Susan Ironside to be ordained this morning

Bishop Theodora (left) in a 9th-century mosaic
from the Church of St.Praxedis in Rome.

My friend Susan Ironside, whose husband Andrew was organist at Grace Episcopal Church in Plainfield for a number of years, will be ordained a priest this morning at Trinity Cathedral in Trenton.

Susan and Andrew lived in their very first home on Berkeley Avenue, just two doors from Cook School, until Andrew's new job at St. John's-on-the-Mountain in Bernardsville led to a move to Madison.

Susan will celebrate her first Eucharist at 9:30 AM tomorrow at St. John's-on-the-Mountain.

In July, she will begin her service as an assistant at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Westfield.

Congratulations and much love to Susan from all her Plainfield friends.

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-- Dan Damon [follow]

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About that cross-and-crown symbol

The cross-and-crown or 'crown of life' symbol.

As this Plainfielder prepared for Easter 2010, I remembered the little rural congregation in which I grew up.

This pietistic congregation of a pietistic denomination (Evangelical United Brethren, or 'German Methodists') preached a rather stern version of the Christian life with perhaps a little too much attention to externals (drinking, dancing, card-playing, jewelry and lipstick come to mind).

The church building's interior itself was severely plain -- it could stand up well to any New England Puritan meetinghouse -- and devoid of any symbolism except for two items.

One was a set of plain brass candlesticks and a cross, which sat upon the communion table, and were still (in the 1950s, after they were there for a dozen years or so) regarded as insufferably Papist by older members of the congregation.

The other was a maroon velvet parament embroidered in gold with a cross-and-crown symbol, which hung from the front of the pulpit. It was never changed or removed. But most notably to a youngster, it was never explained.

What was the significance of that cross-and-crown symbol?

Being in an Easter frame of mind, I was thinking it referred to Jesus' passion and death and the reward of the 'crown of life'. But that appears to be mistaken, since the two New Testament references to the term (James 1:12 and Revelation 2:10) clearly refer to it as a reward to BELIEVERS who persevere under tribulation.

Which led me to William Penn (see here), whose pamphlet (we would call it a book) No Cross, No Crown was written while his butt was parked in the infamous Tower of London for having written an earlier screed attacking perceived abuses of Church and Crown (even Pepys, no shy violet, said he was 'ashamed to read' Penn's writings).

Consider this about Quakers --

Quakers were relatively strict Christians in the seventeenth century. They refused to bow or take off their hats to social superiors, believing all men equal under God, a belief antithetical to an absolute monarchy which believed the monarch divinely appointed by God.

And this Quaker contribution --

By abolishing the church's authority over the congregation, Fox [Quakerism's founder] not only extended the Protestant Reformation more radically, but he helped extend the most important principle of modern political history – the rights of the individual – upon which modern democracies were later founded.

Suddenly, that conservative little backwater rural congregation was found to be propagating the most radical and subversive of doctrines -- the equality of all under God, and individual rights!

And, as I would learn later in life, others who shaped my life and thought drew similar lessons from the symbolism of the 'crown of life': especially Bill Stringfellow, Walter Wink, Daniel Berrigan, Malcolm Boyd and Oscar Romero.

And refusing to 'bow or take off one's hat to one's...superiors', believing all are equal under God.

Subversive stuff, this Christianity.

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• Wikipedia: "William Penn"
• William Penn: "No Cross, No Crown"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Heathenish Plainfield Dems?

Maundy Thursday commemorates the institution of the Eucharist or Lord's Supper.

Is Plainfield's Democratic City Committee a bunch of heathens?

Assemblyman Jerry Green, the city committee's chair has put the committee in something of a pickle by scheduling a committee meeting for 7:00 PM on Thursday evening, to discuss candidates for the June primary.

That would be Maundy Thursday, the day that the world's Christians following the Gregorian calendar mark as commemorating the institution of the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. (The word Maundy is a corruption of 'mandatum', from the Latin Vulgate translation of Jesus' words: 'A new commandment [mandatum] I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you'.)

In many parishes, the clergy and leaders of the congregation participate in washing each other's feet on this solemn evening, recalling Jesus' washing of the feet of the disciples as recounted in John 13:1-17, particularly --

12: So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?
13: Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
14: If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet.
15: For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
16: Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.
17: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.

As a sign of humility, the Pope traditionally washed the feet of 12 poor persons from the streets of Rome at the Maundy Thursday mass in St. Peter's, a custom observed by other great and powerful people at various times, including the kings and queens of England, who did so up to the death of James II in 1701.

In Plainfield, many will be observing this Holy Thursday at the time of the Democratic City Committee meeting, forcing a choice on those who are observant.

Is it a choice between God and Mammon?

Many also observe Holy Thursday by washing the feet of others
as a sign of humility.

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• Maundy Thursday: "Catholic Encyclopedia" | "Wikipedia"
• Pedilavium (Foot Washing): "John 13:12-17 (KJV)" | "Wikipedia"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Three priests rise out of a modest congregation

The Blessed Virgin Mary,
stained glass window in Grace Church.

An abbreviated Plainfield Today today -- am off to the ordination of my friend Susan Ironside as a 'transitional' deacon at Trinity Cathedral in Trenton this morning. 'Transitional' because she will soon be ordained to the priesthood.

Susan is yet another candidate for the priesthood arising out of Grace Episcopal Church in recent years. She and her husband, Andrew Moore (who was Grace's organist for ten years) were deeply involved in parish life before Andrew was lured away by St. John's-on-the-Mountain in Bernardsville.

John Hartman, who lived in Plainfield many years, was recently ordained an Episcopal priest and is serving an Anglo-Catholic parish in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania.

Peter Manzo, now rector of St. Bartholomew's Church in Cherry Hill is the third priest out of Grace Church. Peter, a former Roman Catholic deacon, was drawn to Grace Church after stopping by a plant sale at which Lois Mattson and I were volunteering the Saturday before Mother's Day one year. He and his wife Joan started attending the next day and ultimately Peter, an attorney with a practice in immigration law, was ordained.

Quite a record for a modest urban parish that may have thought its glory days were past.

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-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Teddy Kennedy and 'making a good end'

For those of us schooled in the tenets of Catholicism before the changes of Vatican II, the headline in a Thursday NYTimes story on Kennedy's last year (see here) may have brought a frisson of recognition of something as ingrained as genuflecting or making the sign of the cross: the concern that in dying, we would 'make a good end'.

How alien this idea has become can be garnered from the order in which the Times's writer lays out the story -- from 'big bowls of mocha chip and butter crunch ice creams...smushed together', to 'putting his affairs in order' (which occurred very early on), to 'tak[ing] stock of his life'.

This is just about the reverse of the way Teddy Kennedy and the rest of us inculcated the concept (and, I suspect, the way that Teddy approached his dying moments), and shows Kennedy's attitude to be a bridge to a faith-life barely recognized today.

Earlier generations were much concerned about sudden death, as witness the deprecation from the Anglican 'Great Litany' --

from violence, battle, and murder;
and from dying suddenly and unprepared,
Good Lord, deliver us.

Drawing on ancient traditions, Thomas Cranmer prepared the Litany, the first rite to be published in English (in 1544, see more on the context here) in a time when sudden death could come for many reasons -- war, pestilence, natural disaster, or running afoul of the Royal pleasure -- and 'making a good end' meant both having the time to prepare for one's demise and to meet the occasion with a calm and confident demeanor.

Thomas More, who ran afoul of his former drinking buddy and boon companion Henry VIII, made his own 'good end' on Tower Hill in July 1535, and perfectly illustrates the desire to prepare for one's death. He considered himself to have been privileged to have gotten a year's confinement before his execution after having refused to uphold the Act of Succession (making Anne Boleyn queen) on account of its anti-papal preface.

More's fascinating life is well told in Peter Ackroyd's 1998 biography (see here) which, while sympathetic, does not gloss over the ferocity with which as Lord Chancellor he executed Henry's policies before their split. During his imprisonment he penned for his daughter Margaret "A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation" ('comfort' here having its original sense of 'strengthening'), still in print as a devotional classic to this day.

Catholic teaching emphasizes the connectedness of the believer -- to God, to other believers in the Church (past, present and future), to humanity, and to the natural order. It takes cognizance of the ways in which that connectedness can be rent asunder, and makes ways for believers to restore and strengthen that connectedness (the sacraments, especially baptism, reconciliation and the Eucharist).

In this context, 'making a good end' meant not just setting one's temporal affairs in order, but in repairing, restoring and celebrating that connectedness at the heart of the Catholic faith.

Eamon Duffy, in 'The Stripping of the Altars', his magisterial survey of English religious life in the two centuries bracketing its Protestant ascendancy, goes into the matter in great depth (esp. Ch. 9, 'Last Things') --

... it is clear that there was a well defined set of attitudes and gestures which dying Christians were expected to manifest at this, the most solemn and important moment of their lives. The deathbed was a communal event, not a private one...
To have hope of Heaven the Christian must die in charity, reconciled to enemies, if possible having paid, or being purposed to pay, all debts.
...the bonds of simple neighborliness also found religious expression at this moment above all. The sick and their families were supported by the company, prayers, and encouragement of friends and neighbors...

Teddy Kennedy, whose life was both great and messy (unlike most of the rest of us who must be content only to have messy lives), understood what 'making a good end' was all about, and the testimony of his last year, in which he accepted he had been given this chance to amend, connect and reconcile, can put us in touch with an idea and a practice which we moderns rushing hither and thither have lost.

For that we can thank him.

In Paradisum deducant te angeli...
Lux eterna luceat eis. Requiescat in pace.

[May the angels lead you into Paradise.
May light eternal shine upon him. Rest in peace.]

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• NYTimes: "After diagnosis, determined to make a 'good ending'"
• Ackroyd, Peter: "The Life of Thomas More"
• Duffy, Eamon: "The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580"
• The Book of Common Prayer: "The Great Litany"
  
• Hatchett, Marion J.: "Commentary on the American Prayer Book" (The Great Litany)
  

-- Dan Damon

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Easter: Strength for all the feeble knees

Easter Communion

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)

---

Hopkins was an English poet, educated at Oxford. Entering the Roman Catholic Church in 1866 and the Jesuit novitiate in 1868, he was ordained in 1877. Upon becoming a Jesuit he burned much of his early verse and abandoned the writing of poetry. However, the sinking in 1875 of a German ship carrying five Franciscan nuns, exiles from Germany, inspired him to write one of his most impressive poems “The Wreck of the Deutschland.” Thereafter he produced his best poetry.

His life was continually troubled by inner conflict which arose, some think, not from religious skepticism but from his homosexual tendencies.

Though he produced a small body of work, he ranks high among English poets, and his work profoundly influenced 20th-century poetry. His verse is noted for its piercing intensity of language and its experiments in prosody. Of these experiments the most famous is “sprung rhythm,” a meter in which Hopkins tried to approximate the rhythm of everyday speech.

See more on Hopkins here.

-- Dan Damon

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Public Prayer and President Obama: A Kerfuffle?

This Plainfielder wonders sometimes whether Roger Williams, the Baptist preacher and co-founder of Rhode Island, is not right after all.

As every school child used to know, he was a staunch defender of religious toleration and the separation of church and state. Perhaps less well known is that he left the congregation he founded shortly afterwards, saying 'God is too big to be housed under one roof'.

Roger Williams is always in the back of my mind when public prayer is offered in a civic setting -- whether it is at Plainfield's City Council meetings or at the inauguration of America's first African American president.

As a Christian, I have no problem addressing prayers to God through Jesus Christ. But I know that having it done in official settings leaves many of my friends and fellow-Plainfielders who are not Christian excluded.

On the other hand, to-Whom-it-may-concern prayers can seem limp and lifeless.

As President Obama's inauguration approached, the matter was put on the front burner by the media (an example here). Was Rick Warren an offensive choice? Why was there only one pray-er? Was it a conspiracy that gay Bishop Robinson's prayer at a pre-inaugural event was dropped from the NPR feed?

Oh, my! Oh, my!

The day came. Rick Warren acquitted himself reasonably well (see the full text of his prayer here), though some religious conservatives were upset by his reference to Jesus not only by his Jewish and Christian names, but by his Islamic name, 'Isa' and others critiqued his sermonizing tendencies.

My kind of prayer service came the NEXT day, at the National Cathedral.

First, you were there because you counted yourself among believers and wanted to offer prayers for the new President.

Second, it was TRULY ecumenical -- and more, it was interfaith -- including Jewish, Muslim and Hindu officiants. (An aside: Richard Nixon's 1973 swearing-in had a Baptist, a Catholic and a Greek Orthodox; Ronald Reagan's 1985 ceremony included a Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew, as did Harry S. Truman's 1949 inaugural. A tradition that was lost after Reagan. See more here and here.)

Third, did you notice how prominent WOMEN were? Including the preacher, the head of the Islamic Society of America and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church? Many have noted that only men were picked by the inaugural officials for the civic ceremonies.

Lastly, it was a sensitively INCLUSIVE, JOYOUS and SPIRIT-FILLED service. Read the service leaflet carefully to see what I mean (see here -- PDF).

Roger Williams had an opinion. He thought these sorts of things blasphemous.

I think not.

Perhaps we should conclude instead that God is too big to be housed under the roof of Roger Williams' opinions.

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• Christianity Today: "Text of Rick Warren's Inaugural Prayer"
• National Prayer Service: "National Cathedral home page" "Links to leaflet (PDF) and webcast"
• Inaugural Prayers: "The Ultimate Archive"
• Charles C. Haynes: "What should be the role of civil religion?" -- In today's Courier.
• Wall Street Journal: "The Power of Prayer" -- As America became more diverse, Inaugural pray-ers became less so.

-- Dan Damon

Easter: Women were first, and unbelieved.

The universal testimony of the infant church was that women were the first to discover the empty tomb. Here, St. Luke's version --

And all his (Jesus') acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things (the crucifixion --DD).

And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counseller; and he was a good man, and a just: (the same had not consented to the counsel and deed of them;) he was of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews: who also himself waited for the kingdom of God. This man went unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid.

And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on.

And the women also, which came with him from Galilee (those who had witnessed the crucifixion --DD), followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.

Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

And they remembered his words, and returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.

And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.

-- Luke, 22:49 - 23:11 (King James Version)

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• King James Bible: "The Gospel According to Luke"

--Dan Damon

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IRS drops investigation of church over sermon

All Saint's Church hears IRS news. (Phot, LA Times.)

In an important First Amendment case, the IRS has dropped its attempt to rescind the non-profit status of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, over a sermon delivered by a former rector in 2004 in which he was critical of the war in Iraq and of President Bush's tax cuts.

Parish leaders are confused, however, by the IRS letter closing the case, in which the IRS holds -- still -- that the sermon was illegal.

The church wants a clarification -- and an apology.

This is only church's most recent tussle with the government -- it has a long history of social activism, dating back to World War II, when it's then-rector preached against the internment of Japanese-Americans and the theft of their property by official government action.

I'm glad for them they won they fight.

I'm not holding my breath on the apology.

Plainfield connection: Former Plainfield residents Debby (costumer of the stars) and Jerry (you've seen him in many, many commercials) Lancaster are members of All Saints Church.

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• LA Times: "Pasadena church wants apology from IRS"
• CBS News: "IRS Grants Church Absolution Over Sermon"
• Paul Caron's TaxProf Blog: "IRS Drops Investigation" -- Complete links to all coverage.
  

-- Dan Damon

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ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/

Plainfield seminarian to be on NPR Thursday AM

Plainfielder John Hartman, a seminarian at the Episcopal Church's Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, will be among a group of seminarians in a segment with Chicago Public Radio's religion reporter Jason DeRose Thursday morning on NPR's 'Morning Edition' program, which airs locally on WNYC (93.9 FM) between 5 and 9 AM.

De Rose engages the group of Seabury-Western students in conversation over the tensions between the Episcopal Church -- the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion -- and more conservative Anglican leaders in the Southern Hemisphere, primarily in Africa and Asia.

Though the American secular media portray the tensions as being primarily about the ordination of gay bishops and the performance of same-sex commitment rites, the picture is far more complicated.

While issues around sexuality certainly have their place, there are also vastly different theological perspectives at play. In addition, the majority of monies made available worldwide to support the Anglican Communion's programs of aid, education and disaster relief come from the American church.

Add to this the fact that the conservative archbishops face a reluctance among many of their own churches and clergy to break bonds with the American church and you can see it is a very complicated as well as volatile situation.

Let's hope John and friends are able to shine some light on the issues.

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What: Discussion of issues facing the Anglican Communion.
When: Thursday, September 20, sometime between 5 AM and 9 AM.
On: NPR's 'Morning Edition', locally on WNYC (93.9 FM)

-- Dan Damon

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ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
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The Stations

I. Jesus is Condemned to Death

II. Jesus Takes Up His Cross

III. Jesus Falls the First Time

IV. Jesus Meets Mary, His Mother

V. Simon of Cyrene Helps Carry the Cross

VI. Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus

VII. The Second Fall

VIII. Jesus Speaks to the Weeping Women

IX. The Third Fall

X. Jesus is Stripped of His Garments

XI. Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

XII. Jesus Dies on the Cross

XIII. Jesus is Placed in His Mother's Arms

XIV. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb

About Gwyneth Leech's Stations of the Cross New York Artist Gwyneth Leech was commissioned in 2004 by Saint Paul's on the Green, an Episcopal Church in Norwalk, Connecticut to paint stations of the cross that blend traditional Christian iconography with contemporary elements. She found a vivid way of depicting Christ's journey to the cross for modern viewers, by incorporating the suffering and grief of people around the world who are caught in the midst of armed conflict, especially the war in Iraq. Unveiled earlier this year at the Avenue 50 Studio in Los Angeles (website here), the paintings are now on permanent view in the church at 60 East Avenue, East Norwalk, Connecticut. The artist's website is here. Her article about the commission for CounterPunch magazine is here. An article reviewing the reactions to the series is here.

Traditionally, before each station is said: We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you. Because by your holy cross you have saved the world. And after each station: Lord Jesus, help us walk in your steps.