Religion
Post about Religious topics. My spiritual journey is a subtopic of this.
Epiphany, Theophany, Old Christmas, and Priests Forever
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 01/07/2018 - 02:11It is the midnight of Christmas in the old calendar, celebrated by Orthodox Christians. It is bitter cold outside, three degrees the last time I checked, and the furnace is working overtime. There is a commotion, a bright star shining, angels singing, all in my soul, and I, a lowly shepherd am confused and frightened and trying to figure out what it all means.
Saturday was Epiphany, Three Kings Day for the western church. On the front door to our house, we chalked “20 + C + M + B + 18”. I posted a picture on Facebook, including a prayer to go along with it
The three Wise Men,
Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasarfollowed the star of God’s Son who became human
two thousand
and eighteen years ago.
May Christ bless our home
and remain with us throughout the new year. Amen.
In the morning, I went to a local Orthodox church to join in the celebration of the Feast of the Theophany. As we said the creed, “I believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church”, I thought about being baptized and confirmed Congregationalist, received into the Episcopal Church, and worshiping with the Orthodox. I looked at the young boy in the pew in front of me and prayed for him. Had someone prayed for me, the same way when I was young? Had someone else prayed for that person in a similar way? Is there a hidden apostolic succession that ties us together throughout the ages?
As we approached the blessing of the waters, small children ran around, joyful at the expectation of Christmas and at getting splashed with holy water. Women holding onto tradition filled their jars with holy water for the year. I rejoiced in the ample holy water splashed on me at the end of the service and wished I had a jar I could bring home some holy water for my family. A young boy gave me an ice cube from the holy water that he said I should take home to my mother. I carefully tucked it in my coat pocket until I could get in the car and put it in an empty cup.
In the evening, I returned with my daughter for Vespers. At the end of the service, the priest marked us with holy oil, myrrh, or Myron. I savored its smell as I drove my daughter to her grandparents’ house; the chrism of confirmation after the water of baptism. I did not know that Myron was another name for the holy oil. My middle name is Myron. May I too be used by the Holy Spirit to sanctify and consecrate.
I went to bed early and read for a bit more. I am reading “A Priest Forever” by The Rev. Carter Heyward. At times I’ve been sharing quotes from the book on Facebook. This evening, a few quotes jumped out at me. “Any attempt to postpone justice is a sign of weak faith.” A few pages later, she talks about Kairos, God’s time. “Kairos cannot be calculated by clocks, calendars, or conventions. Kairos bursts without warning into chronos”.
I seek to live into Kairos. I experience it when I pray in various churches and monasteries. I experience it when I partake in sacraments. There are moments of Kairos in family life or while spending time with people in need.
My thoughts go back to “A Priest Forever” and I think about excuses that have been given for not welcoming certain people into certain ecclesiastical ordination processes; wrong gender, too old, there’s already too many priests, impediments of health, finances, or family, all of which sound like the excuses for a lack of faith in pursuing God’s justice.
Mine is not a great cause, easily understandable, like Carter Heyward’s quest for the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church, but it feels like it is of the same essence. It is about renewal. It is about “looking ahead to a future with even more novel forms of ordained ministry” to use the words of a resolution from the Episcopal Church in Connecticut’s Annual Convention.
The star continues to burn bright in my heart. Kairos has burst in and we are all shepherds at the manger, children running around the church on Christmas Eve, aspirants to holy orders, and priests forever. Amen.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, New Years 2018 and the Perpetual New Year
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 01/01/2018 - 08:04Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit. Happy New Year. A new month begins. A new year begins. I’ve often written blog posts starting with Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit remember a childhood idea that doing this would bring good luck for the year. I’ve often celebrated the new year with champagne toasts, herring, lentils, or other things thought to bring wealth and good luck for the coming year.
Last night, my wife and I went to dinner at a neighbor’s house. After dinner, we came home, and I went to bed not much later than usual, and I awoke this morning, not much later than usual. I’ve been thinking a lot about the social construct of time. Last night was New Year’s Eve in the Western Roman calendar, coming on the last day of the final month, the tenth month, December, not counting the months added for the Emperors, Julius and Augustus , and before the first month, January, named for the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions.
It was not New Year’s Eve in other calendars, like the Hebrew calendar, the Persian calendar, or various Asian lunar calendars. In reality, any moment, every moment, can be viewed as the beginning of a new year.
Yet even this is based on the idea of time as dimension that we move sequentially through, that what is past is past and what is yet to come, is yet to come. It is as if we are walking along a path and think of what has disappeared beneath the horizon behind us has ceased to exist and what is coming up on the path ahead of us doesn’t exist until we see it.
In the Christian Gospel of John, we find some interesting thoughts about Jesus and time. “Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.’” Does something special happen to us when we celebrate the Eucharist or when we pray? Do you become part of an event that goes beyond time and location, joining a heavenly crowd? If we pray without ceasing, as 1 Thessalonians 5:16 calls us to, are we ceaselessly participating in something beyond space and time?
Where does this leave us when it comes to New Year’s resolutions? Is every moment a moment of new resolutions? What can we resolve for the new year, for the new us, moment after moment? I’ve always like the resolution, “to live each moment more fully and more lovingly than the previous”. I’ve often failed at this, but it remains a great goal.
Where does this leave us as we try to discover, as we try to live into, the future that already is, into God’s loving dream for all of us?
1 John 3:2 comes to mind:
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
Yet this raises an interesting question. If we are all going to be like God, to a certain level, especially if we apply some elementary math like the commutative and associative properties, then we are going to be like one another. In what ways am I going to be like the homeless man fighting addictions and other mental health issues? In what ways am I going to be like one of the first lesbian priests ordained, or a professor of black liberation theology? In what ways am I going to be like a conservative voter?
How does exploring this change who I am? How does it relate to living each moment more fully and more lovingly than the previous?
I guess these are aspects of my resolution for this coming year. I’m starting off by reading “A Priest Forever” by Carter Heyward. I hope to read a bit of “Martin & Malcolm & America: A dream or a Nightmare” by James Cone. Perhaps I can add in some writings from indigenous people here in America and around the world as well copies of various street newspapers.
How do we take this further in changing our daily media diet? What ideas, resolutions, or resources do you have?
Deconstructing the Established White Christmas: Homelessness, Immigration, and Pain
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/24/2017 - 01:50“I need help,” the old man said. He had come to the Homeless Memorial Service and was looking for food, shelter, and comfort. It had been a long day and I suspect all of us wanted to get home to dinner. He had been saying the same thing for probably half an hour as we tried to get him to head up to the soup kitchen for dinner and then return to the warming station at the church afterwards. After telling his story several times and describing the extent of his few belongings we finally got him on his feet and heading towards the door. He had a 2018 calendar because he was hopeful for 2018.
The day before, I had been to a Blue Christmas service at another church. I prayed for my friends and family members who have lived on the streets. A couple have their own apartments now. Another is in jail after getting into a fight.
I prayed for my friends and family who have been fighting illness. Some have fought cancer this year and are doing well. Others are still in the middle of that fight. Some have died. I prayed for those who have pain yet to be diagnosed. Some are at home. Others are in hospitals or rehabilitation centers.
I prayed for those who have been separated from their families this year. Those U.S. citizens who have seen their hard working tax paying parents deported under new administration policies. Those U.S. citizens who have seen their parents take sanctuary in local churches to avoid deportation.
A vigil outside of one church particularly stuck in my memory. The church was a Spanish speaking Pentecostalist church in a rough part of town. Years ago, when that part of town was where the wealthy lived, it had been a beautiful mainline Protestant church. Some of the stained glass windows survive. Others are now covered with plywood.
On Facebook, a friend with OCD posted about his torments, questioning whether the Episcopal church was Christian enough. Many criticised his post while others offered prayers or tried to help people understand what OCD is really like.
I have just finished my first semester of seminary and I am missing my classmates and my readings. I’ve been thinking a lot about post establishment Christianity and if we can learn anything from post colonial theory. I’ve struggled with how theory and praxis intersect and I think there is something in these experiences to be explored.
Last night, I listened to an An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. I think about the “subalterns”, those suffering outside the existing power structures. Mostly, I exist fairly comfortably within the power structures, although there are places where I struggle or have been rejected by the power structures.
This evening, we celebrate the birth of Jesus. The established churches will sing beautiful carols. Some will have incense. I will be there, thinking not only of God becoming human and living with us, but of God becoming a subaltern. Fleeing to Egypt from the power structures, coming back from Egypt leading to a conflict with the power structures that resulted in crucifixion.
If you want to keep Christ in Christmas, walk with the homeless man saying, “I need help”. It is a modern vernacular translation of “Lord have mercy”. Pray with those struggling with pain and illness. Confront the political and ecclesiastical power structures. Most importantly, keep your eyes open for where the subaltern Christ has been born around you. O come, let us adore him.
The Unexpected Santa: An Advent Reflections of an Ontological Priest
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/07/2017 - 03:44St. Nicholas Day, 2017. 7:20 PM. The GPS announced, “In a quarter of a mile take a left on to Airport Road.” It was guiding me home from an unexpected engagement as Santa at the Community Health Center in Hartford, CT. For the past few years, I’ve been Santa at our Middletown site, and again I’ve grown out a fairly respectable Santa beard. I had the outfit ready, so when I got the message, “x-mas emergency. We lost our Santa. Can you come?” I quickly rearranged my schedule.
I called my wife to let her know the change of plans. My youngest daughter answered the phone. She was not doing well. She handed to phone over to her mother who informed me the two of them were headed back to the emergency room. We had been there just a couple days earlier, trying to get my daughter’s migraine, flu, and whatever else is going on, under control. My wife told me things would be okay and I should go ahead with being Santa.
They say that priests really only have three different messages and everyone sermon they deliver is one of those three messages. I’m not sure what the other two are for me, but the one I am most aware of is that God loves you, the way you are, right now, not as some nice concept or a phrase you tell someone to cheer them up or when you pass the peace. God’s love is real. It is palpable. It is right now, if we can only stop for a moment to hear it.
It is a message I try to deliver any chance I get, in any form I can. When I serve as Santa at the health center, I know that some of the kids I am hugging have not felt that love enough recently. Life is hard when ends don’t meet, for kids, for parents, for all of us. The gifts that some of the kids receive when they visit Santa, may be the only gift they receive all year. They need to hear the message of love in their language and setting.
There is a YouTube video I like to watch every year before I am Santa for these kids and their parents, Validation. It is about a parking attendant that validates more than parking tickets as he sets out on his own journey towards validation.
Those same people that say that priests really only have three different messages also say that they are messages that the priest needs to hear themselves. I am on my own journey towards more fully being aware of the love God has for me. It hasn’t been an easy journey, and I don’t expect it to get any easier any time soon.
As I drove up to Hartford, I prayed that just a little bit of God’s love would come through me on this very distracted day. Not only do I have my youngest daughter to worry about. I have a week left in my first term in seminary. I’ve got a couple big papers I need to finish up, and with each unexpected event, the time to work on my papers slips perilously away. I thought of the real St. Nicholas and I asked him to pray for me as well.
7:22 I hugged a lot of kids today and thought about my youngest daughter who needs extra hugs today as well. As soon as I get on the Interstate, I will call my wife for an update. The Bluetooth display in the car flashed. “Incoming call. Unknown Caller”. Typically in the mornings or evenings when I am on my way to work, or on my way home, when I get a message like that, it means that my eldest daughter is calling me via Skype from Japan.
She is just finishing up her master’s degree in Gender Studies and has applied for a fellowship to work on her doctorate there. We had hoped she would be coming home for Christmas. It has been too long since we saw her face to face. She had bought tickets to come home, but my wife lost her job and money and time is tight for all of us. So, when the airlines screwed up her flight, we all agreed that it was probably best for her to stay in Japan.
Tomorrow, she has the big interview for the fellowship; a four minute presentation followed by six minutes of questions. She gave me the four minute presentation, translated on the fly from Japanese. I’m not sure if there is an official title of her presentation, or if there is, what its translation to English would be. If I were writing a title for it, it would be something like, “Historical Research as Activism: Studying the Amateur Historical Research of Women’s Peace Groups in Japan in the 1980s”
We’ve been talking through her research ever since she headed off to Japan, so I had a pretty good idea of what the presentation was, even before she started. Last year, when I was Santa at the health center, I took a picture of me reading The Guattari Reader. Her classmates have been fascinated by the story of their American classmate’s father who dresses up as Santa and reads Deleuze and Guattari and has long discussions about Foucault and Fanon.
I was almost home when the discussion was interrupted by another phone call. My wife was calling to say that she and our youngest daughter were leaving the hospital and on their way home. There were no substantial changes and the various tests proved inconclusive.
I got home, ate a little bit, and went to bed. I’ve got about a week to go in the semester. I have various family concerns to address. I have another gig as Santa coming up. It is Advent. A time of waiting. In many ways, I’ve felt like I’ve been living in Advent for the past three years.
As I wait, as we all wait, I want to remind you that God does love you in a real, palpable way. I want to remind you, in the words of St. Teresa of Avila, “Patience wins all it seeks. Whoever has God lacks nothing: God alone is enough.” Likewise, as Julian of Norwich says, “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Happy Advent, everyone.
Reconnecting Spirituality to Daily and Political Life via Lobbying and the News Media
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/26/2017 - 05:23This is a commentary that I wrote for the News and Religion course that I am taking at the Religious Freedom Center at the Newseum.
“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, oh LORD, our strength and our redeemer.” Psalm 19:14
How would an epigraph like this sound in our pluralistic secular media? Would we wonder about the use of a quote from the Judeo-Christian tradition instead of from some other tradition, or perhaps a humanist perspective? What role does or should spirituality play in the news media of today? How do views about this vary between the general public and reporters?
The report, Most Americans say media coverage of religion too sensationalized explores some of these issues.
The public and reporters also have different perceptions about what makes for good religion coverage. More than two-thirds (69.7%) of the public says that they prefer coverage that emphasizes religious experiences, spirituality, practices, and beliefs. In contrast, more than three fifths (62.9%) of reporters say that the audiences they serve prefer religion coverage that emphasizes religious institutions, activities, events, and personalities.
The problem is that “religious experiences, spirituality, practices, and beliefs” are often very personal and subjective and are often not breaking news. As a friend of mine quips about spiritual practices, “with priests these days, it’s out with the old and in with the ancient.”
Yet underlying the “religious institutions, activities, events, and personalities” that reporters like to write about these days are these “religious experiences, spirituality, practices, and beliefs”. In our modern age of objectivity, we are losing touch with this spirituality.
A few years ago, my daughter, who grew up in a land of McMansions decided to build and move into a tiny house. She did it as an art project. During her gallery talks, she would speak of the goal of reconnecting art to daily life. Our large houses are filled with mass produced merchandise and we too rarely take a moment to see beauty around us. The same could be said about spirituality today.
Spirituality, morality, and the stuff of religion should be informing our daily and political lives. Yet in our efforts to be objective as well as our efforts to be tolerant of other beliefs, we seem to have lost touch with the spiritual and moral in the public sphere.
I have run for state representative multiple times. While we might acknowledge God in an invocation to an event candidates are speaking at, and our biographies should mention the religious institution we belong to, we seem to rarely bring our spirituality into our stump speeches.
In 2016, I reluctantly ran for state representative again. I wanted to focus more of my time on my priestly journey. I tried to bring the two together as much as I could, and watched my audience squirm as I started a stump speech off with the quote from Psalm 19. It seems like many of us want coverage about spiritual issues, we just don’t want to have to grapple with it in our own lives.
Yet there are people that want to bring the religious into the public sphere and the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life report on Lobbying for the Faithful explores more than 200 “organizations engaged in religious lobbying or religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C…. [that] collectively employ at least 1,000 people in the greater Washington area and spend at least $350 million a year”.
There are also numerous media watchdog organizations seeking to ensure that faith is adequately and accurately covered. There is nothing particularly new or unique about such organizations. In 2003, I was part of the Dean Rapid Response Team. This was a group of volunteers from across the country that worked together to support Gov. Dean in his presidential bid. There was a feeling that the media coverage of Gov. Dean did not adequately represent his views or our thoughts about why he would be a great president. We had a mailing list where we would share links to articles that we felt needed responses and talking points to help our members respond.
More recently, this week I sent an email to the communications committee of a church I attend. Like the volunteers in the Dean campaign many years ago, we are trying to find ways to get information about our church presented in the most positive manner possible. The local newspapers are short staffed and generally don’t write about matters of faith, so we seek to provide editors and reporters with as much usable information as possible. Often, that includes providing material that can be copied and pasted with minimal effort.
Whatever our cause, we are likely to feel that the news media provides inadequate or inaccurate information about it. We will seek ways of using any media we can to correct this.
Underlying all of this is the question of how we help reconnect the spiritual to our personal and public lives, and do it in a way that embraces other faith traditions. To put it another, even today, we continue to struggle like the psalmist to find ways to make our words and thoughts always acceptable.
