Tending Upscale

I'm grateful to Ann Mellow for asking me to write a post for the blog at the National Assn. of Episcopal Schools.

Ferlo Days

The Rev. Dr. Roger Ferlo, born into a working class Roman Catholic family in upstate New York, was ordained an Episcopal priest 25 years ago. Theologian, writer, seminary dean and professor, and cellist, he has devoted considerable energy over the last 15 years to the National Assn. of Episcopal Schools. At NAES's quarterly governing board meeting this week in Portland, Oregon, he stepped down as board member and president. The good work of our busy two-day meeting notwithstanding, many of Roger's colleagues said they feared having to get along without his erudition and gracious, priestly presence.

And shrewd tactical instincts, because there's politics everywhere, even in the church and especially at hundreds of Episcopal schools that work in sometimes uneasy collaboration with parishes. Imagine what can happen when two institutions, shepherded by strong-willed school heads and priests doing the seemingly divergent work of teaching children and ministering to aging congregations, have to share leadership, finances, and real estate. Priests at parishes with schools sometimes complain that heads get all the attention, heads that priests just don't get schools.

Tensions seemed to escalate as the church lost members while schools grew, though in recent years enrollment has leveled off. Amid change and crisis, our Episcopal-Anglican values, which teach us to live with ambiguity, haven't always been enough to help testy neighbors manage their differences. If our experience at St. John's Episcopal Church and School is any guide, a successful confederation makes for a lively, diverse, worshipful community. But some on both sides of the fence say that Episcopal schools can only really thrive when they achieve independence from parishes.

Church-school disharmony also echoes society's prevailing incivility and household discord. Like all pastors, I've counseled angry, discouraged spouses. As a school vicar and religion teacher, I've noticed that while lessons about church doctrine can leave students cold, a unit on Cain and Abel gets the attention of anyone with an annoying sibling (and what sibling doesn't have one?). Bickering and divorce have become societal norms; schism remains an all-too-common ecclesiastical one. Going against the grain takes patience and grit. No matter what his personal views are on the inevitability of school independence, Roger Ferlo, among others at NAES, models a coequal passion for parish and school ministry that encourages optimists in their faith in the creative coexistence between our fractious Episcopal relations.

Perhaps the children will lead us yet again. Portland's Oregon Episcopal School, where Roger and Anne's daughter, Liz Harlan-Ferlo, is high school chaplain and a member of the religion faculty, hosted the NAES board on Thursday. I had a chance to ask some students what they said when non-OES friends wondered what "Episcopal" meant. Their answers demonstrated an instinctual grasp of contemporary Anglican theology. One student said our church has to do with community; another said it's all about service. Maybe building stronger households and communities through the habit of mutual servanthood can help keep our families together amid the inevitable disturbances of our common lives -- husbands, wives, partners, siblings, even schools and churches.

Sitting In With The Episcopalians

Thanks to a comment from singer and guitarist Emmet Faulk, on the staff of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in San Antonio, I learned that the trombonist who busted out a solo with Emmet's Come As You Are Worship Band at last week's Episcopal schools convention was the internationally noted Ron Wilkins. The band, which feature's Emmet's wife, Renee, on vocals, flute, and keyboards, is featured at St. Mark's every Sunday at 11:11 a.m. for what I can guarantee is an awesome-sounding contemporary worship service.

A Boy Named Eboo

Eboo Patel, a 35-year-old social scientist and interfaith leader, is smooth, articulate, and, as a regular commentator on CNN and NPR, media savvy. And yet speaking this morning to 650 Episcopal educators gathered at a National Assn. of Episcopal Schools conference in San Antonio, he twice came close to losing his composure.

He almost choked up describing the day he ran into his old principal, nearly 20 years after being graduated from Glenbard South High School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. To remind a breakfast plenary session full of teachers of their influence in young lives, he said he still remembered seeing Mr. Abrazo standing in the same spot in the hallway every day between classes and helping him form a new campus organization that others on campus had discouraged.

The second moment -- and here Patel evinced sheer astonishment -- was his description of how it felt last summer when Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, history professor, and putative authority on American values, compared him to a Nazi. Patel reminded us that in 1790, President George Washington had promised the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island that the U.S. government would give "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." But that kind of woolly-headed thinking went out the window once Gingrich and certain other Republicans discerned that political profit could be gained by scapegoating Muslims such as Patel and his family for the Sept. 11 attacks and by stoking an anxious public's confusion about the religious affiliation of their somewhat remote-seeming but thoroughly Christian president. Gingrich's own former House colleague Joe Scarborough called it "political hate speech."

During what Patel called our summer of intolerance over whether a Muslim cultural center should be built in lower Manhattan, his mother called and asked whether it might've been better for him and his wife to have given their children less Muslim-sounding names. That way, she was suggesting, they'd be safer.

A sad turn for an American family, brought about by their fellow Americans. "I was tempted to ask her, 'So why did you name me Eboo?'," he said. We Episcopalians laughed with relief. But our keynote speaker didn't let us off the hook. He said our diminutive denomination of churches and schools -- noted for its tolerance of ambiguity and, especially in our schools, promotion of religious pluralism in chapel and religion classes -- is destined to play a central role if our nation's complex religious mix is ever to become less flammable. "We're the most religiously diverse nation in history and the most devout in the West," he said, "living in a time of global religious conflict." Our diversity will only lead to a heightened sense of spiritual communion, he said, if we reacquire some religious and interfaith literacy, learn to talk about our shared religious values, and get to know one one another as individuals instead of stereotypes.

Instead, according to a recent study, a significant percentage of incoming Boston College students couldn't name the four gospels, identify Mother Teresa's denomination, or correctly associate the Koran with Islam. At the same time, Patel said, "the only ones who are willing to speak out out about religion in America are the ones who are comparing Muslims to Nazis." They, of course, as well as the neoatheists, who deftly throw us religious moderates out with the fundamentalist brimstone. Patel said that Episcopalians "are just about in the best place" to promote interfaith encounters based on the acceptance of God's heart for mercy, justice, righteousness, and love -- but to do so, our church will have to stop wringing our hands and start ringing our bell. Essentially, our speaker was calling us to re-embrace our Anglican heritage of prophetic pragmatism, loudly and proudly.

Spurred By Song

At this afternoon's opening Holy Eucharist service at the biennial conference of the National Assn. of Episcopal Schools, convened two blocks from the Alamo in sunny San Antonio, we had an energetic celebrant in the Bishop of West Texas, the Rt. Rev. Gary R. Lillibridge, and a rousing, moving sermon from the Rev. Paula Lawrence-Wehmiller.

And the music was rocking. Dr. Thomas Lee of the Episcopal School of Texas in San Antonio did yeoman service on a borrowed organ, accompanied by Brass FX, another local outfit. After the service, the Come As You Are Worship Band served up some smoldering Tex-Mex praise music right off of a Joe Ely record. As one of the band's vocalists did a flute solo, I noticed the FX trombonist standing nearby with a smile that said, "Can I have a turn?" And that he did.

Most movingly, several anthems were offered by Les Petits Chanteurs, an internationally renowned boy's choir from Port-au-Prince, flown in thanks to the generosity of Episcopal institutions throughout the U.S. (including St. John's Church and School). They sang the national anthem last night at the San Antonio Spurs game (which probably would've been national news if it hadn't been for the sad word about the breakup of Tony and Eva Longoria Parker). Their sweet, high voices melted 700 hearts -- and when they capped it off with "We Are The World," as they do at all their appearances, we were standing, swaying, and beaming. Hearing these kids sing it, I'm not so sure that Jackson-Richie standard shouldn't be in the hymnal!

Do You Remember (The Alamo)?

The current "Rolling Stone" (to whose print edition I'm fated to subscribe until it dematerializes) has a disturbing article about Phil Collins, whose hits in the '80s and '90s with Genesis and as a solo artist manifested an easy, soulful sensibility that I found irresistible. He also did a great job producing Eric Clapton's mid-'80s comeback albums, "Behind the Sun" and "August."

His outstanding work notwithstanding, some extremely unpleasant art rock devotees identified Collins as the cause of all their problems after he took over from Peter Gabriel as Genesis' lead singer in 1975. In every field of human striving, there's a fanatical cabal that sucks every glimmer of joy out of life in the name of some ideal of purity. In Collins' case, they sent him hate mail because they didn't like his pop songs.

What's really disturbing, the RS article discloses, is that it seemed to get to him. He's also lost a good deal of his hearing and, as the result of a neck injury, the ability to grip anything with his hands -- not only drumsticks but eating utensils. While he's preparing to tour behind a new album of Motown covers, he won't be playing the drums, and he's considering retiring from music afterward. He admits to having had suicidal thoughts.

The great joy in his life, besides his two sons, whom he's raising at his home in Switzerland, is his collection of Alamo memorabilia, one of the world's best. So arriving in San Antonio this afternoon for an Episcopal schools conference, having just read the RS article, I found it synchronicitous indeed to get a chance to hear his upbeat voice narrating an account of the Battle of the Alamo written to go along with a carefully constructed 13- by 15-foot model showing the Alamo compound circa 1836.

Collins purchased the model last year and gave it to a small private museum, the History Shop, on Houston St., not far from where the compound's northeast corner would've been on the morning in March 1836 when the forces of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna launched their first assault. They eventually killed all the defenders, sparing only the woman and children huddled in the sacristy of the old mission church in the southeast corner (the building, below, which most people think is the Alamo).

A young woman named Megan was on duty when Kathy and I visited this afternoon. She showed us a small excavation, perhaps four feet deep, that had revealed horseshoes (which, given the museum's location, might have been left by elements of the Mexican army) and a cannon ball. We also met El Paso-born History Shop staffer Art Duke, who assisted with the dig. He told us that Collins would be back in town soon for an Alamo anniversary event.

His narration takes 13 minutes as spotlights illuminate key moments and positions inside and outside the compound. It's not a "don't mess with Texas" show but rather one that acknowledges ambiguity and unanswered questions, such as how many of the new Texas Republic's best were holed up and died there (estimates ranging from 180 to 225). Being fair to all who fought their hardest for a cause they believed in, he calls one Mexican officer who died while trying to rip the Texas flag from atop the Long Barracks a hero. He should be careful, because Texans make Peter Gabriel fans seem like pansies.

Port-au-Princely Sounds

Les Petits Chanteurs, a famous choir of men and boys from Holy Trinity Music School in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is shown rehearsing at Trinity Episcopal Church in Stauton, Virginia last Monday. The National Association of Episcopal Schools has invited the choir to come to San Antonio during its biennial conference in November. While in town, they'll also perform the "Star-Spangled Banner" at a Spurs game (though not, we are assured, "The Yellow Rose Of Texas" at the Alamo).

Hat tip to Jim Freeman

From Dead Into Life

When I arrived on Capitol Hill from Dulles early Wednesday evening, my dinner companion, who has a fascinating international portfolio that need not concern us further, slipped me a small shopping bag containing 12 CDs (actually, more than that; most are double albums). They ranged from 1967, when Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh spun and talked about their favorite records on a radio show in San Francisco (it's astonishing the tape of the show exists) to a concert Garcia and mandolinist David Grisman performed at San Francisco's Warfield Theater in February 1991. My friend said the recording of the second set would be one of his ten desert island discs. You know the concept: If you were stranded on a desert island forever, what albums would you take (in case you couldn't take your iPod)?

Garcia's first instrument was the banjo, which my friend said he took up during what he called "the Great Folk Scare" of the early 1960s. For several years he and Grisman tailed Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, and taped his concerts (the way people would later tape Dead shows). The 1991 set in question, which my friend played in the car, begins with "The Thrill is Gone," a 195os blues song popularized by B. B. King and belted out by Garcia in a husky but sonorous voice I'd never heard from him before. It continues with some country standards ("Old Rocking Chair"), a few Dead songs, and Irving Berlin's "Russian Lullaby."

So I have a feast of several weeks' music to listen to, including a Dead concert my buddy and I attended on Sept. 15, 1987 at Madison Square Garden. It includes "China Cat Sunflower">"I Know You Rider" (ask your local Deadhead what ">" means), which also appears on the Dead's commercially-released three-disc "Europe '72." My friend winces when I proclaim that the album captures them at the height of their powers. They played about 2,000 concerts, and he knows far better than I when the high points occurred. Indulgently, he also gave me a complete recording of a London show from May 1972 that comprises part of "Europe '72."

With the Dead dispatched, over a long dinner at a French restaurant about ten minutes' walk from the Capitol, we talked about friends, love, politics, Nixon, and synchronicity. Earlier in the week, I'd listened to a radio interview in which mandolinist Ricky Skaggs talked about performing with Bill Monroe, and here was my friend talking about Garcia's Monroe tapes. On my flight from Long Beach, I'd just read Terry McDermott's New Yorker profile of the enigmatic sociopath Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who dreamed up the Sept. 11 atrocity and marketed it to Osama bin Laden. In the original plan, he was going to hijack ten planes, use nine as bombs, and land the tenth safely, climb out, wave, and hold a press conference. McDermott writes that KSM also conferred with and helped fund the Jersey City-based architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. When I mentioned all this, my friend said that his and his wife's favorite picture was taken in Jersey City, with the World Trade Center in the background, and that while they'd been friends for years, their affection had deepened in the traumatic aftermath of the attacks, resulting in their marriage.

Once we'd turned to matters of faith, I learned that these little non-coincidence coincidences mean a little more to me than to my friend. When they occur I usually experience a frission of alertness, as if something has locked into place. I find, for instance, that if I think of someone and then call him, it was usually the right thing to do at just that time. That doesn't mean it's magic, since these days calling someone is probably always the right thing to do (instead of e-mailing or Facebooking or, worst of all, doing nothing). And yet I do see them as little evidences of the sovereignty of God. No less spiritual but perhaps somewhat more democratic, my friend is inclined to think that noticing any coherence amid the universe's seeming chaos and prevailing cruelty means that one has learned to observe creation "with the third eye open."

After dinner he dropped me at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, where I was due this morning for a meeting of the governing board of the National Association of Episcopal Schools. I'd never been here before and tried to find someone to guide me, but by 11 all the gentle seminarians appeared to have said their prayers and gone to sleep. I soon found my way across a broad, dark lawn to the snug campus guest house.

This afternoon, during a conversation about the challenges facing Episcopal schools and parishes, I remembered something else my friend had said at dinner. Once a daily-mass Roman Catholic, he's taking a break from Rome because of its handling of the sexual abuse scandals. He praised the Episcopal Church for facing up to issues of gender and sexuality that most of Christendom ignores. Since Episcopalians are sometimes more inclined to wring our hands than ring our own bell, I repeated to my colleagues what my friend had said as evidence that our beloved, sometimes beleaguered church may yet end up as the most logical safe haven for the west's substantial cohort of enlightened orthodox. "And the thing about my friend," I added, "is that he's a Republican!"

The seminary playing host to our two-day meeting has been training Episcopal priests, deacons, and laypeople for nearly 200 years. These eminences include my bishop diocesan and our St. John's rector, Jon Bruno, and second-year seminarian Shivaun Wilkinson, a postulant for Holy Orders in the Diocese of San Diego. She's shown here with her classmate Laura, a postulant from Nebraska. Shivaun's parents and sister attend St. John's, so I thought I'd better check up. Plus she and her husband, Chris, are expecting their first child in February, and I wanted to get caught up on all all the news.

We made arrangements to meet at the daily Evening Prayer service in the campus chapel. Those who planned the liturgy combined the beautiful service in The Book Of Common Prayer with folk-style songs led by a four-member combo featuring guitars, bass, and mandolin (could've been Garcia, Lesh, and Grisman about 40 years ago; coincidence? I don't think so). We were 25 worshipers in all. As we sang the verses from Ecclesiastes first set to music by Pete Seeger in his song "Turn Turn Turn" and made famous by the Byrds, my eyes met those of a four-year-old girl who'd come to church with her mother, and I felt that frission again, this time the grace of knowing as a matter of absolute certainty that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, and, this evening, doing it with the brave, talented, faithful young people who will lead our church far into this century. And what a church it is! Before we walked out of the beautiful old chapel into a warm September drizzle, we heard this old, beautiful prayer:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

Churches And Schools, O My!

Immanuel Church on the Hill on the campus of the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, with the bell tower of Aspinwall Hall in the background. I'm attending a governing board meeting of the National Association of Episcopal Schools.