A Place for Despair at Christmas

Feast of the Holy Innocents

On this day we read in Jeremiah of a distraught Rachel grieving for her children as we recall King Herod's slaughter of all firstborn in his frantic search for the Christ Child. If you've ever been with someone in such sorrow you know they are restless and searching. They cannot be soothed...they are inconsolable.

And it adds to an already abundant message in this season of incarnation, faithfulness, hope...and now, a focus for despair giving it place, rest and redemption.

It had always been Presiding Bishop Schori's idea to connect with us over "a" Christmas and we had big plans of traveling with her to Kuwait and possibly Iraq for 2008. There was a distinct possibility except for the pulled travel orders at the last minute. We hustled to a fall back itinerary which included a tour of our new offices at the National Cathedral, staying at Bolling AFB for four days, Walter Reed Medical Center on two days, culminating with a visit, service and lunch with the Pentagon eucharistic community.

As I said, we had been anticipating the Presiding Bishop’s visit for a long time; it was the first of a Primate in anyone’s memory to see the work we do. I figured we’d be drawing energy off this venture for years to come since she would meet many officers and enlisted persons, celebrate and preach, host meals, and eat with a chaplain's family in their quarters. So, a lot of face time. Yet one incident characterized the whole time for me.

While Washingtonians clogged the roads preparing for the holidays we drove back and forth between the various locations on the itinerary. (A special mention of gratitude should be made of the Don and Darla Bretz, Randy Haycock, John Symons and Gerry Blackburn for their exceptional support of this trip.)

It was at Walter Reed Hospital that Bishop Katharine made a singular comment. A hallmark of her Nevada episcopacy and her priesthood before had been hospice chaplaincy. So when a retiree, an Episcopalian, had been admitted for pneumonia there was a request for clergy presence at his bedside. Bishop Katharine stepped forward as naturally as if she were the chaplain on duty. I didn’t want to crowd into the room so like a worried parent I paced outside and peeked into the room.

No need for worry: Under a faint nightlight +Katharine was hunched over the bed straining to hear and calm the gasping man in his last life event. Photos were restricted of course on that floor and even this blog veers close to violating that intimacy.

Later she said to me, "I don't get a chance to do much of this anymore and I miss it.” +gep

Text of a Christmas Quiknote

We had hoped to be at least in Kuwait (and maybe even Iraq) with the Presiding Bishop during this Christmas but our travel orders were not approved. As a worthy substitute we will be in Washington, DC visiting Bolling AFB, Walter Reed Hospital, and the Pentagon with Presiding Bishop Schori. So it's a different kind of Christmas than expected and that's a theme of note for this Season.

The holiday for Vic McInnis, Bob Young, Eric Thompson, and Ted Valcourt in Iraq is different than what they had expected to celebrate some years before this deployment. At such a time they are closer to the Holy Family’s experience on the road to Bethlehem than we might be. By their example we can see how the Incarnation often arrives with no familiarity. This is a distracted world to which He comes and it certainly needs Him.

It is a welcome mystery how God brings warmth and acceptance to a stable or changes any other different kind of Christmas to become the birth scene he intends it to be.+gep

Across the Miles

Have you read any good books lately...to your kid while in Iraq?

That's the kind of question a group of education writers were asking over this past week as they worked under the theme "Across the Miles: Praying, Reaching, and Reading." Meant as a support to the deployed and their families a series of booklets and on-line, inter-active supports is planned. For example, "Devotions for Adults Family Members Separated by Distance." is matched in its ingenuity by another selection of prayers and exercises crafted especially for children.

All these materials will be available on-line at www.episcopalchurch.org through the Evangelism and Congregational Life Center. Once there, click “Adult Formation”, then, “Military Resources.” Check it out in a few weeks.

Pictured with me during a work break is project chair Ruth Ann Collins, Lifelong Christian Formation, ECC Staff, Janie Stevens, Diocese of Texas and Mary Lou Crifasi, Diocese of Southern Virginia and the Rev. Gerry Blackburn, Director of Federal Ministries who gave considerable and essential staff support. +gep

Electing a Successor in 2010

By the time the Presiding Bishop places the mitre on the person who follows me I will be well into my 11th year in this job. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to 9/11, to two wars in SW Asia, to Katrina, and all the countless visits in between that's a lot of air miles, hotel rooms, and friendly faces. And every bit of it fascinating. These occasional entries will keep you up to date on the selection of the next bishop suffragan.

This afternoon we took the first steps in preparation for the election of my successor in this job by forming a committee of six bishops who will function like a Standing Committee in a diocese. That is, they will determine the parameters of the election, its rules, protocol, and budget.

This group met by conference phone call today and plan further face to face time at the House of Bishops meeting in March. The group was appointed by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to reflect geographical balance, and interest in differing parts of the Federal Ministries episcopacy. They are: Bishops Laura Ahrens, Connecticut; David Alvarez, Puerto Rico; Nathan Baxter (Chair), Central Pennsylvania; John Chane, Washington; Rayford High, Texas; and Gregory Rickel, Olympia. Bishop Clay Matthews (Consultant), Pastoral Ministries.

A step by step process is contemplated which includes the writing of a profile and the selection of a nominating committee at our May conference at Kanuga. Intake of candidates will take place during the remainder of 2009 to include a process for those by petition. The nominating committee will be drawn from all parts of this episcopacy to include chaplains and laypersons.

Candidates for bishop will be flown to the spring House of Bishops meeting in 2010 for the "walkabout" when the election will take place. Consecration of the new bishop is tentatively set for September, 2010. +gep

Like Sparks Darting

On these winter nights I watch the fire in the hearth as the embers fly upwards and away. At open campfires you might remember this busy, aimless journey. A little there, more there, popping and meandering, it seems, but so plentiful.

On Saturday I attended the memorial service for Ann Evans Bauer wife of the Rev. Tom Bauer who serves Fort Meade. Ann had died suddenly after an earlier heart attack which we had thought was behind her. I called Ann during the interim hospital stay and she sounded chipper, "I think I dodged the bullet," she said, and then, matching my woebegone story about the church she continued prophetically, "this has taught me to greet things with a glad heart."

Ann continued to recuperate while her energetic husband organized an all-day planning conference which our office visited over a speaker phone. It was very nifty and strategic. The gathering took note of Ann though it seemed an interruption to ask about her given the focus of the day. There was just so much you could do over the phone.

To be at the funeral I had to design an odd and complicated cab-train-cab route beginning very early in the morning in New York to make the 11 AM service in a Baltimore suburb. I say all this because I was as surprised to get there on time as, apparently, were the other mourners to see me. But as I slipped into the pew I knew I had part of a story but I wasn't sure if it meant very much.

There were any number of priest friends of the family in the congregation--me included--but Tom, indomitably, soldiered on and did the service himself and it turned out to be determinative. His homily was an amusing anecdote about his wife which he intended as an open invitation for anyone else to add a memory. I cringed at this having been in these awkward moments before. But Tom knew his crowd.

One by one, friends, old employers, past parishioners, and family each shared a snippet: Ann was a nurse, she loved nature, she was a grandmother to the neighbors' kids, she was the thoughtful friend. Gradually I began to understand where my fragment fit in and I shared it.

In this Advent season--and on this weekend which includes Pearl Harbor's Day of Infamy--we seek Christ so intently in individual moments of character yet we may miss seeing his corporate face staring back at us in a mosaic of the people who encircle us with love and affection.

The bestselling book, "The Shack" by William P. Young includes a portion where the main character, Mack, is confronted by a visual display of celestial souls who have died. Without distraction we see through his eyes the heightened animation God intends for us one with the other. As it says in the Book of Wisdom that was read on Saturday, "(the souls of the faithful) are like sparks darting among the stubble." We are created to know Christ and love through Him...come what may.

After the service over sandwiches I greeted the young Air Force mom and her 6 month old son whom I had met during the conference call. She had come from Korea to have her baby here; her husband was back in Osan. The Fort Meade people had wrapped her in their arms and the sparks were flying. +gep

Advent Anger

Chaplain Vic McInnis wrote to me recently about his Thanksgiving experience in Iraq, and like today's daily lectionary readings, it should give us the splash of cold water of reality for Advent.

In today's daily lectionary readings Isaiah conveys God's admonition that solemnity and prayerfulness aren't necessarily the same thing. And in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, we read that the gospel came by word, yes, but the Holy Spirit matched that by filling them with power and conviction.

Vic writes, “I spent Thanksgiving out with one of the forward operational bases and it was an extraordinary experience. There were Marines who missed the worship services I had offered prior to the Thanksgiving meal which had been flown in hot and ready to serve. So later in the evening they asked if I would consider offering the service for a second time.”

These young Marines weren’t eating turkey and basking in someone else’s gratitude they had their own sense of worship to claim; Advent skewers anything that would do otherwise. Simply, it’s an insistence to get on with what matters. It’s Advent anger, really, an impatience mixed with urgency. Promises are made all the time in life yet here’s one that trumps them all: Christ in whatever form will be disclosed. You know it…it’s more than a hunch. I have a friend who though economical in her churchgoing isn’t so in Advent. She says, “I’d miss the opening of a new level.”

I've had conversations recently with my college roommate about how our lives have turned out. His on the edge of religion but no less spiritual and mine, well, you know mine. Despite our differences we’ve noticed a common impatience with fluff, distraction, and disingenuous behavior. I don't recite these because I don't have them; at my age it’s just harder and harder to hide. And possibly that’s the source of the new found wisdom of my roomie and me: now in our sixties we can sense we’re running out of time.

O God, birth Christ in me and around me yet anew, and hasten to do it! +gep