Not So Much The Handshakes Anymore

One aspect of the colorful mosaic being fashioned in retirement by my friend and mentor, the Rev. Canon Mark Shier, is lending his mellifluous instrument to the production of public domain audio books, which he does as a volunteer. Along one of his literary back roads he discovered an 1895 collection of short stories called Red Men And White by Owen Wister, who also wrote The Virginian. Mark sent along this excerpt from the author's introduction, which resonates pretty well this political year:

With no spread-eagle brag do I gather conviction each year that we Americans, judged not hastily, are sound at heart, kind, courageous, often of the truest delicacy, and always ultimately of excellent good-sense. With such belief, or, rather, knowledge, it is sorrowful to see our fatal complacence, our as yet undisciplined folly, in sending to our State Legislatures and to that general business office of ours at Washington a herd of mismanagers that seems each year to grow more inefficient and contemptible, whether branded Republican or Democrat. But I take heart, because often and oftener I hear upon my journey the citizens high and low muttering, “There’s too much politics in this country”; and we shake hands.

Intersper-// ced With Scatter- // red Showers

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The weather in Anglican chant. According to a YouTube comment, this performance by the Master Singers has been around since 1966.
Hat tip to Mark Shier

Wireless Warning

Hat tip to Mark Shier

The Latest From Dan Brown?

The Episconinjas. Perhaps related to the Episconixonians?

Hat tip to Mark Shier

Ineffable

To say goodbye to a beloved priest and pastor after nearly 35 years, the people of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Fullerton, California chose the theme of Aloha, which communicates the ancient and godly virtues of affection, grace, and love and has more recently come to mean (this is the especially helpful part when you're still a little in denial) "hello" and "goodbye" at the same time. So at the end of a ceremony this afternoon in front of a church packed with well wishers, the children of St. Andrew's took turns loading down the Rev. Canon Mark Shier with leis. As each young face approached, Fr. Mark's brightened more. Children all love him. Pretty much everybody else does, too, which made today's parting all the more poignant.

Several years ago, Mark spearheaded a renovation of the church grounds, including a reception plaza that has now been named in his honor. Our bishop, J. Jon Bruno, designated him rector emeritus. While his name will be all over the place, the church won't be seeing much of him in the weeks and months ahead as the congregation gets used to its interim pastor, who will help them get used to life without the only priest most St. Andrew's members have ever known, and launches a search for a permanent replacement.

Over the last few months, Mark has prepared the church for his leave-taking with his usual meticulousness, but today was still hard for his devoted people -- and I was one of them. Sitting in the pews, watching the sometimes stoic priest try to battle back tears, I remembered my first visit to this friendly church 14 years ago. I'd been in search of an Episcopal parish that felt right. As Holy Eucharist began that Sunday morning, thanks to Mark's gracious ministry, I knew I'd found it. Forgiving (or overlooking) the whole Republican-Nixon thing, he inspired, encouraged, and supported my own vocation, sent me off to seminary, baptized and confirmed my daughters, Valerie and Lindsay, married Kathy and me, and gave me my first job as a deacon and priest while teaching lifelong lessons about how to do both jobs. My life wouldn't be remotely the same if it weren't for this gifted theologian, liturgist, pastor, and proud Vietnam veteran and Welshman. That our lives intersected as they have (and still shall, I pray) is an ineffable thing. Only one other word for it, really: Aloha.

Farewell, Mark! (When Can You Come Preach?)

My mentor, sponsoring priest, and beloved friend, the Rev. Canon Mark Shier -- Vietnam veteran, brilliant theologian, and loyal Bruin -- is retiring this weekend after nearly 35 years as rector of the the Episcopal Church of St. Andrew the Apostle in Fullerton, California. The Orange County Register takes due note:

[Fr. Mark] said he appreciated the religion's unconditional acceptance of humanity including the Episcopalian views on women as priests, gays and lesbians and immigration.

"We don't demand everyone agree with us 100 percent; we are saying to pray for and love one another," he said.

Shier can't forget when his older, gay brother was dying of AIDS. He told his congregation he was bringing him to Fullerton and would care for him no matter what.

"I said if anyone had a problem with that, to come and talk with me," Shier said. "No one came. Instead, many people asked how they could help."

The Bible: Story Of God, Story Of God's People

My mentor and friend, the Rev. Cn. Mark Shier, five months from retirement after an extraordinary third of a century's rectorship at the Episcopal Church of St. Andrew in Fullerton, California, on reading the Bible:

Only the simple or the lazy would look at the events and attitudes of the Bible without realizing that they are colored by the lens through which they are reported. The text of the Bible did not descend miraculously out of the clouds of heaven and the mind of God. The Bible as we have it is the result of a long and complex development, guided indeed by the Spirit of God but nonetheless the work of different men and women with different personalities (different neuroses!), folk observing and interpreting events out of different societies and cultures, most of them far more harsh and primitive than our own. If we don’t do the work of compensating for the shortcomings of the reporter, we will get a skewed idea of what is reported. If we read a book about Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea in our Civil War, we will want to know whether the author is a Southerner or a Northerner or a third party presumably free from bias. If we want to know of the contributions of Jewish culture to Europe, we will want to know if our author is a Nazi or an Israeli. It will make a difference.

So it is with the Bible. We will want to know what period of history the book comes out of, who were the friends and who the enemies, what experiences of conquest and injustice might have colored the narration in front of us, how was God conceived, what was the idea of mercy (it is not always our idea of mercy – for example, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was not a harsh prescription of punishment but a merciful way of limiting retaliation for wrong (Exodus 21.23, Leviticus 24.19, Deuteronomy 19.21), and so on. The Bible is the story of God’s people every bit as much as it is the story of God. If we are wise, we will make and know the distinction.