There is lead ash in the ice on Greenland.  The presence of lead there is three hundred percent more than one would expect naturally to find.  It’s a curious reality as well as a dangerous one.  For the longest time scientists were perplexed by the ash, and it was assumed that it would forever be among the earth’s unsolved geologic mysteries.  However the lead became trapped in the ice, it will surely now be there forever.

 

          

We want to live forever.  Oh, there are some of us who will deny it.  But our desire is betrayed by the ways in which we live our lives.  Both personally and corporately, we create things that will outlast us—like monuments, skyscrapers, museums, and one hundred twenty-year-old churches.  We put our names on memorials, scholarships, events, and buildings.  We amass (or try to amass) fortunes that will continue to live through our descendents, almost as if through their inheritance a piece of us will continue living. 

         

As a gift to the future, none of these is bad, and in fact they can all do immeasurable good.  But we must also acknowledge the uglier underside of our striving for immortality.  In addition to leaving testimonials to future generations, we also leave a darker legacy.  With our pretensions to immortality we act toward one another and toward the good earth as if there are no consequences, as if we—like little gods—can do what we will and start each day afresh.  As the current economic morass has so painfully revealed, we live unsustainably in every way.  We eat up our financial resources, our human resources, and our environmental resources, leaving proverbial ash where once life was vibrant.

          

Sadly, it is our negative legacies that most closely approach immortality.  Long after anything explicitly connected with any of us is gone, the lingering effects of our regular and casual misuse of our world will live on to affect generations who may remember nothing of us but our shame.

 

The desire to live forever is not new.  Throughout the broad scope of human history, people have coveted immortality, and then, as now, they enacted their pretensions by living as though there lives bore no consequences.  You see, we now know why there is lead ash on Greenland.  Some years ago enterprising scientists paid attention to the geologic strata where the ash is found and were able to date it to a period around the first century before Christ, a time when Roman entrepreneurs discovered silver and gold in the hills of Spain.  Without thought of consequence, the Romans built giant, hell-like furnaces to smelt those precious metals.  Ancient writers talk of clouds of ash that could be seen for miles, of birds that would drop dead from the sky when traveling near it, of forty thousand slaves condemned to work around and breathe in leaded poison, all so that the Romans might adorn themselves in silver and gold to resemble the gods. [1]  That lead, emitted into the air on what scientists call “a hemispheric scale,”[2] wafted northward until it was trapped in Greenland’s icepack, a deadly gift left us by the Romans, a deadly form of immortality.

 

This is Ash Wednesday, and the very intention of this day is to be a reminder of our mortality.  Today we will go to church (I pray) and will each have ash smudged on our foreheads with the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  We will recall how all the endeavors in which we place so much effort and devotion in this life—monuments, inheritances, even august church buildings—will, like us, eventually crumble into dust. 

 

 

But just as importantly we will also remember the ash we leave behind.  I pray we will dwell upon the ways in which our worst legacies threaten to overshadow our best.  As but one example, consider that the same deadly lead trapped in Greenland’s ice through the actions of the Romans two thousand years ago may soon melt into our oceans through actions of our own.[3]

 

 

Of course, the great irony is that we do enjoy true immortality.  With and in God, our promise is that we will live forever.  Were we to lay our unspoken anxieties and fears about death at the feet of the God who gives life, we might find that we could tread in this life more lightly.  We might discover the light of the immortal God that shines in all people, and we might then treat our brothers and sisters differently, both those we know personally and those masses we don’t know and are as yet unborn who nevertheless are often on the receiving end of our decisions.  We might recognize the goodness that God declares in his creation and cherish it rather than use it and use it up.

 

If we believed God’s promise—that we will abide with him always—then perhaps we would live for his immortal glory instead of striving for our own.

 

[1] Holland, Tom.  Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, pg. 41.

[2] http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/265/5180/1841

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/science/earth/08gree.html

 

 

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When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ ²Aaron said to them, ‘Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.’ ³So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. ⁴He took the gold from them, formed it in a mould,^* and cast an image of a calf; and they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ⁵When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.’ ⁶They rose early the next day, and offered burnt-offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel. (Exodus 32:1-6)

In January of this year, Cindy Jacobs was in a worship service when the Lord spoke to her, “Cindy, the strongman over America doesn’t live in Washington, DC – the strongman lives in New York City! Call My people to pray for the economy.” The Lord further said, “October 29 was Black Tuesday, the day the stock market crashed, and Satan wants to do it again.” We must be proactive in prayer.

“We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems,” she said. “While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble.” (Christian Broadcasting Network, CBN.com)

I’ve been scratching my head attempting to figure out how I missed this story last fall. It occurred just before the presidential election. I (along with eighty-five million other Americans) was so preoccupied with all things presidential that it escaped my radar screen. Of course, I don’t visit CBN’s web site with any regularity, either!

The reported event did in fact take place on October 29, 2008, the anniversary of the third catastrophic day of the 1929 stock market crash (known as Black Tuesday). Apparently the irony of laying hands upon and worshiping at the foot of an actual golden calf was lost on the good Ms. Jacobs.

In the Exodus story, the Israelites have grown impatient with God. Rather than viewing the long road before them as a journey of promise, the Israelites see it only as a wilderness, something to be escaped in favor of lives of greater ease. The Israelites don’t much care for this God who asks that they put him first, that they trust in his purposes for them. And so while Moses tarries with God on the mountain, the people convince Aaron (who, let’s admit, doesn’t require much cajoling) to melt down their gold and silver and craft for them a new god in the form of a golden calf.

In so doing, the people lapse in their fidelity to the first commandment, already given them by God: “You shall have no other gods before me.” Adding insult to injury, in their error they abrogate the second commandment as well: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”

The truth of Holy Scripture is often more about patterns than discrete facts, and the story of the Israelites at the foot of Mt. Sinai surely reveals to us the pattern in our own lives that led to the current economic crisis. Eschewing a life journey that includes prudence, restraint, and patience in our fiscal dealings, we have engaged in devil-may-care consumption, predatory lending practices, and unsound investment in things such as mortgage-backed securities.

Lest we claim that the culprits are all out-of-control investment bankers, we must acknowledge that all of us are complicit in the creation of a culture obsessed with accouterments that far exceed our ability pay for them. For years middle class income has stagnated or fallen (see “For Many, a Boom that Wasn’t,” in the April 9, 2008 issue of The New York Times), and yet our standard of living has unrelentingly advanced through unsustainable practices. Mortgage debt, consumer debt, and unsound investments have all combined to bring us—socially and individually—to our knees.

We Christians ought to be doubly chastened. Unlike Gordon Gecko, we bear a responsibility—a primary Gospel responsibility—to tend to others before ourselves. This responsibility has implications for charity (such as St. John’s vital Tuesday morning emergency outreach program), but it also has implications for justice. We are called to labor against the things of this world that deprive some of their human dignity, that raise up the proud-hearted and lay low the weak. In other words, we are called to be active participants in nurturing an economic order that is not soulless. As examples, Christians should advocate for legal protections against predatory mortgage lending and for punishing those who willfully defraud others of their life savings. Because for us it is unacceptable that anyone ultimately be chewed up and spit out by the economy. Shrugging our shoulders at the “casualties of the system” is not an option. (For reference to the centrality of these claims for our Christian faith, see Leviticus 19, Matthew 25, Mark 10:17, and the entire Gospel of Luke.)

To this primary Christian calling and the God from whom it comes we have not responded. We have instead worshiped at the golden calf of our own self-centered and unsustainable lifestyles.

And so we must ask, now that our current economic situation has brought us to our knees–the traditional posture of prayer–to what and for what should we pray? This brings us back to Cindy Jacob’s prayer vigil at the Wall Street Bull. Cindy Jacobs agrees that prayer is needed. What is troubling is the eerie resonance between her prayer and that of the ancient Israelites. By literally laying hands upon an actual golden calf, Jacobs’ followers ominously reveal the depth at which the wealth it represents is, for them, an idol…or more accurately, is God. Their prayer was that God restore our economic fortunes. In other words, the emphasis was apparently on a return to our easy road, though this time without the mistakes that led to our economic fall. Though we wouldn’t be so blatant as to pray on the Wall Street Bull, we have to ask, does Cindy Jacobs represent us, too? Is the language of her public prayer the content of our silent ones?

On October 29, nowhere was the confession of our callousness toward our brothers and sisters in need. Nowhere was repentance for neglecting the impoverished, for failing to fight the structures in our system that raise some up to grotesque heights while pushing others to the bottom. Nowhere was a commitment to walk the long and hard path through what today looks like wilderness but may someday be revealed to us as the road of promise and redemption.

I was born and raised in Arkansas.  Last month I began my 37^th year (having turned 36), and it occurs to me that I have now lived almost as much of my life outside of Arkansas as in it.  I’ve spent years in Illinois, Texas, Tennessee, and now Virginia.  And yet, if anyone asks, I tell him without hesitation that I am Arkansan.  It is my identity, and I experience it as such in the marrow of my bones.

 

But I also realize that the experience is an illusion.  My family’s connection to Arkansas goes back 150 years—a paternal great, great grandfather was a McGehee, Arkansas, stonecutter and fought in an Arkansas artillery regiment during the Civil War—but in the grand sweep of history that duration is but an instant.  Before that, the Spanish legally possessed Arkansas (mostly in absentia), and the land was inhabited by the Quapaw Indians, among other tribes.  What does it mean, really, to be an Arkansan?

 

I’m currently reading Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, which chronicles the messy peace process subsequent to the First World War.  MacMillan uses as her launch pad Woodrow Wilson’s much celebrated—and derided—Fourteen Points, the most famous of which includes, “…a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.”  In other words, self-determination.  In carving up Europe, and indeed the world, Wilson proclaimed that people would be able to align based upon their natural identities.

 

 

On the face of it, it sounded great.  In reality, it was, and continues to be, a nightmare.  (Conflicts as recent as the 1990s Balkan wars can be traced Wilson’s ill-fated concept.)  The Allies quickly learned that identity is an ephemeral thing.  When the lines of such new countries as Yugoslavia were created, or when ancient countries such as Poland rose again from the ashes of history, there was no neat and clean way to determine who was, for instance, a Pole.  Indeed, in much of central Europe the Allies discovered that people did not always conceive of themselves by way of nationality.  As one example, the Galician territory ultimately ceded to Poland was populated by Polish-speaking, Roman Catholic Ukrainians who had long been subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  So what were these people?  Each one asked gave a different answer.  For some, identity was political; for others, religious; for yet others, identity turned on language or race.  The Allies assigned these and other peoples whatever identity made the most sense to the experts in Paris.  In the decades to come, the Allies’ work had near-demonic consequences, as some people rebelled against the identities hoisted upon them and others embraced those same identities with nationalistic fervor.

 

The point is that identity is not so concrete as we might imagine, or even as we subjectively experience it to be.  While that might at first be scary, it should not be news to us as Christians!  Scripture teaches us that all human sources of identity are fleeting.  The only abiding identity is found in relationship with and to God.  St. Paul reminds us, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28 )

 

Paul proclaims, Jesus proclaims…God himself proclaims in the First Commandment…that our identity and allegiance are found first and firmly in our covenant relationship to God.  I am not an Arkansan, or even an American, ultimately.  I am a Christian, one who finds my identity in relationship with the Incarnate God.  But there is choice here.  It is the profoundest of choices.  It isn’t exactly self-determination, but it is a volitional act of  both submission to and cooperation with God.  It is a choice by which I determine that all other loci of identity are secondary to the Christian one.  When these come into conflict, I will affirm (with God’s help, I pray!) my Christian identity and my obligations to it even if doing so means that I must disavow (in the most extreme circumstances) other facets of identity.  Jesus understood the radical nature of finding one’s identity in God-in-Christ.  In the tenth chapter of Matthew, he poses the uncomfortable scenario in which identity in Christ conflicts even with basic family identity.  As strange as it sounds, I am a Christian before I am a Thompson.  If one or the other must go, I will be a Christian still.

 

Returning to the level of national identity, in our hyper-patriotic American ethos I wonder at what depth we who claim to be Christian truly accept the primacy of our Christian identity.  Too often, we assume that our faith and our patriotism are in sync.  Too often, they are not.  If the pursuits of our nation are in conflict with our lives in Christ—or the pursuits of our particular political party, be it Republican or Democrat—to which basic identity do we retreat?  Are we Americans first, or are we Christian?  Do we attempt to conform our faith in the service of our politics or our social outlook rather than conforming these things to the requirements of our faith?  I’m indicted by Abraham Lincoln’s response to one who asked if he thought God was on the side of the Union.  “Sir,” Lincoln responded, “my concern is not whether God is on our side.  My greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”

 

This has become a longer post than I intended.  I have more to suggest about what it might mean to be faithful to our Christian identity as it is expressed through our particular church—The Episcopal Church.  I’ll tackle that next time.

The window of my office has a spectacular view.  I overlook the parish garden, with St. John’s bell tower standing sentry on the garden’s far side.  Half of the view is filled by a mature sugar maple, the largest I’ve ever encountered.  This time of year the maple’s leaves are brilliant hues of red, orange, and gold.  With each gust of wind leaves release their grip from the tree, giving themselves freely to the breeze and covering the garden in an autumn blanket.  The wind gusts often, and each time I hear it rap at my window and cause the leaves to flurry, it strikes me as a visitor.  Today it reminds me of Antonio Machado’s poem:

 

 

The wind, one brilliant day, called

to my soul with an aroma of jasmine.

 

“In return for the aroma of jasmine,

I’d like all the aroma of your roses.”

 

“I have no roses; all the flowers

in my garden are dead.”

 

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals

and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

 

The wind left.  And I wept.  And I said to myself:

“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

 

During this season in the Sunday lectionary, our Gospel readings offer variations on Machado’s theme.  God graces us with a brilliant and multi-hued world, full of blessing.  And we are continually visited by the Ruach—Spirit, Wind—of God who brings with her gifts but also expectations.  When God’s Spirit approaches and asks for the best of us, what will we give: the jewels that adorn the sugar maple, or petals withered? 

 

In the November 3, 2008, issue of Newsweek (my news magazine of choice), Sharon Begley offers a fascinating article entitled, “Why We Believe: Belief in the paranormal reflects normal brain activity carried to the extreme.”  In the essay, Begley converses with a number of prominent psychologists, neurologists, and anthropologists to investigate what goes on in the brain that leads otherwise “normal” human beings to believe in paranormal phenomena ranging from ESP to alien abduction to the intuition that one has been reincarnated.  Several times Begley obliquely alludes to more common—if not more mundane—experiences as well: those we would call religious.

 

According to a recent study in the journal Science, Begley points out, people’s tendency to experience extrarational phenomena (the essay, not surprisingly, uses the term “irrational”) often coincides with periods of anxiety and chaos.  This is especially true with regard to the experience of underlying patterns and what Begley calls “illusory correlations” among things that, in ordinary times, appear random.  Begley quotes Bruce Hood of the University of Bristol who says, “In the absence of perceived control, people become susceptible to detecting patterns in an effort to regain some sense of organization.”

 

Neuroscience considers this susceptibility to be disconnected from actual reality.  I would argue, however, that this consideration betrays a materialist reductionism on the part of the biological sciences—a reductionism that biology’s first-cousin physics shed long ago. 

 

Whereas Hood believes the intuition of deep and underlying order that abides even in the midst of chaos is nothing more than a human coping mechanism, Christians claim that this intuition is of the presence of the living God who creates order from the “chaos and void” (Genesis 1).  We are more attuned to deep order and cosmic connection in times of chaos because at those times when we experience a loss of control we shed the emotional, psychological, and even material layers that otherwise buffer us from the presence of God.  We become vulnerable.  Our lives—including our psyches—become “thin places” and we are better able to intuit God.

 

This is not to deny the biological explanation for how this intuition kicks-in at certain times.  The essay concludes that the tendency to look for extrarational explanations for our experiences is located in a “bundle of neurons in the superior parietal lobe of the brain.”  This is the area of the brain that enables us to distinguish where our bodies end and the exterior world begins.  There are necessary and appropriate times, such as sleep, when these neurons shut off.  This bundle also becomes quiet at other times, including during intense prayer or meditation.  For Begley and those she interviews, this is an unfortunate evolutionary mistake which opens the door for our minds to perceive connections and the presence of a nonmaterial reality that simply do not exist.  Our “normal brain processes…become hijacked and exaggerated,” she explains.

 

This discovery by science provides a biological—even mechanistic—explanation of how it is that we come to believe we have experienced any number of extrarational things, from little green spacemen to the palpable presence of God.  But an explanation of how is not the same thing as an explanation of why.  Rather than an evolutionary mistake, the brain process that enables us to intuit layers of reality beyond the material (layers that, in its material reductionism, biology claims are illusory) is the means by which we experience the presence of the living God, by which Rudolph Otto said we encounter the Holy.

 

Begley comes to a couple of conclusions with which I whole-heartedly agree, though she intends them as unfortunate whereas I celebrate them.  The first is this: “The universal human need to find meaning and purpose in life is stronger and more basic than any attachment to empiricism, logic, or objective reality.”  Thank God.

 

Second, in discussing the scientific research that undergirds her essay Begley says, “It quickly became clear that belief requires an open mind—one not bound by the evidence of the senses, but in which emotions such as hope…can trump the evidence.”  A better articulation of our Christian faith is difficult to imagine.

Fourteen hundred years ago, King Oswald of Northumbria–newly restored to power after seventeen years as a prince in exile–sent to Iona on the Scottish coast for monks to Christianize his kingdom.  After fits and starts, Aiden came.  Nostalgic for his island home on Iona, Aiden chose as the site of his new monastary the tidal island of Lindisfarne from which he could gaze across the sea and see Oswald’s court at Bamburgh Castle. 

Lindisfarne quickly became the center of Christian prayer and devotion in northern Britain, and it gained the name “Holy Island.”  Like Iona before it, Lindisfarne was understood to pulsate with the heart of God.  Pilgrims flocked to the Northumbrian coast to make their way onto Holy Isle, but when they reached the coast they were met by the foreboding tides.  Twice daily when the tides are in, Holy Island is inaccessible.  But twice daily when the tides are out, the island becomes linked with the mainland by a thread of sand.  For more than a millennium pilgrims have waited patiently on the tides until the sands emerge, so they can begin the trek to Lindisfarne.  Because in the eras before tide tables the water could rise with unexpected speed, posts were driven into the sands to mark the high ground.  Pilgrims could mostly avoid danger if they hugged the marked way.  Even so, there are stories of lonely pilgrims who encountered sudden dangers and were drowned by the waters on their journey from worldly life to Holy Island.

Last month I made my own pilgrimage, and I joined the Communion of Saints who have walked the sands.  The Rev. Marcus Losack was my pilgrim guide.  This from my journal:

“Six of us walked back across the sands on the Pilgrims’ Way from the mainland to Holy Isle.  I walked along the sand, dodging threats of quicksand, wind, and the impending regularity of the returning tide.  Come what may, the guideposts were there to mark the way.  At one point even the guideposts were unreliable because the water was too high.  Marcus served as our guide when we had to veer from the marked path.  The walk was a sacrament, to be sure.  The wind was, on another level, its own sacrament.  As it blew, literally changing the face of the water, it hearkened to me the Holy Spirit.”

On our Christian walks, we benefit from those markers left before us, those posts that make our paths straight in the wilderness of the world.  And yet, there are those times when even the stalwart markers fail us.  The tides creep upon us, and we fear drowning.  At such times, when water rises, wind gusts, and markers fail, a trusted guide on the Christian walk can save a life and see us to the heart of God.

As the air turns cool and the leaves begin to change color each autumn, one of my personal rituals is to watch Bart Freundlich’s film “The Myth of Fingerprints.”  With all due respect to the Godfather films, The Myth of Fingerprints is my favorite movie.  The film was released in 1997, and the cast is stellar: Roy Scheider, Blythe Danner, Noah Wylie, Julianne Moore, Laurel Holloman, Michael Vartan.

The setting is a Thanksgiving holiday in a rambling New England country house.  A family has reunited after three years apart, and the viewer quickly is made aware that their separation has been with good reason.  The house crackles with tension–spoken and unspoken–and the veneer of familial love repeatedly cracks.  Characters variously wonder in confusion why their family relationships are so broken.

This morning I’ve been working on lecture notes for an upcoming Gathering class session on Jesus and the Atonement, and I’ve been re-reading Saint Anselm.  Anselm argues that humanity’s sin has created a chasm between ourselves and God.  Because of the age in which he lives (the 11th century), Anselm casts his argument in terms of honor and satisfaction.  Humanity’s sin has robbed God of God’s honor, and because God’s honor is supreme, even if humanity were to become sinless today, we could not satisfy the honor we’ve besmirched since the dawn of time.  God’s love is supreme also, and in love God offer’s Jesus the Christ–the God-man–as the one who can pay humanity’s debt and satisfy God.  Most often in our day, Anselm’s theory is vilified as cold and transactional.  His language of honor sounds archaic to our ears.  We protest, “Why can’t God simply forgive and forget?”

But Anselm’s theory underscores, as does the Myth of Fingerprints, that true reconciliation cannot occur without satisfaction.  This has special significance in today’s world where so often broken human relationships attempt to achieve reconciliation with superficial ease.

Whether one considers the societal oppression of the Jim Crow South; a strained relationship between parish and priest; or a wounded marriage relationship in which partners have been emotionally abusive toward one another, these devastating experiences prove that no efficacy occurs when a paper-thin veneer of amicability is taken as an acceptable response to wrongs committed.  Anselm’s theory, even with all its flaws, drives home the fact that cheap reconciliation is no reconciliation at all.

All that aside, there are some great lines in The Myth of Fingerprints.  Like this exchange around the Thanksgiving table, where Noah Wylie’s high school friends Tom and Jerry have joined the family for dinner:

Mom:  You boys haven’t changed, at least where food is concerned.

Jerry:  Actually, that’s not true.  Tom likes mustard now.

Warren (Noah Wylie):  You do?

Tom:  I like mustard now.  Although, I don’t understand it…it seems that any sandwich with mustard on it is, in essence, a mustard sandwich.

Truer words were never spoken.

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!  If you’ve made it this far, then you’ve clearly spent some time exploring St. John’s new web site.  I hope you’ve found it helpful.

This is my first attempt at blogging.  I will strive to keep posts updated and relevant.  Happy reading!

Grace and peace,

Barkley+