Fragments of Godness

Fragments of Godness.

Notes from Coffee and Conversation

Lindon Eaves

First Sunday of Advent, November 2009

After the circus parade come the pooper scoopers - tidying up after the show has gone by.    I often think theologians are like the pooper-scoopers marching behind the parade of history.    How many theologians does it take to scoop up a truckload of horse-poop?  Answer: "Four - one to shovel the poop and three to determine whether or not it really is horse-poop".   I am conscious this morning that my life seems to be more talking and less scooping.  If that is how it comes across, please forgive me.

Favorite BBC TV program "Last of the Summer Wine".  Three guys about my age.  Factory closed, Laid off from work, time on their hands, wives don't want them round the house.    Hang out together.  One of them is my alter ego, or maybe my shadow side.  His name is "Compo".  He is a disgusting grubby old man with a disrespectful sense of humor and a lust for anyone in a skirt.   He has nothing to do.  Time to watch and reflect.  Process all the events of life in a small country town.  The stories of "LSW" are a combination of nostalgia for earlier lives and reflection on and dealing with the fact of getting older. No longer distracted by work.  Time on their hands.   An episode I watched last week told the story of how they had to figure out what to do with the body of a married friend who had died at the climax, literally, of an adulterous affair with his brassy blonde girl-friend.   The immediate problem was how to get him back in his own home and his own bed without waking his wife.

Today: fumblings of an old guy looking back, trying to make sense of things.  Humans struggle to join up the dots of their lives.  "Meaning" is a more or less successful joining of the dots:  coherence of story; usual jumping off point for future encounter with new data and experience.

• 1. Share Significant Objects:

Dad's Deer stalker.

Empty Auslese bottle.

Grandpa's cane.

Norman's sandals.

Norman's tie.

Benedictine rosary.

"Biometrical Genetics" signed by John Jinks. Gift inscription from Sue.

Book "Genes, Culture and Personality."

Flash drive.

• 2. Share significant events and experiences.

What do the following events have in common?

Parties at Sue's parents.

Pork pies and brown sauce on Sunday evenings.

Home-brewed beer.

German wine.

Emily Dickinson: collected poems.

Mrs. Riley - always late for church with her pyjama bottoms under her fur coat.

Robert May's Good Friday sermon the day Dorothy died.

Walt Smith washing the feet of Andrew Butler on Maundy Thursday.

Father Jim Eckersley - trying to kick his hat through the gap in the chancel arch.

An unexpected visit from the local priest in 1955.

The shed in the back garden in King's Heath.  The attic in our house in Moseley.

Asking Cedric Robinson about how to get ordained.

Becoming an acolyte.

Douglas McLean.

Finding out I could sing.

Cricket at the Monihull lunatic asylum.

Something Larry Meyer said in our "Job" study group.

Reading "Death on the Nile."

Coming out of the elevator on the hospice floor of St. Mary's the day Merrill died.

Getting the math right in 1985.

Communion at Sue's dad's bedside two days before he died.

Sue's conversation with the funeral director.

Doing the funeral.  Reading the gospel of the raising of Lazarus.

Monty Python:  "Life of Brian."  "Meaning of Life." "Fawtly Towers"

Solemn High Mass on Corpus Christi at St. Alban's Conybere Street in Birmingham.

Father Zebic.  The orthodox Liturgy. The hymn of the Cherubim.

Verdi's requiem.   Recordare.

Oxford.

Emigrating to US.

Going to SSJE with group from St. Thomas'

Watching the orginal version of "300 Spartans" with Thomas.

Shelly Klinger's spiritual journey.

Barbara's woodwork.  

Climbing the steps in Florence.

Extracting the double helix from bacterial cells in second year genetics lab.

Plainchant at the Society of the Sacred Mission in Kelham, England.

Sue going to seminary.

Dinner in Trastevere.  Arreviderci Roma.

John Rossington.

Visiting friends in England.

Jewish grandfather with an automatic rifle in Jerusalem.

Walking the Via Dolorosa.

The last morning in Florence.

The icon of the Guardian angel in Thomas' crib.

Marian Wells massaging him to sleep.

Watching Thomas talk about his visit to China. 

Dinner at the Rami.  Hagia Sophia. The Blue Mosque.

Matthew starting to walk.

Waking up in Izmir.

Helen's wedding - son-in-law dancing with the gay florist.  The bride's father dancing with the florist's partner.

The church of St. Savior in Chora, Istanbul.

Hugh's graduation.

Thomas telling his Sunday school teacher about sheep's testicles.

Looking out at the dogwood outside my study window in Spring.

Ginter park in the Fall.

Visiting Jill with Martin Lee at the Churchill hospital in Oxford.

Losing weight.

Listening to St. Thomas' people talking about the psalms at Shrinemont.

Mother Mary SSSM at Walsingham.

Fresh raspberries with cereal for breakfast on Pilgrimage.

Special prayers on Sunday.

Watching Betsy cook.

Books.

Matthew walking.

Inscription on an early Christian tomb under St. Peter's.

Looking at the sun reflected off the sea of Marmara from the Topkapi palace balcony.

A big part of life is trying to make sense of life.   Trying to accommodate to the reality of death.  Trying to find what, if anything, is bigger than me. What is most precious? But doing it truthfully.   Integrity is important.  No easy answers to questions of meaning.  If someone tells you they know the answer, they are probably deluding themselves or trying to fool you.

I was born a scientist.  From the time I saw my first chemistry set in the window of the newsagent/toystore when I was seven until now,  I have wanted to understand.  I remember once asking Mary-Claire King the famous geneticist if something was "true".  She replied with another question.    "What do you mean?  Do you mean ‘deeply true'?"

I have discovered that the quest for "deep truth" is a deep passion.   It also doesn't make friends.  I became an academic because I thought that would let me look for deep truth.  I thought that tenure was society's license to look for deep truth.    I thought you were judged by how much "deep truth" you could uncover.      

This is just the way I am.  I was like this before I ever got into "religion".    But it affects how I go about religion and what I make of it.   

Some kinds of religious belief seem to confuse "truth" with "conviction".   Xenophanes:  "No one can know the final truth...(for)..all is but a woven web of guesses."

People who are inspirations to me in my own attemps to make sense of things.

Mary: "kept all these things and pondered them in her heart."   Watch.  Pay attention.  Wait. Ponder. It takes a lifetime of inner dialogue with events and experience.  It hurts:  "A sword shall pierce your own soul."

Julian of Norwich:  "Revelations...."  A life-time of reflection on a life-changing event (experience of mortal sickness).  Became contemplative.  Walled up in a chapel. Became a great counselor.  People came from all over to talk to her.  Wrote book(s) of reflections on the meaning of her life-changing experience. 

John of the Cross:  1) Passion of seeking: "One dark night I set out, by a secret ladder...". 2) Living in darkness and uncertainty:  "To come to what you know not, you must go by a way in which you know not."  3) Surprise: "The Virgin, heavy with the Word of God, comes down the road if only you will go to meet her." 4) Recognition: "The ‘I don't know what'  which is so gladly found."   5) Fulfillment "Leaving my cares among the lilies.

Cloud of Unknowing: "Fire a dart of longing love into the cloud of unknowing."

Pointer to meaning:

Susan's sermon last Sunday:  Told about St. Thomas' giving out 160 free turkeys.   People standing in line.  Discussing how they were going to cook them. 

Turkey is a "sacrament".   Something in the concrete world  - an action, event, thing, person - that brings focus and clarity to our understanding.  It is a place in our experience that speaks to us at a level that is far beyond the mere action,  opens up new horizons, changes us by changing the way we think.

Christians believe that we live in a sacramental universe:  in which "stuff" and "event" have the power to communicate meaning; to open up deep truth.  That is, the stuff and events of our physical lives and experiences are "fragments of Godness".  They are points of contact with what matters most - what makes sense, gives direction.

The turkey handout was such a sacrament.  The last few weeks I have been wrestling with health care or, more explicity, with our nation's deepseated unwillingness to respond to the obvious call of God.   Moved by stories of long lines of the uninsured waiting hours in the rain to be on a car park for a few minutes with a nurse, or doctor or dentist.   Angry at the hardness of heart shown by those citizens and politicians who would deny to others the care they are privileged to seize for themselves.    It is evil.

Yet in this world, this cruel harsh and hungry world,  to people queuing up at our door little St. Thomas' gives out turkeys.  And when it runs out, little St. Thomas's finds more.   As Susan was describing the story of the turkey give-out, it hit me like a brick that the giving of the turkey, such a small act in so many ways, was a sacrament every bit as sacred as the giving out of a piece of bread at the altar on Sunday.     The turkey was a sign of an alternative world, a deep hope, a longing for what is so clearly not.

The turkey is a fragment, a concrete, actual, touchable something that draws me into a new place in my understanding of what really matters.  The turkey shapes how I think, how I see my life.  The turkey calls me, and challenges me.    For one moment, in that fragment, I meet "Godness", I meet a reality and truth that challenges me from unexpected depths to see things with a clarity that had not been there before.

Sometimes people ask what is special about Christianity.   What does Christianity bring to the community of world religions that we would really want others to hear and understand?   Do we have any special insight that we would ask others to hear?   I ask that question in fear and trembling because there are no clear black and white distinctions and Christianity can never be isolated from the Jewish and pagan influences that shaped it.  But I think the answer lies in the way the Christian faith has elaborated the idea of "incarnation".    For us, we do not begin with an idea of God and then try to figure out what it implies.  We do not start from the top.  Rather we start at the bottom and try to work our way back up.   God is not an abstract principle but a reality that we are forced to deal with in the light of events.  Hence, I want to talk about events that contain "Godness".  Orthodox Christianity sees Godness in the stories about Jesus. 

But these fragments of Godness do not occur in isolation.  There are lots of them.  Some are part of our shared story - like the stories of Jesus, or those of the old Testament  that help us recognize Godness in world events.  Others are part of our more local community, like the stories we tell about our own Church and its members.  Some are quite private, in the sense that they come only to one person.  But they are moments or events that shape us, they move us, they challenge us.  They are moments in which we see something that makes new sense.   These are what I want to call "fragments of Godness."

I am a bottom-up Christian as distinct from a top-down Christian.  Not long ago, I went to a lecture given by a medical colleague at VCU which was a crass attack on evolution.  It was scheduled by a fundamentalist student Christian group.  Before he started we were told that we could only ask questions about the science not about religion. The speaker was introduced with a proclamation of all the papers he had published and all the grants he had held - as if that made him a special authority.  After his talk, God forgive me, I introduced myself with a brief proclamation of all the papers I had written (more than his) and all the grants I had held (more than him) and said that "I am an Episcopal priest and I just wanted to say that I think your understanding of evolution is lousy and that your use of probability theory is fallacious."  At which point he said "Do you believe in God?" I reminded him that it was a stipulation of the meeting that we could not ask questions about religion but that since he asked I felt free to say that "I was working on it."

I am working on it.  I do not have all the dots of experience joined up.  My faith is a more or less organized collection of fragments, some - like the liturgy and scriptures of our heritage - as shared by many, some are private moments or periods in my life involving only me, or perhaps a few others.  Like the turkey handout, they are fragments that point to what I can only call "Godness."  They keep the possibility of God open in my life.  They are the building blocks that may, one day - perhaps not in my lifetime - form part of a cathedral of vision that now I can only hope for. 

It has to come from the bottom up.  It has to start where I am.  It begins in my mess.  It began when I first popped out into the buzzing and blinding world and will continue to the moment when I can no longer see, or hear or feel or think.

The fragments, these stories and experiences, call to me.  They demand that I listen to them.  My head and my heart are placed at the cross-roads of so many fragments.   Moments of sense come as gifts when suddenly the dots seem to join in expected ways.    Last week it was seeing the contrast between the giving of the turkey on the one hand, and our withholding of health care with the other.  The turkey was a fragment of godness that seemed only to highlight our congressional godlessness when it comes to hunger and sickness.  Neither in science nor philosophy have I encountered atheism so poisonous as that emanating from our nation's Capitol.

For me faith is not a collection of more or less ridiculous ideas that only make sense if you belong to the right group.  For me, faith is a way of approaching the data that comes to us from all over.   It is a way of trying to join up the dots of experience into some kind of working picture we can build on.   

Each of us has our own chains of experiences. But we do not experience in isolation.  I am connected to a whole community of people who are also trying to join up the dots.   That includes, of course, the people at St. Thomas', but it also includes all the other people I come into contact with.  And it does not just include those I know personally, but all those before me who have struggled to join up the dots of their own lives.  Some of these are people I can read about, or people whose own personal fumblings I can read.  Some are the people whose lives and ideas come to us through the stories and language of scripture, creed and sacrament. Some are Christians;  some Jews;  some Muslims;  some atheists.

All these are "fragments".   They come from all over the place.  They come upon me from every side.  Some of them I go looking for.  Some of them are complete surprise.  Some of them are ambiguous and confusing.   Some are even frightening.   Some of you know that three years ago I "damn near died" as one doctor put it.  As they drove me off in the ambulance I literally could not hold the pen to sign the consent form.  I think that was the first time I have ever said "I am scared".    I want to share some of these fragments, because some of them may connect with you and your experience.  The point is, that each of us is playing some version of the same game.  Trying to organize all the things that happen to us into some kind of pattern or story that allows us to put the next foot in front of the last without sinking into a complete black-hole of mean-spirited self-centeredness.

I call them "fragments of Godness", because they are events and experiences in this world and this life that feel like meetings with what is "deeply true" as Mary-Claire King put it.   I remember when I was in confirmation class being told that prayer was "talking to God."     I didn't get it then and I still don't get it.   I don't "talk to God" in any literal sense.  I'd feel rather silly.  But in another metaphorical sense, as one Jewish colleague once put it, my "life is one long argument with God."    It doesn't mean that I walk up and down muttering under my breath.  It means I am wrestling with the angel - trying to make sense of the buzzing, blinding world I have been born into.  I am struggling for meaning and structure.  I am seeking the "I don't know what which is so gladly found."

If there is a God, he, she, it or they, are hidden in events.  God buries himself in "godness".   We never talk to God directly, but we encounter concrete events which give us hints that there is "godness" at the heart of the universe.  Arthur Peacocke coined the phrase "intimations of reality" events like this.

Many events - many but not all within the community of faith.   But I know I need friends on this journey. People who are also trying to join up their own stories.   Belonging to a community of people who share some of the story, who process some of the events we share in the light of the stories and sacraments and action we share.   That helps me find the words and stories that help me in my own attempt to make sense of the "fragments of godness" in my own life.