman. In the course of the conversation he lamented the exodus of young people from France where they are given little room to grow. “We don’t value young people,” he said with a sigh, “and so they leave.” I could have countered that in our country the situation is reversed — we revere only the technological facility of the young and ignore the wisdom of age — but either way there is room to improve.

Which ultimately is the residual taste in my mouth from our time away.  Yes, we had lots of fun away.  Yes, we looked forward to returning home.  But having returned I even moreso than before bemoan the precious time we waste as a country in self-congratulatory boasts of our own greatness — “we are the best in the world,” blah, blah, blah — when it would be so much more productive...and interesting...to explore and lean toward what we might yet learn and how we might grow still better. It’s fine to keep in mind how far we’ve come; even better to be resiliently honest about where we can still beneficially go.

With that, I think I'll take another nap.

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