Proximate Causes

Mike, a longtime friend of Kathy and me, is a respected general contractor. Not long ago, he was finishing up a job for an Orange County family. Walking through their kitchen, he happened to notice one of their kids standing at the sink, rinsing backyard dirt and sand off a bucketful of LEGOs.

The next morning, Mike got a call from the homeowner, who asked, “What did you do to our garbage disposal?”

“It happens all the time,” Mike told me. “I add a spare room or a dig a hole for a Jacuzzi, something breaks anywhere in the house two hours, weeks, or months later, and they blame me.” In this case, the chagrined client called back and said he’d found a LEGO block right where Mike promised he would: Trapped in the frozen jaws of their garbage disposal.

At one time or another, each of us has indulged the temptation to assume that because A happened, then B did. The rational mind is on the lookout for what prosecutors and defense attorneys call the proximate cause – according to one online definition, “an act from which an injury results as a natural, direct, uninterrupted consequence and without which the injury would not have occurred.”

While identifying the proximate cause can help measure accountability and assess penalties, the work can be tricky, especially when both sides are pointing the finger. If my car is struck at an intersection by a truck whose driver was exceeding the speed limit, I may try to convince the traffic judge that I wasn’t at fault just because I happened to turn left into its path. If I get caught smacking my little brother, I’ll probably try to get out of trouble by saying that he hit me first, when mom wasn’t looking. In each case, while I may have a legitimate grievance, I’m still going to lose the argument, since my own action, not someone else’s, directly caused my predicament.

 In the public sphere, when politicians and media figures identify what they believe is the proximate cause of an event, it usually means they want to either mold public opinion or leverage or prevent some policy outcome. White supremacist Dylann Roof’s murder of nine African-Americans during a church Bible study in Charleston on June 17 was an especially striking example. Was his racism the proximate cause of the murders? Some said it was America’s institutional racism, including some people’s sentimental allegiance to the Old Confederacy. Others insisted that we have to consider Roof’s easy access to a handgun or the possibility of his being mentally ill. One presidential candidate said Roof was attacking religious liberty. Others made even more outlandish assertions.

Some talking heads accused others of politicizing the Emanuel AME Church massacre by stressing the wrong causes. In our polarized political and media worlds, these debates take on a wearyingly circular character. If I’m sure that I’m right, that I’m the one taking the morally superior stance, then I won’t necessarily be conscious of having political or tactical motives. When you disagree with my moral stance, I might be tempted to say that you’re the one who’s playing politics.

It would help if those raising their voices in such certitude would be more mindful of their prejudices and open about admitting them. This is not to argue that there’s never a correct answer in the search for proximate causes. It’s just that human affairs tend to be complicated, and those who have something to prove, or political capital or power to protect, are bound to be the enemies of nuance.

In Christian terms, of course, we might say that there is no nuance, only dark and light, death and life, evil and good. This frame of reference can lead to greater polarization when we insist that we are the ones on the side of the good. If we instead proceed out of humility, the Christian view promotes clarity and empowerment. June 17 was a day of ultimate darkness, an affront to the mind, heart, and spirit of God. Whatever we believe about its proximate causes, we can agree that it should never happen again. If we really want to do whatever it takes to prevent such horror, we should be willing to consider and work on multiple potential causes, even those that don’t match our predispositions. By definition, God’s love is wider than any horizon we may be able to glimpse. To see more of what God sees and desires, we may have to set out from the territory where we feel most at home.

This post originally appeared in the Vaya Con Dios, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church

The Cafe At Two Rocks

The cafe at Two Rocks

When Lisa worshiped with us for the first time a few weeks ago, I placed my accustomed phone call to suggest that we meet for coffee so I could learn about her journeys of life and faith and tell her more about St. John’s. Hearing people’s stories is one of the greatest joys of ministry, so I always wait eagerly for a reply.

Lisa wrote quickly to say that she’d gotten my voice mail message. She suggested we meet the next morning, a Friday, “at Stbx. in the Lowe’s Center.”

John sent back a friendly message saying Lisa’s proposed time wouldn’t work because he conducted a church service each Friday morning. He mentioned other possible times and added, “Sorry! I don’t know where the Lowe’s center is or what Stbx stands for. It’s my age!!...God bless. John.”

Lisa had undoubtedly heard that some pastors were out of touch, but what was with me? Granted, the Lowe’s reference was a little obscure, at least if I wasn’t into home improvement. (I’m not. Just ask Kathy.) But even a non-stockholder ought to know what Stbx means. Lisa was beginning to think that I lived in a monastery or maybe a cave under the St. John’s altar. Even at this point in the correspondence, a person would be excused if she went looking for another church. But Lisa’s kindness and patience held fast. She wrote, “Stbx is short for Starbucks and it’s the one in the Lowe’s shopping center in RSM.”

One more aspect of the reply bugged her. She had heard me make a big deal about our new weekly fellowship ministry, but I didn’t even know where it met. It was obvious I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in my own church. She wrote, ”I think it’s where St. John’s has Happy Hour on Fridays.”

She asked if I was free the following Wednesday. The next reply she received fell into the category of one step forward, one step back. Her befuddled prospective pastor said that he’d be free anytime after noon. That was progress. But then he added, “So it would just be getting wherever RSM is? Let me know what time and the where and we will be on to meet. It will just be how long it takes to get there from Yanchep. Blessings. John.”

“Yanchep” might have been a hint that Pastor John really was living on another planet, or at least another continent. Lisa’s reply is my favorite in the whole thread: “RSM is Rancho Santa Margarita. I think Wednesday at 12:30 wld be great. If I’m late it’s because I’m coming from Yanchep to the Lowe’s Stbx.”

John was the first to punt to Google. “I think we have got each other confused with different people,” he wrote. “I am in Yanchep Western Australia and Rancho Santa Margarita is in America. If not and you’re in the same Yanchep why not meet at the Lagoon or the café at Two Rocks?”

My address is revjht@msn.com. Lisa had written to revjt@msn.com and reached, it was now obvious, a different Pastor John. When she shared the e-mail thread with me, Lisa suggested that the title of my next sermon – or Vaya article, I hope she’ll allow -- might be “the Misfortune of Misunderstanding.” Because it entailed waiting for understanding and connection, it’s a great Advent story. Lisa’s gifts of patience and good humor despite Pastor John’s moments of cluelessness and John’s own unstinting, cheerful hospitality are all essential virtues for dealing with those we love at Christmas. So good on them both!  

This post first appeared in the Vaya Con Dios, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church.

Justice And Blood

In Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” Jamie Foxx portrays a slave named Django (“The D is silent,” he tells another character) who frees his wife from a sadistic plantation owner. (Spoiler alert!)  In the process he kills every white person on the farm, including the owner’s unarmed sister. Among Django’s victims is Tarantino himself, appearing as a minor character so debased and irredeemably stupid that I’m sure even the Pope would say he deserved to die.

I can’t account for everyone’s reaction to the half-hour of airborne intestines at the end of “Django Unchained.” Priest of God and follower of the Prince of Peace, I was rooting for Django all the way. You know the feeling when the bad guys are getting what they deserve. If filmmakers have done their jobs, few in the audience are hoping the suspects will be read their Miranda rights and given the opportunity to reflect on their poor decisions. Something deep in us aches for instant justice. We want to see righteous vengeance in the flash of steel and gunpowder. We want blood.

If you really want to see a bloody mess, ask screenwriter and director Tarantino to justify Django’s mayhem in the context of the Newtown massacre. In one TV interview in early January, he refused to answer. But a few weeks before, on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” he made a useful distinction. The worst moments in “Django Unchained” are depictions of savagery against slaves. They’re not stylized, and Tarantino doesn’t dwell on them. It’s this documentary violence, the vicious reality of slavery, which provokes Django and his friend, played by Christoph Waltz, into an orgy of what Tarantino called “the fun violence.”

Fun violence is the concept I’ve been wrestling with since seeing Tarantino’s entertaining movie (not suitable, in my perhaps too conservative view, for most under 15 or 16). Some think that his movies could inspire real-life attacks by sick people. Others just believe they’re in poor taste. But most critics miss the point, which is that the blood lust is in us already, an integral aspect of our nature. Tarantino is showing us exactly what we’ve come to see, which is also what we came to see when Bruce Willis battled terrorists in "Die Hard" and Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star. Fictional violence against the unquestionably evil gives our animal instincts a chance to bubble deliciously to the surface under carefully controlled conditions.

Owning our instincts, including our taste for violence, is vital to our formation as Christians. Especially as we prepare for Lent and Good Friday, it helps us understand how we might have been persuaded to add our voices to those who shouted “Crucify him!” Jesus’s antagonists concocted a narrative about his blasphemy and pretensions to kingship that triggered the audience’s craving for a spectacle of torture and death. During the long era of public executions in the U.S., people also gave themselves permission to enjoy watching someone die.

It’s up to the experts to say what came first, our hunger for righteous payback or for sheer blood, and how they’re intrinsically bound. But understanding how deeply we want vengeance can help us make better decisions about dilemmas in the world and our lives. Do we ever catch ourselves rushing to judgment, deciding too quickly who’s right and wrong so some sentence can be speedily pronounced? We leave behind the vivid colors and moral clarity of a Tarantino movie and rediscover gray areas and stubborn facts. In a complicated world, give me “Django Discerning” on the judicial bench and in corridors of power, hungry for justice but with a lust for due process.

Movie violence can also deepen our understanding of biblical violence – the massacre of the priests of Baal by God’s prophet Elijah on Mt. Carmel as depicted in 1 Kings or, as described in Exodus, God’s killing of the Egyptian firstborn to free his people from slavery. In their time, these events were portrayed not as fun but as good violence, leading to righteous worship in 1 Kings and freedom in Exodus. God’s role in bloody biblical acts is a question for another time. But God does say this much to his violence-prone people: “Promote justice. Strive to walk in peace. Vengeance is mine, and never yours.”

This post was first published in the parish newsletter of St. John's Church, the Vaya Con Dios.

Keeping Sabbath And Staying Home

Maybe I’m imagining it. I can’t give you hard data. But whether it’s because of the price of gas, the economy, or Orange County’s peerless weather this year, I’m pretty sure that more St. John’s congregants and school parents than ever have told me that they’re staying home this summer.

Staycation is a word, by the way – or technically, a neologism, which means a term that’s on the way to being accepted as a word. Its working definition is “no extra baggage charges or lost luggage, jet lag, jellyfish stings, or gaining five pounds on a cruise to Alaska.”

What staycation doesn’t mean is no fun, rest, or change of perspective. It doesn’t mean no Sabbath. The psalmist sings, “My boundaries enclose a pleasant land” [16:6]. We take our capacity for Sabbath wherever we go, just as we can ruin our vacations by packing our accustomed anxieties (and our e-mail-loaded iPhones) along with our sun block and swimsuits.

It’s the same with church. We don’t need to be in church to thank and praise God, talk to God from the depths of our heart, seek and obtain forgiveness for our sins, participate in sacrament, and live a more abundant life. But the discipline of regular attendance helps turn our minds toward the divine. By the same token, while we don’t need a folding chair, Corona with a wedge of lime, Daniel Silva novel, and stretch of beach on Maui to relax and enjoy life, they sure help set the stage.

If I’ve just described your vacation, you may not be even be reading this. If you are, put down that laptop get back to having fun. If not, here’s your guide to a five-star staycation:

Take little trips. Do we really need to be reminded of the diversions within a few hours’ drive? Since Kathy and I were on the St. John’s Holy Land pilgrimage, I decided not to take much more time away this summer. But I’m taking five or six days in August to drive to San Diego, see friends, and spend a couple of days on retreat, ending up at Camp Stevens in Julian to check up on my younger daughter, Lindsay, who’s on the staff. A six-day cruise to Mexico? Just fine. Spending six days (or six hours, if that’s all that’s available) doing exactly what I want? Priceless.

Do exactly what you want. A spiritual counselor told me that her definition of Sabbath was watching a whole season of “The West Wing” in one day. That’s because she loves “The West Wing.” Her point was that Sabbath is whatever you find enjoyable and reinvigorating – watching sports, baking cupcakes, playing video games, hiking, talking to friends, going to the movies by yourself, or just sleeping in. Above all, never feel guilty for indulging yourself. Remember that, at least in English, Sabbath doesn’t start with “sh” (for “should”).

Try something new in your life and at St. John’s. What I love most about vacations is the new or atypical: Seeing historic places, scuba diving, eating four meals a day. The staycation dictum is the same: “Just try it.” Rent a flute and sign up for a lesson. Download Scrabble or Angry Birds on your phone. Amaze and confound your grandchildren by learning to text or joining Facebook. Have a frozen yogurt with chocolate sprinkles. Have another.

At church, sample the noon healing service on Wednesday or the Saturday evening community Holy Eucharist. They only last about a half-hour, giving you more time for “The West Wing” or Angry Birds. Come to the fellowship dinner on Aug. 11 or yoga and the labyrinth on Aug. 16. Join a parish reading circle. If you’ve been tempted to try spiritual direction, what better time for a deeper conversation with God than the lazy days of summer? Call me and ask for a referral. If you’ve never tried the discipline of daily prayer by the hours, get out The Book Of Common Prayer and turn to pps. 137-140. Tell God I said hello.

Above all, if you’re not traveling this summer, remember why people go on vacation to begin with: For refreshment, reorientation, and (if we’re smart) relationship. We can fly around the world ten times without ever finding such comforts. We can rejoice in them without even leaving the house.

This post originally appeared in the Vaya Con Dios, the St. John's parish newsletter. My thanks to JP Allport for the labyrinth photo and sacredsandwich.com for this cartoon:

Alone Again, Unnaturally

In mid-May, Kathy and I were in New York to see her daughter, Meaghan, and over 400 classmates receive masters degrees in social work from Columbia University. Those we met were bright, idealistic, and deeply committed to helping suffering and marginalized people. To pay for their studies, many took on a six-figure debt, all to prepare for a vocation that isn’t especially remunerative.

But at the graduation ceremony (at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side, graduates trod where Stones had rolled) and a party afterward, nobody was fretting about the future. Their devotion to mission, and the gracious community they’d built in their two years together, made me think of a class of seminarians. Commencement was a secular event, so no one said a public prayer. I imagine I joined thousands in the audience in quietly thanking God for the class of 2012 and the support they’d received from family members and friends.

Meg feels a calling to serve older people, which is a growth industry for social workers. We all know about the coming baby-boomer retirement bubble. By 2017, in the global population people over 65 will outnumber those under five for the first time in history.

This explosion of longevity is stalked by what some health experts call an epidemic of loneliness. Stephen Marche surveys the research in a recent Atlantic article. A 2010 AARP study found that over a third of Americans over 45 are chronically lonely, compared to a fifth of the same cohort ten years before. Another study reveals that about 60 million in the U.S. say they’re unhappy because of loneliness.

Marche’s article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”, is one of many these days plotting the correlation between social media and social isolation. Marche doesn’t buy it, and I don’t, either. Our temperaments aren’t formed by our online interactions anymore than they are by cocktail parties and family reunions. We come fully formed to all settings of intense personal interaction, whether on-line or en masse, when we quickly display (and, if we’re lucky, learn) how we are with others – reticent or revved up, other- or self-directed, good listeners or relentless talkers.

But if Facebook isn’t making us lonely, what is? Why do naturally social organisms become unsociable? As a baby-boomer, I have a post-Vietnam, post–Watergate answer that has to do people’s skepticism about the focal points of authority that used to bind us together, especially governments, political parties, and religious organizations. Add a dose of western individualism, whose worst expression is selfishness, and you’re tending toward a society of mutually suspicious, self-sustaining loners who are (Marche also reveals) just as likely to share their troubles with a therapist – or social worker – as with a friend.

If you think my closing pitch will be that more active participation at St. John’s and in all our wonderful ministries is a sure-fire cure for loneliness, you’re only half right. Marche had a statistic for that, too: “Active believers who [see] God as abstract and helpful rather than a wrathful, immediate presence [are] less lonely.” Are we coming to church to have our worst suspicions, whether about ourselves or others, confirmed by a God of judgment? Or do we come with eyes, ears, minds, and hearts open to the unpredictable movement of the Holy Spirit, which promises to bind us closer to God and one another?

Sometimes when we log onto Facebook, we want to convince the world that our lives are in better shape that they really are. We’re also tempted to put on our game faces before we come face to face with God – which is ironic, since God “friended” us and “liked” us at the beginning of all things, has read all our data, and will never relinquish the copyright.

This post originally appeared in the St. John's Church newsletter, the Vaya Con Dios.

Epiphany In The Land Of Light

From our newly digitized St. John's parish newsletter (thank you, Cindy!), my Advent anticipation of an Epiphany adventure with 29 friends in faith:

As our Vaya Con Dios experiences the flowering of new life, the latest group of St. John’s pilgrims is getting ready to say vamos a Dios. We’re going to God, or, at least, to the place where God did his most mysterious, magnificent work by the Resurrection of our LORD Jesus Christ. We’re heading for the holy city of Jerusalem in January to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and his family and followers, experience the quiet majesty of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Sea of Galilee, and leave the prayers of our church and school community tucked into the ancient crevices of the Western Wall.

It will be the second pilgrimage for St. John’s Church and the third for your vicar. We’re taking a group of 30 this time. We’ll divide our time between Jerusalem and Nazareth, with plenty of side trips along the way.

We’ll see ancient sites, and modern ones. We’ll imagine ourselves walking the hills of Palestine in Jesus’s time, and we’ll experience something of the tension and anger between Israelis and Palestinians today.

Why do we go? What’s the most special part of making a pilgrimage? Each pilgrim, you’ll find, will have a different answer. When I visited the Holy Land for the first time in the summer of 2007 with a group of seminarians and fellow priests, I had a feeling of belonging, almost of homecoming. Within a few days, I knew I’d be back – and I was pretty sure I could talk Kathy and some of my St. John’s brothers and sisters into coming along.

Sure enough, about 20 of us visited in the summer 2009. If you saw the presentation in the multipurpose room on our return, you know that we floated in the Dead Sea, touched the damp rock in the Bethlehem cave where the Church believes Jesus was born, and even walked along first-century streets (literally, perhaps, in the footsteps of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph) that had been excavated deep beneath our pilgrim guest house in Nazareth.

Our Epiphany 2011 pilgrimage will be in the Middle Eastern winter, which, we’re told, is a lot like a Rancho Santa Margarita winter. It may be a little chilly at night, and we could get some rain and even snow. Each day, we’ll worship and pray and experience moments of deep fellowship and profound silence. We’ll enjoy quiet evenings in the garden of St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem and explore the labyrinthine streets of the Old City. We’ll laugh, shop, eat and sleep well, and spend a lot of our time with our mouths hanging open as we say to my fellow guide, Canon Iyad Qumri, “Wow!” (He says that’s the word Americans use most often in the Holy Land.)

And when we return, we’ll tell you all about it, and ask when you’d like to go!