I am a violin and fiddle student, something taken up a few years after being ordained a bishop in Alabama, and continued when we made the move to California. The wonderful teachers I’ve had in both places have taught me great lessons about music and about life.
From Michael Korn in Alabama I learned the importance to attending not only to the meaning of the music, its overall pattern and dynamics, but also to the contents of my own heart, my passions and values.
Here in the Bay Area I have another wonderful teacher, Catherine Matovich. For the last year she has been pushing and prodding me about the necessity of counting throughout each piece – approximations of time are fine if I would never be playing with other people, but in an ensemble the counting is foundational. Whenever we play together, Catherine and I, and we finish the piece, if I have not been mindful of the counting she says, “I’ve been adjusting for you – it is pretty thoughtless of you to treat other people that way, and you are not a thoughtless person.”
Just back from the General Convention, Catherine’s teachings are in my mind. The theme of the convention was Ubuntu, an African social principle that has been consciously formative of the Anglican Church in South Africa. One way to express Ubuntu is that my individuality depends on the web of creation in which I live.
I believe Ubuntu to be a description of reality, not something about which I have a choice. My choice comes in at the level of how I take account of this reality in my daily life; am I mindful of the lives with which I’m connected or not. My level of attention and its quality can affect the tenor of my community, but not its existence.
The advantage of learning about the reality of Ubuntu through music is this: the feedback on one’s level of attentiveness to others, to the shared reality, is immediate. In the daily rounds of life the system effects may not be as blatant – a inner wound may be checked in outward expression.
Looking back on the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church, I would say that we in the House of Bishops were playing our music with exceeding attention to one another, and to our shared life. The question many are now asking is this: how would we be evaluated when the ensemble is not the House of Bishops, the General Convention, or our Church, but rather the Communion, or other great entities.
The expected answer is that we weren’t so attentive to the tempo and rhythms of these larger realities, but I’m not sure about that. Many may consider us self absorbed, solipsists listening only to the beautiful music we were making in our little space, unaware of our unkindness to all those around us.
But what about the women and men who speak so earnestly of both their faith and their suffering as lesbian, gay and transgendered people in Africa in the affecting documentary, “Voices of Witness, Africa?” Would they not hear us as playing with them, at last?
And finally I wonder about a grander composition, an all-encompassing orchestra, summing up all our smaller efforts. If there is such a greater reality, I think that it is beyond my comprehension, beyond my hearing, like the B-flat that sounds forth from the black hole, 100 times lower than the B-flat below middle-C. Because this reality is so much larger, deeper won’t I need other faculties in order to hear its sounds?
I’m reminded of a little scene in the first book of the Harry Potter series. Harry and his new classmates have just arrived at the school, and are in the Great Hall for their orientation. The headmaster, Albus Dumbledore is finishing his opening-of-school address, and announces that it is time to sing he Hogwarts school song. The smiles on the faces of the faculty become fixed – something about what is to come is to be endured rather than enjoyed. The song begins, and to Harry’s wonder and delight, everyone picks his or her own favorite melody and tempo. Standing before them all, eyes closed and a smile of real joy on his face as he listens is Dumbledore. Because he hears through love, he hears the greater composition and the foundational tempo of the universe.
I hope you have had a chance to watch the videos of the four EPF youth presence representatives I posted earlier. Below is another interview with an EPF youth, Anson Stewart.
Anson, like the others, gave powerful, winsome testimony before the committee on which I serve, but I hadn’t been able to catch up with him for an interview until yesterday, after the daily Eucharist.
I interviewed him in the shade of some little palms outside the convention center. The interview is a bit longer than some, because near the end (I could see he was wrapping it up), he referred to Jesus’ saying, “Turn the other cheek,” in a way that intrigued me.
“Turn the other cheek” used to be almost universally interpreted as a call for Christians to be passive; not non-violent resisters, but people who accepted violence without protest. I think it was an interpretation that was deployed to take the power away from the institution of the Church. By “the power” I mean the power to dominate and control, thus power we don’t ultimately want. Taking it away by violence however, and the passive acceptance of that violence (probably within the scope of the scapegoating complex) solves nothing, but merely perpetuates a timeless cycle of struggle.
When I was chaplain and a teacher at Episcopal High School I learned another interpretation from Walter Wink, a culturally contextualized interpretation that deeply influenced my whole Christian life. Essentially, those three sayings of Jesus in that portion of the Sermon on the Mount (turn the other cheek, give the inner garment as well as the outer, and walk the extra mile) were re-interpreted to show Jesus as a creative person in the face of violence, a person who took surprising, strategic actions that forced both himself and the aggressor to rethink their positions. I call this stance that Wink teased out of the Sermon on the Mount sayings “The Third Way of Jesus.”
Anson, as you’ll see in the video, mentioned “Turn the other cheek,” in a way that got me to ask him how he understood that saying. He talked about how the “other cheek” was an invitation to become reflective, and consider one’s own complicity in violence, how one is in the web of actions that includes the seemingly exterior act of violence aimed at the subjective self.
After we finished the interview, Sheila and I said goodbye to Anson, and began walking back to the hotel. We were stopped by a friend for a few minutes, and when we started walking again, there were hate mongers between the convention center and the hotel, haranguing the Episcopalians walking by with anti-gay invective. And there, sitting quietly not far in front of them, was Anson, reflectively gazing at the scene. I pointed Anson out to Sheila, and said how much this contemplative stance in front of violence delighted me.
Little did I know that there was more to the story. Later in the day I was telling Sean McConnell about the interview with Anson. He said, “Yeah, did you know that two of the EPF youth presence people counter-protested those folks by flying kites in front of them?”
The fruit of contemplation, turning the other cheek, re-presenting big men, yelling not as threats, but as children with ungoverned selves, a contemporary parable, an enacted prophecy. I have hope for the Episcopal Church and our world.
Here is a my vlog in two parts recorded at the start of the General Convention. I will post more updates throughout the convention. Please view the interviews below with some of those who came to give witness here in Anaheim.
Please watch the following video of one of our Episcopal transgender witnesses, present here at the 76th General Convention, worshiping and praying with their brothers and sisters, and asking us, by resolutions to advocate with them for their full civil rights and equal protection under the law.
In the sermon at Eucharist this morning, Bonnie Anderson said that
as Jesus healed individuals, he was also often healing communities by
restoring the outcast to his or her community, thus making it whole
again. This is a powerful idea, and it made me wonder anew about Jesus'
healing; did he make the physical infirmity or ailment go away in each
case, or was the location of the healing sometimes in the community,
you could say in their eyes. Were the eyes of the onlookers healed so
that they no longer saw difference as disqualifying a person from
belonging. I'm thinking about this with respect to our transgender
brothers and sisters: they don't need to conform to dominant norms, or
they shouldn't have to, in order to belong.
I'm serving on the national and international concerns legislative committee while at the General Convention. A great committee from all over the church, we have received important, complicated resolutions regarding such areas as education in Haiti, Israel/Palestine relations, human rights for transgendered people, and climate change and the Millennium Development Goals.
I interviewed four young adults in the episcopal peace fellowship who gave testimony to our committee at one of our hearings. please watch these videos if you want to see the present and future shape of our beautiful church
+Marc
