The Democratic Party of Delaware just held its 2013 statewide party meeting in Dover. I was a delegate from the 20th Representative District. This was my introduction to the state party and the meeting was highly informative of the difficulties of party processes for decision making. It was, to put it plainly, a mess. The morning began with a bit of smoozing as we registered. There were roughly 250 folk in the house, split into four sub-groups - one each for New Castle, Kent and Sussex Counties and one for the city of Wilmington. After convening and the pledge of allegiance we heard the secretary's report and then split into the four groups for a bit of caucus time. We came back to elect officers and a slate was put forward which was voted in with ease. The really good news there is that Lisa Goodman, who just headed up the Equality Delaware effort to put into effect new marriage legislation, was elected co vice-chair of the Democratic State Party.
Then the troubles began. The State Party chairperson could not stay ahead of the debate on whether or not to accept the report of the Platform Committee, what to do with a Platform proposed by one of the Wilmington delegates, and how to deal with the reality that the work of producing a Platform still had to be done. And, on top of this was the thread running through of criticism of the process proposed as well as the make up of the Platform Committee. I was a member of that committee, one of the shortest lived assignments I've ever had. Watching the way in which the Convention managed to pile these many issues into one confusing heap was frustrating and not pretty at all. Still, at the end of the morning a resolution to replace the Platform Committee with a new membership list that would more adequately address issues of inclusion passed. As to the Platform, one presumes that the platform of the past continues until replaced, and that the new Committee and the officers will work to find a way to both develop a platform and have it ratified by the party. This may require a special convention, it may not. It will necessitate a broader committee. By-law matters were then taken up, with much the same level of confusion from the chair. By two o'clock it was clear that everyone was fed up, tired, and a bit crabby. (No lunch break will do that to you.) So the Convention was over without much clarity about just how the Executive Committee plans to receive and act on accepting the platform.
I've been a deputy six times to one of the largest legislative bodies in the world - the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. In 10 or fewer days General Convention considers hundreds of resolutions, has hearings and recommends consideration to the General Convention for consideration. It too is a very complex way of governing. But at least there are well thought out ideas of how to proceed.
Here at the Democratic Party state convention there was less a sense of how to get things working. The thing is, I'm going to stay with the Party and its work in spite of discouragement with the processes as they were experienced on Saturday. Here in Sussex County we hope to see a stronger Democratic Party presence. If that means going to state conventions, so be it. But the action is here on the ground and local. I have to say the highlight of the day was Senator Chris Coons. He speaks with great clarity and solid political sense. He is very good indeed. I hope the National Democratic Party helps him have national exposure. So... the Party met, and excepting Goodman's being elected, not much happened that was useful. Nothing much useful happened. It reminds me of some Diocesan conventions where much the same could be said.
Ah, the greetings after church, when (if one is lucky and the service went well and people are not being cross)!
Hello! Hi! and then "Hi Mather Harris" and later "Hello, Mather Mark." All because of a typo at the end of the service leaflet. What should have read, "a friend of Father Mark Harris" got printed, "a friend of Mather Mark Harris." After the usual snickers about typos, I got to rolling the word around in my head. With all the past muttering about what to call priest people, male and female, "Mather" sounded just fine. Of course as a last name it has some heavy duty users - Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, etc. But as a word it was a comfortable fit - kind of an androgynous combination of Father and Mother. "M" from Mother "a" from Father, "ther" from both. And, given Jesus' reserve about calling anyone Father, and his image of being like a mother hen, "Mather" has the ring of skating near the one and the other both. So, here I am, Mather Mark. Let the typo be.
Meanwhile, in reality I dislike the use of titles at all - Father, Mother, certainly "Reverend," Canon, Doctor. If there has to be a titlereference, I like the Romanian "Priest", as in "Priest Harris," which parallels "Lawyer" Harris or "Engineer" Harris, forms used in Latin America with some regularity.
Even then it goes far from what ought to be the norm (at least in my mind.) My name is Mark. Few people in the Church family at St. Peter's in Lewes, and few people in the various church settings I find myself, would not know that I am a priest, and for them the information would come forward as they got to know me, or saw me working in that capacity. Just call me Mark, and when doing priest things, Mark the priest.
Jim Friedrich remembers, and I remember always, an event in 1976 at the General Convention where the vote was taken for the ordination of women to the full range of ordained ministry.
He writes on his Facebook pages, "While watching this performance on tv in Minneapolis (we were there for the 1976 General Convention), the Rev. Mark Harris had the revelation that this was a song about the Ascension (the disciples being the long-awaited clowns doing their best to fill the gap until the Parousia - or something like that - it all made sense at the time!)." (Here he inserted the YouTube of the Song... its later on in this essay, stay close.)
The revelation, as I cherish and remember it was a turning moment for me. Here is what I remembered.
A group of campus ministry types working for the ordination of women gathered at a friends house for a bit of relaxation in the midst of all the work. Friend Bill Teska prepared spaghetti, we had some wine, and Bill said we had a treat on TV - first a concert with Judy Collins and then Bob Dylan.
So sitting there, tired and hungry, and with good friends and companions around, I sat, spaghetti in lap, and heard Judy sing "Send in the Clowns."
It was an astounding performance. But about half way through the song I looked around at my friends and I saw all of us for what we mostly were - clownish players in a divine play, mostly taking parts that involved trying to change the church and ourselves and all creation, and tripping and falling and then getting up again for the next show, the next action, the next step.
Several of us in the group had actually taken some training as clowns, and one of the first things you learn is how to fall, fall so the thump when you fall is great, and thus the joy also great when you get up again all the greater. And Lord knows we fell often.
We were clowns for God, it seemed to me, always trying to leap up and ascend, but then falling back. And it struck me we were all in our way trying to imitate or perhaps follow Jesus, and ascend, but we kept falling back.
This was all very quick, and when I saw my comrades and myself as ascension clowns, I was filled with sense of love for them, and a strange warmth. My eyes filled with tears and the tears ran down into the spaghetti.
And a voice came to me and said, "Now you know what the Ascension is about." And I in my mind said, "what?" And the voice said, "You fight against doctrines you don't understand. You don't have to. Just let them be. They will be there if you need them."
Jim, who cares deeply and with great love, was sitting next to me and saw the tears and said, "Something special is happening to you." Not, "what's wrong?" or "do you need help." "Something special is happening." He gave me permission to think of what happened as revelation.
Something special had happened. Over the next few minutes I told him and several others what had happened. They were glad for me, and a comfort.
Ever sense that time I have not fought against ancient doctrine, I have let those things I don't care about, don't understand, or don't find useful simply be, assured that if I need them they will be there. And if they are never useful again, then they will die out from non-use.
I think the revelation made me a better theologian, and a better pastor. But the report is not all in yet.
Nor can I prove it was a revelation from God rather than a brain fart of tired neurons. But that's OK. The notion of revelation is itself a doctrine, ready for our use when we need it.
And it began, as Jim remembered, with the Song. Here it is:
That wee revelation was one of only two that I have had. There have been dreams and visions of one sort or another, but only the two that "played forward" in my life, giving substance to my belief that connection with the "hints" that arise from the whole gang of people who have gone before is a worth while enterprise. Even the best of these doctrines are only hints until events, and stories and songs of experience make them real for us.
Meanwhile we leap up, and fall again and again. After a while it looks like a dance.
William Stringfellow loved the Circus, not the least I suspect because the clowns reminded him of how often we leap to grasp the feet of the one who indeed did not pass on or over, but passed up. We grab at the divine heel, I suppose, and fall, but one day... one day.
Its refreshing to find in these days a debate out there in Anglican Land about the Wrath of God. Not content with smaller bits of theological controversy, several New Zealand worthies are serving up a tasty dish of seriously pecante theological sauce. Go to Liturgy and Anglicans Down Under for the debate.
The Wrath of God...The primary biblical references for the wrath of God are enough to scare the pants off anyone. Here is a sample, from The Revelation to John: 11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself.13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in[a] blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty." Ho, ho, ho.... not a pretty sight! "treading the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty." Stomping those grapes of wrath, making blood in which one supposes the Faithful and True has dipped his clothing so that it is blood red. If that doesn't do it, consider Psalm 75:8
"For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup
with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the
wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs." So out of all this sort of imagery comes the words of the hymn that Bosco Peters found questionable, “Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied” Now I am an ol' Wrath of God sort of guy. Of what I know of God I am dead sure that God is mad as hell about the general screw-up that human kind has passed off as progress and civilization. The WoG is particularly reserved for nations and the power brokers, the principalities and powers, and the report is we don't want to see the WoG implemented. The fury of God and the WoG is not something we want to see expressed in our back yards. But, dear friends, the wrath of God is not satisfied by the Cross of Christ. If anything the death by crucifixion of the One God calls Son ought to send God into a frenzy of wrathful action. Even given that Jesus asks "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," the beginning proposition is that God might not otherwise withhold his wrath. That God does not do the WoG thing may indicate that he is listening to the Son, but it does not mean that the act (crucifying Our Lord) was not worthy of wrath. The WoG, it seems to me, is part of why we have the Fear of God (FoG) as part of our repetoire of response to God. The FoG is in place so that we might excape the WoG. Apparently in these days the FoG has been lifted sufficently for the WoG to be a topic of theological conversation, with the sense that the WoG is not to be dismissed lightly. About the FoG, William Stringfellow had this to say (From a Public and Private Faith), "In the end, what distinguishes the Christian faith from mere religion, what set apart the practice of the Christian life from religiosity in any of its forms, what distinquishes the self-serving prudence of many of the churches of Protestantism from the freedom of participation in the ministry of Christ in the world, is the fear of God. The fear of God in the Christian faith is the unanimous and elementary knowledge of the Church that God is God. The fear of God is grounded in the spontaneous response of a man to the active presence of the Word of God in the common life of the world, including the life of an ordinary man.... The fear of God, thus, is the initiation of worship. For the fear of God confesses the integrity and freedom of God an negates all substitutes for God....That is the beginning of the ethics of redemption in which men are emancipated from the struggle to justify themselves. Now the dread of death is dissipated, since God, and not death, reigns. And now, at last, men are free to be men." (p. 92-3) Now, lest our local and specific wrath gets out of hand, we need to remember that Bill Stringfellow wrote when talking about "men are free to be men" was more or less generic. Although, I think Stringfellow had he been able to stay, would have admitted that "man" is not generic as all that, and that God might be a tad wrathful over how much we men really meant men when we said men... But I digress. What Stringfellow points out here is that behind the WoG imagery there is the "unanimous and elementary knowledge of the Church that God is God." God is not apparently open to suggestions that the judgment of God or the righteousness of God or even the mercy of God can be replaced by any other thing. Which leads, of course, to the thought that God's mercy and judgment and fearsomeness and even wrath are no placated by the death of Jesus, for who can escape the awfulness of God? My sense is that God's wrath withheld even with Jesus' death at the hands of principalities and powers and even at the hands of our own negligences is a sign of the wideness of God's mercy. Perhaps the death of Jesus finally drives it home that God loves us quite in spite of God's anger, wrath, and even righteousness. But it is not because Jesus dies that God has mercy, but rather that God has mercy, even to the point of not lifting up the hammer and driving it down on our heads when we drove the nails in His hands. But God is God, unchanged even by the death of a loved one. Mercy prevails even while justice is demanded. There it is.
Just out from Morehouse Publishing, ENCOURAGING CONVERSATION: Resoureces for Talking about Same-Sex Blessings. Professor Fredrica Harris Thompsett is editor, forward is by Bishop V. Gene Robinson, and Chapter 3 is by Patricia Bird and me. The blurb online reads, "With the authorization of "I Will Bless You and You Will Be A Blessing,"
more Episcopal parishes will be preparing to be in conversation about
same-sex blessings and issues of sexuality. This volume is designed to
tell the stories of parishes and dioceses where the conversation has
been held: what worked, what didn't work, how the conversation shaped
and was shaped by those involved. Harris Thompsett pulls in a range of
voices and resources, designed to aid those congregations now
approaching this exciting opportunity."
Worth the read. Glad to have been part of it. Buy it HERE.
