The Birdbath Saint

 Sandhill Cranes, Whitewater Draw, February 28th 2021. Photo: the author.

A young man in fancy clothes got off his horse, took his rich apparel and the fine fabrics he was carrying, and sold them in a neighboring town. He gave the cash -or tried to- to the priest at a small derelict church, which, as he could see, was falling down. The priest, worldly enough to anticipate trouble, refused the offered money. Whereupon the young man in disgust and frustration cast the coins into a corner of the church. Soon enough his father came looking for him, imprisoned him in a basement, and accused him of theft. Then in front of the entire town, bishop and everybody, the father demanded the son return all he had had from him.  

And so the young man did just that. He divested himself of his attire and stood naked before his accuser, that was his father, and the bishop. The bishop quickly put his cope around the young man’s shoulders and led him away. Later in the bishop’s garden the young man found a cloak abandoned by an under-gardener and, chalking a cross on the back, happily adopted it as his new garb. 

And then he began his new life. He embarked on a new kind of pilgrimage, even a new kind of crusade, as he traveled about his home country and farther afield, even to Palestine and an encounter with “the enemy” across the front lines of a Crusaders’ battle. He preached to the people and begged for his daily bread. He struggled with his inner temptations, and he gave freely of what he had. It drove some people crazy. And it attracted others.

About 795 years ago, much of a lifetime later, a poor little man died in central Italy, surrounded by friends he called his “little brothers”. Worn out with work, travel, illness, and excessive self-deprivation, he died exhausted, as he had driven his frail frame beyond its ordinary powers. 

Indeed, at the end of his life he admitted, “I’ve been too hard on Brother Ass.”-- He called his body Brother Ass, like an overburdened burro. 

He called all created things his brother or sister, not just humans, though surely those, but the sun, the moon, the elements, animals … and at last even death.

He himself was known to his friends as Brother Francis, though as soon as he died he was acclaimed as a saint. 

Saint Francis is known for several things: his passion for the gospel, his embrace of poverty, his leadership of the religious orders known as Franciscans, his love for creation, and of course birdbaths.

He is said to have preached to a wolf, and to birds. Indeed, he is often known for the latter. We might call him “the birdbath saint.” Once as I crossed the street to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, a crowd of pigeons lifted off the roof of Diocesan House and gathered at my feet. What would Francis do? He would preach! I didn’t have the temerity to admonish them to repent; instead quietly I urged them to rejoice in our fellow creaturehood.

We celebrate Creation Sunday on a Sunday close to October 4th, the feast of Saint Francis.

And it is only right. As we look at creation around us, all creatures, each other, ourselves, we look at them in part through Francis’ eyes. 

He regarded all things through the lens of his devotion to his Lord and because of that he embraced what is holy in all things.

This was not an easy road. 

Early in his career he asked God to grant him to know the pain and the love Jesus felt on the cross. And perhaps he did. 

What we remember today - without forgetting the pain of the passion - is the love that surrounds it.

The love of the passion: paradoxical, all-embracing. 

Today that love we particularly remember as we look with gratitude, hope, guilt, and a deepening desire to care, upon our fellow creatures, especially this fragile earth that is our home, and our creaturely neighbors, from fish and birds to sky and sea. 

How can we love our fellow creatures as God would have us love them - as family? Maybe seeing through the eyes of the little poor man of Assisi - Saint Francis - will help.

Most High, all-powerful, good Lord, yours is the praise, the glory and the honor and every blessing.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong, and no one is worthy to speak your name.

Praised be you, my Lord with all your creatures,...

O praise and bless my Lord, thank him and serve him humbly but grandly!

(from the Canticle of the Sun by Francis of Assisi)

 

Some material previously published as "Love all of God's creation", Arizona Daily Star, Home + Life, Keeping the Faith. October 10th 2021. E3. Used with permission.

https://azdiocese.org/2022/09/the-birdbath-saint/ (September 14th 2022).

PEOPLE NEED WATER

Arizona legislators did a good and notable thing this summer. They passed a good water bill (HB2873) and a bi-partisan budget. The legislation includes substantial funding for conservation projects along with generous funding for long-term projects (desalinization, transporting water from water-rich areas, etc.). 

Looking at what legislators accomplished, sometimes working into late nights at the end of their session, one can be excused for expressing gratitude at the progress being made.

This is not a completely popular sentiment. It is easy to say “too little, too late,” or, conversely, “none at all is too much.” Progress comes like that; in small  pieces, easy to spit out or to digest. 

We can be grateful for what has been accomplished, not because it is enough, but because it is not nothing, is a step forward, and not a start down the road to cynicism or the peddling of desperation.

In the course of coming to terms with annual budget factors, the legislators negotiated $200 million from federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for water conservation projects, including $20 million dedicated to Tribes; increased funding $3 million over last year’s budget for Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to establish rules for drinking water quality; and allocated $30 million for state Department of Agriculture water-efficiency programs.

The $200m conservation fund can be used immediately, not only for education and research, but for rainwater harvesting, gray water systems, efficiency upgrades, and drought-resistant landscaping.

For those of us whose checklist includes clothes closet, food pantry, soup kitchen; compost heap and recycling bins; rain catchment basins and barrels; solar panels and storage batteries; xeriscaping and community gardens; heat respite shelters; and other mitigation and climate-responsible practices, this can only come as good news. 

Not great news, not everything any particular person or group wanted, but a lot nevertheless, and representing a practical agreement between people of different interests and backgrounds. 

Politics is the art of the possible, much as we hate to say it; politics involves listening to and working with people we might rather be shouting at, dissing from a distance, or simply ignoring. And that means the work of imaginative charity, of putting ourselves in the same room as people with different voices and concerns.

It’s a step forward and worth recognition. Hard work, under pressure, but with results. Bravo.

What next? We need to work together on protecting against over-pumping of groundwater in rural areas of the state, management throughout the state - perhaps including a new form of active management area for rural contexts, environment impact review of water projects, and rethinking ecosystem and water dependent crops (including thirsty alfalfa and other export crops).

As a local resident, I'm concerned with conservation and water resources. As an Episcopal priest, I serve on the creation care council of the diocese of Arizona.

John Leech

Foothills

9/5/22 submitted to the Arizona Daily Star as a guest opinion.

“Far From Perfect, But Historic Bi-Partisan Budget Contains Significant Democratic Wins for Arizona”, Arizona House Democrats, press release July 1, 2022. www.azhousedemocrats.com

This opinion piece was published in the Arizona Daily Star on Wednesday September 7th 2022, A6, under the title, "Diligent legislators took good first step on water" and online as "Local Opinion: Legislators took good first step on water." 

https://tucson.com/opinion/local/local-opinion-legislators-took-good-first-step-on-water/article_41b46384-2dfb-11ed-8b13-ab476e634855.html

reconciliation of peoples

 ​​Bigotry, Racism, Sexism: Reconciliation between Creeds, Colors, Sexes and Genders.

As my teachers noted, the Churches have faced and begun to address three implications of the Gospel embodied in Christ and preached by Paul at his best in the letter to Galatians. Just to note: the Galatians were themselves objects of prejudice as they were Celts not Jews - therefore the argument about having to be circumcised to be a good Christian - and so they were troubled by a potential second-class status in the Church.

But this reveals the larger problem: they versus us. “He can’t be a man ‘cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes that I do.” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in “The Dignity of Difference”, and many other teachers have reminded us that really there is no “them and us” : there is only us. Bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamic, anti- you name it, is an expression of anxiety and not of faith. 

Identity if it is in Christ is not threatened by the identity of others. It is not threatened by the status or class of others. If we love Christ the most - and that is what it means to love others (even ourselves) less - then all loves fall into right relationship. 

Racism - black/white, but also indigenous/immigrant, and many other distinctions - is another challenge to the Church, in itself and in its role in larger society. Martin Luther King, Jr., called eleven o’clock Sunday morning the most segregated hour in America. We are still working on this, so that we break bread together, so all of us do indeed share in one loaf, one cup. 

And offer our voices in praise: our diverse voices in praise. For we are all one in the Spirit but we are not the same: and that is a blessing. Each of us and each community offers different gifts, in praise to God, as we offer different prayers and practices. 

Sexism, and now increasingly an undertaking to make progress in understanding gender identity, is a continuing area of growth for churches.

And this is far from the end of the list. Different abilities, incarcerated versus free, political polarization, … the challenges continue.

But we hold this to be true: In Christ all are one, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; we are all one in the same Spirit. And blessed by our diversity.

And reconciliation of peoples begins with the hard work of the Gospel, the freedom that costs no less than everything, as - reconciled in Christ - we choose to follow Christ in building the beloved community, the kingdom of God.

The Potter and the Clay

Pete Skoro, Eckels Pottery, Bayfield, Wisconsin, on August 25th 2022. 

At the potter’s house the other day I watched him select a lump of clay, start his wheel, and shape the clay, changing and molding it, with a vision that belied its original outward appearance as it was gradually transformed. He shaped it and scraped it, with his hands, a knife, and an improvised tool.

(Yes, he said, he would smoosh it down if needed and start anew.) But then after ten minutes something new had appeared, and he set it aside to dry.

Later he would fire it in the kiln, and then glaze it. 

Many centuries ago potters in the old world and the new made pots, fired them and glazed them. I have held in my hand potsherds from cliff dwellings and Anasazi villages, and also a piece of the Berlin Wall. The legacy of a pot may be good, or it may reflect evil - but note, not an evil that ultimately lasts. For God shapes our ends for peace and not harm.

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Jeremiah 29:11 (NRSV)

And those plans involve something we call reconciliation. For we are made and redeemed, and empowered, and reconciled, by one and the same Spirit.

Reconciled in Christ: Becoming Beloved Community is the theme of this year‘s diocesan convention and it is my theme therefore this day. To be reconciled in Christ is first of all to be reconciled with God in Christ and with each other and with ourselves: just as we are commanded to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves.  

It is in Christ that we come into right relationship with God, each other, and ourselves; it is in Christ that we are reconciled.

Reconciliation is with God and thanks be to God through Christ with others and with ourselves. 

Stephen J. Patterson, in “The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism” (Oxford University Press, 2018) argues that the most primitive creed is this: there is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female. 

And that means… We are all children of God, we are all one in the Spirit. 

So of all the readings guess what Paul says to Philemon in his brief letter Onesimus – his name means “useful” – was useless to you as a slave but I am returning him to you useful as a brother, more than a slave a brother: and Paul makes the somewhat veiled request of Philemon that he set Onesimus free and even somewhat hints that it would be best to send him back again to Paul but now as a freedman. 

So how does Onesimus go from being useless to useful: is it through the transforming power of God through the Spirit?

In the letter to Philemon, as in many passages in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures, slavery is taken as a fact of society of the time: that doesn’t mean it is condoned so much as recognized as part of how life and society were, so that in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) readings there is slavery even of Jews and sometimes of Jews by others … but elsewhere in the New Testament we encounter Paul at his best: this passage in Galatians (3:26-29) :

“In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

Today our challenge is to come to an understanding in our full maturity in our current social context of what it means to be free, what it means to be freed, and what it means to have been enslaved in the first place.  

Over the centuries, as my teacher Neal Flanagan OFM has pointed out, the church has dealt with these three bondages: 

• the ethnic and racial conflicts that “no longer Jew or Greek” represents, especially in the ancient world but on up through our own peril-fraught times; 
• the justice conflict of “slave or free” including historic chattel slavery on up through the mid-19th century; and lastly 
• the inequity of male-female relations, which the church began to address afresh only in the middle years of the 19th century and the various feminist movements to follow.  

The reconciliation of peoples means that there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female, in terms of precedence or power or right.

And, to return to our original theme, overcoming those conflicts is part of what it means to be reconciled in Christ: first to God, and then to others and ourselves … and we are learning that ‘others’ includes all of creation, including all created beings and certainly one another. 

And this helps us move forward in one challenge of our age: reconciling with other people not like ourselves. 

It is in Christ, in his work, in his life as well as his death, from incarnation on through crucifixion to resurrection, that we find our hope and the new possibility and even power to come to a right relationship with each other, ourselves, and God. That is the Christian hope.

Jeremiah 29:11-13 (CEB)

I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope. 

When you call me and come and pray to me, I will listen to you. When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me. 

So what does it mean to be reconciled in Christ? What does it mean to be in right relationship with God, each other, and ourselves, and to come into right relationship with God, each other, and ourselves? 

It means to be reshaped as the potter reshapes the pot. It means to be reshaped, to submit ourselves to be reshaped, but also to undertake conversion - that is, to take responsibility for our own growth, development, and indeed, transformation.

We take active part in our own reshaping to God’s hand, to firing and glazing, to becoming solid in our place in creation, after testing it may be, becoming useful - as Onesimus became useful - in bringing into shape the reign of God, and becoming a legacy, lasting and good.

https://www.commonenglishbible.com/ 

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 18

Jeremiah 18:1-11
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33

https://www.eckelspottery.com/

Pete Skoro, Eckels Pottery, Bayfield, Wisconsin, on August 25th 2022. At the wheel; the drying pot.

Stephen J. Patterson, The Forgotten Creed. Oxford, 2018.

Simran Jeet Singh, The Light We Give. Riverhead, 2022.