Sunday, February 28, 2010

On the Writing of Hymn Texts: “Always Trust Your Ears!”

This morning I preached for the first time in 2010 to the little Berkshire hill-town congregation at the Federated Church of Charlemont, while their pastor was on a mission trip to Nicaragua. It was a gracious experience in so many ways, and a homecoming of sorts, since it was my seventh visit there as a guest preacher since 2007.

It was also there that I led my very first worship service after my sudden retirement from disability in 2004, which was a deeply moving experience.  I have a warm spot in my heart for country churches. I started my ministry back in 1975 in two little village churches in rural Maine, and I always feel at home in churches like them, especially this one.

For a country church Charlemont has extraordinary music. The gifted organist and choir director, Esther Haskell, who is a school librarian at her day job, does a masterful job, and sometimes it seems like nearly half of the congregation is in the choir. The composer and arranger Alice Parker, who needs no introduction to many of you, also worships in that congregation, and has worked closely with Esther to make congregational singing an important part of their worship.

For some weird reason, soon after my brain injury in 2000, I suddenly started writing hymn texts. I can't recall ever writing a poem in my life before, and I have certainly never had any training, but these texts started tumbling out of me in the early morning hours after many a sleepless night, often complete and in meter needing few if any changes. I've told this to various of my neurology specialists, and they have no explanation for it, and it might just be a coincidence, but I don't think so. Maybe Olive Sacks would be interested!  The human brain is a marvel and a mystery. Take good care of yours.

So on this February 13, I posted a Lenten hymn text that I wrote back in 2004, not long before I had to pull the plug on my 22 year pastorate. It is called “You Won't Despise a Broken Heart.”

The text is very much in the spirit of Lent, but the last verse ends on an Easter note, based on the church's practice of counting the Sundays as being “in” Lent, but not “of” Lent, which is why the forty days don't add up, if you've ever wondered about that.  And the closing Easter note in the text is also appropriate because every Sunday of the year, even in Lent, is a celebration of the Resurrection.

So far, so good.  But when I went to post it,  I counted all the syllables to make sure it was truly in Common Meter (C.M.), which is 8.6.8.6.  To my dismay I discovered that a couple of the lines in one of the verses didn't add up. I liked the hymn the way it was, but I wanted it to be metrically correct, so I added a couple of words to make the numbers come out right before I posted it. But the changes definitely took something away from the poetry, and I never liked them.

When I spoke by phone with Esther earlier in the week she had suggested that it might be an appropriate hymn to sing today for this Second Sunday in Lent,  which pleased me.  But she gently suggested that a few minor changes be made in one of the verses to make it more singable, and I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

The changes she suggested were, of course,  to eliminate the “corrections” that I had made, and I told her so, and about my worry that the lines wouldn't have the right number of syllables. She has been an English teacher in Amherst and taught poetry there for many years.

“Always trust your ears,” she told me. I ask her how one shows that when it is just a written text without music. She said, “I'll ask Alice!” And she did. The answer was simple. Just write it out, and when it is sung (if you have trusted your ears) the music will tell the congregation how to sing it. (If the music and text are shown together, as in a hymnal, then you divide the words up with special hyphen-like marks that probably have a name, but I don't know what it is.)

Unlike some of my other hymn texts, this one has never had an original tune written for it, and since I left the pastorate shortly after it was written, I had never heard it sung.

But this morning I did!  Esther and Alice suggested the lovely Scottish tune “Crimond” for the music, and that is what we sang, and I really loved it. So I have gone back to my post of February 13 and restored the text to its original form, and the recommended tune is now “Crimond.”  You can find the hymn text here.  And it is not (yet) commercially copyrighted (nobody gets paid, in other words), so if you want to use it this Lent in worship, be my guest.

And so it was that I learned an important lesson about writing hymn texts: “Always trust your ears!”

(Photo by M. T. Floyd of R. L. Floyd, Charlemont, MA, Lent 2007)

Friday, February 26, 2010

Why did Jesus refer to Herod as “That fox” in Luke 13:32”?

Here are some more of my background thoughts for preaching on Sunday's Gospel text for the Second Sunday in Lent: Luke 13:31-35.

I have been wondering why Jesus told the Pharisees “Go and tell that fox for me . . .” after they had warned him to leave town because of Herod. Why call Herod a “fox”?

Herod was the tetrarch (meaning “ruler of a fourth,” for the kingdom was divided) of Galilee, in whose territory Jesus was active. We all know about Herod the Great, the one who was in power when Jesus was born and who slaughtered the innocent children after the Magi told him about the Christ child, but this is his son, Herod Antipas.

What do we know about him? Well, when Jesus calls him “that fox,” he is not saying that he is as sly as a fox, although he might well have been. No, Jesus is actually insulting him, for a fox is an unclean animal in the Israelite holiness codes. We need a little history lesson to know why Jesus thought Herod fit to be insulted in such a way.

Though Herod often tried to appear the pious Jewish leader, he had more than a few problems maintaining the loyalty of his Jewish subjects. His first problem was his very authority. He had been put in power by Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor, in 4 BC. And then in 17 AD, to honor his Roman overlords, he build a grand new capital city named Tiberius, after the current emperer, only to discover that it was built on top of an old Jewish cemetery. No pious Jew ever entered it, and it was inhabited almost exclusively by Greeks and Romans.

Then he also had serious women problems. He divorced his first wife, which had been a political union, as she was the daughter of an Arab ruler, in order to marry Herodius. She had been the wife of his half brother, also called Herod just to confuse us.  It was not unheard of in those days to marry the ex-wife of one's brother, but she was also the daughter of another half-brother, Aristobulus. Marriage to one's niece was also permitted, but marriage to a woman who was both one’s sister-in-law and ones’ niece was irregular, or as my kids might say, “sketchy.”

It was this Herod who had John the Baptist killed. John had been a persistent critic of Herod for his dubious marriage and his general immorality. The Gospels say he had John killed because he had promised his daughter Salome anything she wanted if she danced for him, and John’s head on a platter is what she wanted. The historian Josephus wrote that Herod’s subjects believed that the war that broke out in 36 AD with the Arabs (recall the first divorced wife), and the subsequent Arab military successes, were divine punishment for Herod's many transgressions.

So for these reasons, and for the fact that he let his daughter dance in public, which was considered a shameful act, the readers of this story would have understood that Herod Antipas was an unrighteous man and an unfit ruler.  No pious Jew would ever have let his daughter dance in front of strangers.

In short, Herod Antipas was an unsavory and unscrupulous puppet ruler of the Romans, and certainly not one to be trifled with. Jesus would have had every reason to have been afraid of him. This is the gist, I think, of the Pharisee's warning to Jesus to stay away from him. They were no friend to Jesus, but most likely were even less enamored of Herod Antipas. Jesus was in danger from Herod, and so he left for the countryside, not because he was afraid of Herod, but because “his time had not yet come.”

Jerusalem, which figures prominently in this passage and in the larger story, was part of the Roman province of Judea, which is why Jesus, as the creed says, “suffered under Pontius Pilate‚” the Roman procurator. Herod's role in turning Jesus over for trial to the Romans, as described in Luke, is much debated by historians. Most likely the reason was that Jesus was active in his district. But it was smart for someone who was attracting crowds as Jesus was to keep clear of Herod.  An unpopular puppet ruler with a tenuous grip on power was then, as now, someone to be afraid of.

(Picture: Salome Dancing before Herod by Jacob Hogers (1630-55). Rijksmuseum.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Fear or Faith? John Calvin on Psalm 27:3

After Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, John Calvin's Commentaries were probably my most thumbed through books while I prepared for preaching over the years.  I gave mine away to a younger pastor friend when I retired, but was pleased to be able to find them on-line, albeit in an old English translation that is perhaps not the best.

Though Calvin is much maligned as a general grump and meanie in modern popular culture, his sermons and commentaries on scripture, quite to the contrary, are more often than not, full of faith, hope, and love.  Here is an excerpt (verse 3) from his commentary on Psalm 27, which is the appointed psalm in the New Revised Common Lectionary for this upcoming Second Sunday in Lent:
Though armies should encamp. He infers from his former experience, as I have already mentioned, that whatever adversity may befall him, he ought to hope well, and to have no misgivings about the divine protection, which had been so effectually vouchsafed to him in his former need. He had asserted this, indeed, in the first verse, but now, upon farther proof of it, he repeats it.  But when he declares, “My heart shall not fear,” this does not imply that he would be entirely devoid of fear, — for that would have been more worthy of the name of insensibility than of virtue; but lest his heart should faint under the terrors which he had to encounter, he opposed to them the shield of faith. Some transfer the word translated in this to the following verse, meaning that he was confident that he would dwell in God’s house; but I am of opinion that it belongs rather to the preceding doctrine. For then does faith bring forth its fruit in due season, when we remain firm and fearless in the midst of dangers. David, therefore, intimates, that when the trial comes, his faith will prove invincible, because it relies on the power of God.” (John Calvin, Calvin's Commentaries, Volume 8, Part 1, translated by John King)
Good stuff, don't you think? It still speaks today to our fears.  I especially like: “Under the terms, camps and armies, he includes whatever is most formidable in the world.” So though the names and faces of the powerful people who hold the world in thrall will change, the truth remains: “Although all men should conspire for my destruction, I will disregard their violence, because the power of God, which I know is on my side, is far above theirs.”

The Good News here is that the principalities and powers of this age, and any age, are ultimately subordinate to the power of God, though as the rest of the Psalm amply shows, they manage through their subordinates (in this case “the army encamped about him”) to give the Psalmist (let us call him David, as Calvin does) and mutatis mudandis, us, plenty about which to be afraid in the short run.

This faith in the power of God, as he writes, is not the complete absence of fear, as in a more Eastern religious calm through meditation and detachment.  No the fears are quite real.  So I particularly love this: “But when he (David) declares, “My heart shall not fear,‘ this does not imply that he would be entirely devoid of fear, — for that would have been more worthy of the name of insensibility than of virtue.”  Am I wrong to detect some dry humor there?  Calvin humor, who knew?

So faith always lives in the midst of our fears, but it is that same faith that knows “when the trial comes, our faith will prove invincible, because it relies on the power of God.”

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

More Ruminations on Luke 13:31-35 for the Second Sunday in Lent


A friend of mine said today that the preaching resource he is looking at has at its theme for this Sunday, “sacrifice,” and then it admonishes us to have Jesus be our model of sacrifice.  He said he was suspicious of this, and I think he is quite right to be suspicious of sacrifice (at least ours) in this passage.

Because Jesus' vocation is utterly unique. Yes, it will end in an atoning sacrifice that is nothing less than an obedient and holy act of the Triune God, but that is his calling and can't be ours in quite the same way.  So no matter how important our own sacrifices are for Christian faith (and they are), they must not obscure for us the critical fact that Jesus is not merely the apotheosis of human sacrifice, rather he is “doing a new thing.”  And he knows this must take place in Jerusalem, as the final culmination of the ancient promises, about which we get a glimpse with Abram in the OT lesson in Genesis 15: 1-18.

And, contrary to some commentators, I don't see the Pharisees as particularly Jesus' friends here. I see their warning more like, “Galilee is Herod's turf, he's the big kahuna around here, so you'd better lay low, or bad things will happen to you.”

So Jesus goes on the lam in the countryside to carry out his ministry until it is his time to go to Jerusalem, not because he is afraid of Herod, but because he doesn't want his plans thwarted before they are completed.

And the obvious foreshadowing of the Palm Sunday triumphal entry this early in Lent should keep our eyes fixed on the larger narrative, which is that Jesus will indeed in his own good time travel to Jerusalem, and he will die an atoning sacrificial death, that among other things, will replace the sacrifices of the temple, which is in part why it must take place here.

So Jesus isn't afraid, but disciples ancient and modern are fearful for him, even those of us who know how the story turns out.

Psalm 27 asks, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?”  It is a good question.  And then the Psalmist proceeds to list quite a few things to fear. And there are always quite a few things to fear in our world.  Faith always takes place among those fears, and, as in Psalm 27, it is often hard to know whether faith or fear will get the upper hand, the final word.

So we are all fearful disciples, and one of the things we are fearful of is the full import of Jesus' vocation and death and its implications.  Yet in Psalm 27 the Psalmist finishes with hope that he will live to see the promise fulfilled.  And more and more, as I get older, I think our faith is properly understood best eschatologically or it risks dissolving into moralism.  We don't get to see it all.  We see“ through a glass darkly.”

Yet though we must wait to see the promises fulfilled “in the land of the living,” we do see enough in Jesus Christ to proceed in faith, which in many ways, is the opposite of our myriad fears.


(Photo by R.L. Floyd.  Snowfall at Dawn.  This morning)

Monday, February 22, 2010

Ruminations on Luke for the Second Sunday in Lent with the Help of Cyril of Alexandria

I am doing one of my rare preaching appearances this week, so I have been ruminating on the lessons for the Second Sunday in Lent.

The New Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for this week is Luke 13: 31-35, and imbedded in the passage is a curious foreshadowing of Jesus' triumphant entry on Palm Sunday.  He tells them, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” (NRSV)

In the rhythms of this penitential season we still have weeks to go before we hear these words again. So what are we to think of this coming so early in Lent?

One of my homiletical disciplines over the years has been to see what the church fathers (and a few mothers) had to say about it. A great resource for the preacher who is interested in seeing what this long and deep tradition of the church has to say about particular passages in Scripture is the series Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, edited by Thomas Oden, and published by IVP, which, regrettably, only started turning up toward the very end of my active ministry.

There’s some good stuff here. For example, on this week’s Gospel there are excerpts from Augustine, Ephrem the Syrian, and Cyril of Alexandria.  Here’s what Cyril (366-444) had to say in a homily on this text:
“And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” What does this mean? The Lord withdrew from Jerusalem and left as unworthy of his presence those who said, ‘Get away from here.”[The Pharisees had just told him to flee Herod] And after he had walked about Judea and saved many and performed miracles which no words can adequately describe, he returned again to Jerusalem.  It was then that he sat upon a colt of a donkey, while vast multitudes and young children, holding up branches of palm trees, went before him, praising him and saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’  Having left them, therefore, as being unworthy, he says that when the time of his passion has arrived, he will barely be seen by them.  Then again he went up to Jerusalem and entered amidst praises, and at that very time endured his saving passion on our behalf, that by suffering he might save and renew to incorruption the inhabitants of the earth.  God the Father has saved us by Christ.”  (“Commentary on Luke, Homily 100,” from Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol. 3, IVP, 2003)
In these early days of Lent, the readings from Luke’s Gospel keep reminding Christians of Jesus’ unique vocation, which will lead ultimately to his atoning death on the cross (and his ultimate vindication on Easter).  If we let our gaze wander too far from this heart of the Christian Story, Lent risks becoming a vain exercise in legalism (just dos and don'ts) and various forms of self-justification.  The Church Fathers generally kept their eye on the whole story and its center at the cross of Christ; not so much focus on what we need to do for God (not that we should forget that), but on what God has already done for us.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

A Prayer for Lent by Henri Nouwen

In the early days of my ministry, in the mid 1970's, I went through a big Henri Nouwen stage, where I read everything that came from his pen. Nouwen (1932--96) was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest, writer, lecturer, and spiritual director. He taught for a time at Yale Divinity School, and introduced many Protestant clergy to previously unfamiliar spiritual disciplines from his tradition. Later in his life he was a leader at the L'Arche Daybreak Community for people with mental and physical disabilities.

I was given his book The Wounded Healer as an ordination gift by my pastor and mentor Dudne Breeze.  That book is still worth revisiting.

Here is something else by him which speaks to me this season, a good prayer for these early days of Lent:
How often have I lived through these weeks without paying much attention to penance, fasting, and prayer? How often have I missed the spiritual fruits of the season without even being aware of it? But how can I ever really celebrate Easter without observing Lent? How can I rejoice fully in your Resurrection when I have avoided participating in your death? Yes, Lord, I have to die—with you, through you, and in you—and thus become ready to recognize you when you appear to me in your Resurrection. There is so much in me that needs to die: false attachments, greed and anger, impatience and stinginess.... I see clearly now how little I have died with you, really gone your way and been faithful to it. O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones. Let me find you again. Amen.   (From A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee, Orbis) 

(Photo:  “Parker Brook in Winter,” Pittsfield State Forest, by R.L. Floyd)

Friday, February 19, 2010

Is Cyberspace Evil? Thoughts Toward A Christian Ethic of Blogging

Sometimes a topic is just suddenly “in the air,” and the one that is currently preoccupying me is how people behave in Cyperspace. The medium of blogging is now old enough for us all to see fairly consistent patterns emerging, and one of them, sadly, is the pervasiveness of bad manners, boorishness, and a general tendency toward a reflexive mean-spiritedness.

This really shouldn’t surprise any of us who have an adequately robust view of human sin, for after all, Cyberspace is just a reflection of the “real world,” where the wheat and the tares grow together. Over the years I have had some really disturbing comments on my blogs. There are remedies one can take for this. One can choose to moderate comments (I don’t), or delete them (I usually don’t), but still it can be unsettling to have someone you don’t know flame you, call you nasty names, impugn your faith, or blaspheme your God. It happens all the time.

Lately some thoughtful people have been calling it out. First, Tom Wright, someone I once briefly studied with thirty years ago and greatly respect, had rather pointedly addressed the issue in a recent book, from which an excerpt was posted on Theology Forum, a thoughtful theo-blog. Wright said,
“It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging. Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. And as for the practice of saying mean and untrue things while hiding behind a pseudonym – well if I get a letter like that it goes straight in the bin … I have a pastoral concern for such people. (And, for that matter, a pastoral concern for anyone who spends more than a few minutes a day taking part in blogsite discussions, especially when they all use code names: was it for this that the creator of God made human beings?” (Justification [2009], 27)
This was the beginning on that site of a lively discussion on the issue, and another post, focused mostly on the practice of anonymous commenting, which I find to be a dubious practice.

Then my friend David Anderegg, a noted child psychologist and professor at Bennington College, wrote a blogpost for Psychology Today, describing how he was repeatedly flamed and castigated on his blog after the New York Times, in a brief article about his new book Nerds, quoted him as saying that terms like nerds and geeks should be banned. The free speech crowd ate him alive, without bothering to read the book, or attend to the context of his comment, which was that such terms of derogation are keeping talented boys from pursuing studies in math and science at a critical time in their development because of the stigma of such terms.

In response to this unpleasant experience he wrote a subsequent wonderfully cranky blogpost entitled “How I Learned to Hate Cyberspace: I Thought I Had a Good Idea until it Hit The Internet.”

David hasn't given up his blog, but some have gone as far as to say that Cyberspace is intrinsically evil, and should be avoided by Christians, and maybe by everyone.  Even Tom Wright, in the quote above, questions whether any of us should be spending more than a few minutes in blogsite discussions.  I am guilty as charged.

So should we just avoid Cyberspace?  Is it evil?  My response to that, which I posted as a comment on Theology Forum is:
The whole discussion of whether blogging is an appropriate vehicle for Christian expression is one that must take place, but missing in much of what I read is the whole notion of moderation. I enjoy and learn from blogs like this one and others of its ilk, of which there are many. Do I do other things? Yes. Do I interface with actual people in real life? Yes.
Some of the overheated talk against blogging reminds me of some of the arguments I have heard against the use of alcohol. True, some people should never touch it. But many others are able to partake of it in a healthy and profitable way. It is not evil.
So I cannot accept the argument that this new medium is intrinsically harmful. When Christians start labeling things evil, they often would do better to examine their own hearts and souls, where the problem often is located.
Now I am generally a defender of blogging, and I find the access to information and to far-flung colleagues that one wouldn’t otherwise have as interlocutors invaluable. But I have been on blogs and list-serv conversations for years and recognize that there are genuine problems.
So I am all in favor of an ongoing discussion that helps us be kinder and more civil to each other on-line. Here are some random thoughts about it:

My own first rule on-line is to try to remember that there is a real person at the other end of the communication, and to write as if one was speaking in person, that is face to face. That won’t entirely eliminate the bad behavior, to be sure, but it is a start.  I have witnessed rude, mean-spirited interactions in universities in both Britain and America, some of the worst ones by theologians (and certain ethicists.) My teacher James Luther Adams once said to me, “The average divinity faculty makes the average congregation look like the communion of saints!” I was young then and took him at his word, but after being ordained for thirty-five years ( and serving in both contexts) I suspect he was just more familiar with the former. 

One of the roughest interchanges I ever witnessed was at a 1989 Society for the Study of Theology lecture at Exeter College, Oxford, where the young paper presenter, who remained gracious and calm throughout, was subject to a grueling Q and A that slipped outside the bounds of propriety. That speaker is now the Archbishop of Canterbury, so perhaps that was good training for the vitriol that he is now routinely subject to. But we should all do better than that, both in person and on-line.

One of the ugly truths about blogging is that controversy gets you viewers, and one of the temptations for us bloggers is to intentionally get a kerfuffle going to attract eyeballs to our sites. To succumb to this temptation is not tending to “the better angels of our nature,” and is, as we Christians like to say, the work of the devil.

I speak from experience, for I confess that I have a fairly high snark factor in both my speech and my writing, and need to constantly keep it in check. I admonish my brothers and sisters to do likewise. But there is a fine line between hurtful snarkiness and dry humor, and one needs to be aware that we can’t see each other's faces to catch the nuances, so some care with our words is in order.  Remember that people who don't know you, don't know you!  Your friends may get you, but don't expect that unknown others will.  This suggests comments be kept brief and to the point, and as free of horns and teeth as you can possibly make them.

The Christian practices that keep order in actual (as opposed to virtual) communities should be in place on-line as well. “Tell the truth in love,” “do unto others as you would them do unto you,” “be not conformed to this world,” are just a few that leap to mind.  And gentleness and kindness are included in everybody's list of gifts of the Spirit.

One of the practices that my Confessing Christ open forum conversation has is a sort of quiet shunning. If someone is consistently provocative and trying to pick a fight we just don’t respond, a kind of Cyber turning the other cheek. In this way we don’t embarrass the person, and typically he or she (usually he, for some reason) just gets bored and goes away, or repents and gets back in the flow.

Just some thoughts.  I’d be interested in yours about this, as long as you are nice about it.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross: Reflections on the Atonement” is now available at Wipf and Stock Publishers

Some of you have asked me how to get a copy of my little book on the atonement, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross:  Reflections on the Atonement.  The book was a Confessing Christ book, and published in 2000 by Pickwick Publications, which Wipf and Stock Publishers acquired in 2004.

This is good news for us theologs, since Wipf and Stock, like Pickwick before it, has made many useful and significant books available that would otherwise not be published for lack of a sizable market.

Confessing Christ wants to support Wipf and Stock in this important mission, and so we now have an agreement with them to carry the book.  It has been selling at Amazon.com for $14.00.  Now you can get it at Wipf and Stock for $11.20.  It is in paperback with a thoughtful foreword by Gabriel Fackre, Abbot Professor Emeritus at Andover Newton Theological School, with a striking cover designed by James R. Gorman.

Alan P. F. Sell, Professor of Christian Doctrine and Philosophy of Religion, Aberystwyth, Wales, writes on the back jacket: “I warmly recommend this book to all who wish to reflect earnestly and joyfully on the heart of the Christian Gospel. May the Cross of the crucified and risen Savior ever be at the center of our worship, service, evangelism, and ecumenism.”

If we sell out our limited stock Wipf and Stock will make a new printing available, but I'm guessing without the beautiful cover, so get yours now here.  Some of you Barthians may recognize the cover picture, as Karl Barth had a reproduction of it over his desk when he wrote his monumental Church Dogmatics.

Confessing Christ owns the copyright, so profits beyond what Wipf and Stock gets will support their good work of encouraging “joyful and serious theological conversation.”

(Cover: Crucifixion by Matthias Grunewald from the Isenheim Altarpiece, Musee d'Underlinden, Colmar, France.  Copyright Giraudon.)

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Ashes and Snow: The Quotidian Graces of my Ash Wednesday


I woke up early this morning.  Too early, in fact, to stir without waking my sleeping wife, whose alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m.  So I put on my headphones and turned on my iPod.  At bedtime it had been set to Rachmaninoff’s beautiful Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, for I am boldly attempting to sing it with a local choral group in May.  But for some reason my iPod was now playing my entire library on shuffle, and I didn’t want to have the little but bright iPod screen light go on and disturb my wife, so I listened to an eclectic assortment of tunes, starting with Traffic’s “Freedom Rider,” then the Greatful Dead’s “Trucking,” and ending with something lovely by Mary Chapin Carpenter, with some Christmas music thrown in the middle for good measure.

The alarm promptly sounded its daily vigil, and as my wife prepared for work I got up to see if there was an early Ash Wednesday service I could attend, since I wanted to go snowshoeing, as we got a fresh new mantle last night, the first in quite awhile.  I know snow has been wreaking havoc south of here, but we have had, not a snow-less winter, but an atypical one for the Berkshires, and I have been hiking in just boots and Yaktrax every day, so I was pumped to get on my snowshoes.

My denomination, the United Church of Christ in the U.S., is a rich mix of traditions, but the majority of them have Reformed roots, so Ash Wednesday has never been big for most of us.   And especially here in New England, where the Congregational churches that sit in the center of every village and town have evolved from the Puritan settlers.  The Puritans, who in so many ways got it right (but not always), historically took a dim view of such suspect accretions to the faith as Ash Wednesday services (they outlawed the celebration of Christmas for generations to give you some idea of where they were coming from.)  In the UCC and other Reformed churches we are coming around, thanks to the cross-fertilization of the Twentieth Century ecumenical movement, so now you can find such services in our churches, but they are usually at night.

But I was raised an Episcopalian (as was my wife), and as a young person I used to go to the early Ash Wednesday Service with my Mom, who died when I was eighteen, and so I have many poignant memories of such services.  I am very familiar and comfortable with the liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, and fully accept the imposition of ashes, and so I tamp down my more Puritan impulses on such occasions.

Consequently, I looked on-line for the services at the local Episcopal Church, where I have a long history, as it is near the congregation I served for 22 years, and where my wife and I attend every once in a while.  I was hoping for early, but be careful what you wish for, since the service was at 7:00 a.m., and it was already 6:40 and I was still in my PJs, and the church is a ten minute drive.

Now those of you who know me know that I am somewhat old school (I suspect my children might say to the point of fussiness), and don’t feel quite like myself in church without a coat and tie and proper shoes, but there was no time even for a shower (now occupied by the one who actually works). So I washed as best I could, and tried to disguise my bed-head, put on my hiking clothes and went to divine worship.

I arrive at the front door at 6:55 and it was locked.   Hmm, I thought.  This is clearly not a UCC church, for “extravagant welcome” is one of our principle articles of faith.  But I knew there was a side door that led to the chapel, so off I went and arrived in time to see a few other souls ready to enter.  The rector, who is a friendly and gracious priest, came sweeping in, welcomed us and beckoned us to the chapel.

The familiar liturgy really moved me, and, since my own sense of sin may well be my keenest spiritual faculty, I found myself very emotionally involved in the  service.  And, not to put too fine a point on it in a public blog, I have of late been even less where I would like to be in my long and sometimes stormy relationship with God than usual, so I was feeling properly penitent and truly glad to hear the good news of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

The rector nicely explained Ash Wednesday, and how they had, on the previous evening, made the ashes for the service from the Palms from last year’s Palm Sunday.

Then we went forward to get our ashes and I dutifully fell in line with the faithful.  When my turn came the priest put ashes on my forehead and said “Rick, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Then she said to me, “Will you do me?”  She handed me the little bowl, I dipped my finger in it, and repeated the words she had said to me, while I made the sign of the cross on her forehead.

I have been very involved in the ecumenical movement for most of the thirty-five years I have been ordained.  It has fallen on hard times of late, sad to say.  But I was profoundly moved by my colleague’s recognition of me as a fellow minister of Jesus Christ.  Another priest friend of mine, Jane, did this years ago, so I have imposed ashes exactly twice in my life.  Both times the gesture was humbling and wonderful.   God can use such small acts of grace to strengthen the unity of his church, a unity that we have already been given in Christ, but that we cannot see because of our sin.

Then I went snowshoeing.  But first I e-mailed and called every retired and unemployed outdoor type I knew, but as in one of our Lord's parables, they all had other plans.

So I went alone, which I never do, since I have a brain injury and sometimes fall, although I have poles so usually it's just my pride that gets hurt.  But I decided to do it anyway today, and I had my cell-phone if I needed help. So I headed up the glorious white hill at the Pittsfield State Forest and broke fresh snow on one of my favorite trails.  It was beautiful there.

I had labored about half an hour, and suddenly there appeared two relatively new friends of mine out of the blue.  The last person I had called before I left was my neighbor, who couldn’t go with me because of an appointment.  I had told her that I didn’t hike alone, but was going to try it today.  She mentioned that these same two good friends of hers might be at the State Forest today and I should look for them.  But, in truth, they had found me only because she had called them after I talked to her, and they were all looking out for me.  We had a vigorous hike uphill and back down and a most pleasant conversation.  It was lovely.

Such were the quotidian graces of my Ash Wednesday, for which I am most grateful.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

A Hundred Lesser Duties: The Marginalization of Preaching

The great British theologian P.T. Forsyth often complained that the church was guilty of the “sin of bustle,” by running errands for the culture at the expense of its own unique vocation. Perhaps preachers are the guiltiest of them all when it comes to this, when they avoid attending properly to their high calling of preaching.

Here's Richard Lischer's cogent take on what too often happens to preaching today:

Most ministers were “set apart for the gospel”, as Paul says of himself … The preacher’s vocation was once a kind of circle that began and ended in the word. Whatever it was that made you a minister was aimed at its eventual public expression. The minister’s whole existence was concentrated to a point of declaration. Today, however, the circle has been broken.
Our culture devalues proclamation while elevating other associated forms of ministry such as counseling or community work …
But the proclamation of the word cannot be professionalized. It has no functional equivalents in secular culture. It cannot be camouflaged among socially useful or acceptable activities. Its passions are utterly nontransferable. The kerygmatic pitch, as Abraham Heschel said of the prophet’s voice, is usually about an octave too high for the rest of society. If you are filling out a job application, see how far it gets you to put under related skills: “I can preach”.
When ministers allow the word of God to be marginalized, they continue to speak, of course, and make generally helpful comments on a variety of issues, but they do so from no center of authority and with no heart of passion. We do our best to meet people’s needs, but without the divine word we can never know enough or be enough, because consumer need is infinite. We are simply there as members of a helping profession. We annex to our ministry the latest thinking in the social sciences and preface our proclamations with phrases like ‘modern psychology tells us,’ forgetting that the word ‘modern’ in such contexts usually indicates that what follows will be approximately one-hundred years out of date. What we lack in specialized knowledge we can only offset in time by making ourselves compulsively available to anyone in need.
I am convinced that no seminarian or candidate sets out to minister with such reduced expectations, and not everyone succumbs to this scenario, but ultimately the marginalization of the word of God fractions it into a hundred lesser duties’.
Richard Lischer, The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence (Grand Rapids / Cambridge, U.K., 2005), pp. 22-24. (I got this from two of my favorite theo-bloggers: Kim and Jason.)

Saturday, February 13, 2010

A Hymn for Lent



You won’t despise a broken heart
       C.M.

You won’t despise a broken heart
   or spirits made contrite.
You lift the downcast, stay the proud,
  and ancient wrongs make right.

The humble look to you for strength,
  for comfort and for peace.
They know you’ll go to any length,
  to give their souls release.

Through times of hard temptation,
  of testing and of trial,
You always go before us,
  You’re present all the while.

When danger comes in any hour,
  no matter what the test.
You come in presence and in power
  to those who seek you best.

On dark Golgotha’s lonely hill,
  our hearts were filled with dread.
Bright Easter turns our dread to thrill,
  Christ’s risen from the dead!


Recommended tune:  Crimond.


©2004 Richard L. Floyd

Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Green Religion of the Blue People: The Faith of Avatar

(Spoiler alert: If you are one of the few moviegoers who hasn’t seen Avatar you may want to wait to read this until after you’ve seen it, as it gives away plot lines.)

James Cameron’s Avatar is quite literally spectacular, and if you are a film buff, you will want to see it just because it is quite unlike anything that has gone before, and it will no doubt put its stamp on the way Hollywood movies are made for years to come.

I see very few movies at the theater, since I find them too stimulating for my brain, but I wanted to see this one in 3D, and I hadn’t been to Pittsfield’s new Beacon Theater, so off we went on a date last night.

I’d seen 3D films before, like the 1986 Michael Jackson movie, Captain Eo, at Disney World, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.  But the 3D films I’d seen before always used the 3D as an obvious gimmick that you just couldn’t forget was there, with things flying around the room and jumping out at you. Not true this time: I forgot about the 3D very quickly while watching Avatar. It is part of what makes the film so visually stunning, of course, but Cameron deftly uses it to advance the look of the film and not just to show off.

As has been noted by critics the plot doesn’t measure up to the film's amazing visual effects, and it is true. You keep getting the feeling you may have seen this film before, maybe multiple times. It has been compared to Ferngully, Pocohontas, and, especially to Dances with Wolves, where a protagonist goes among noble aliens and is captivated by their ways, unsuccessfully trying to intercede on their behalf to stay the disaster approaching them. The young clerk at my local Blockbuster told me I should definitely see it, but called it “Dancing with Smurfs,” since the local folks on Pandora, the earth-like moon where it all takes place, the Na’vi (hmm, awfully close to the Hebrew word for prophet) are a race of ten-foot blue skinned humanoids (but in a good way.)

What struck me most about the film were the numerous religious motifs running through it. There is a powerful scene of laying on of hands, which evoked my own ordination, when the celebrant invited the whole congregation to come join the gathered clergy to lay hands on me (we’re Congregationalists.) There is a faith healing scene that would have done Oral Roberts proud, with an incantation that sounded very much like glossalalia, although I don’t speak the Na’vi’s tongue, so the priestess could have been reciting Luther’s Small Catechism for all I know.

But I doubt it, for the Na’vi's God is Eywa, a mother goddess who seems to be the aggregate of all living things on Pandora. This essentially pantheistic deity later seems to undergo a decidedly Western monotheistic personality change when she takes sides and helps the Na’vi repel the nasty humans that are trying to despoil her turf, with the aid of the human protagonist Jake Sully, a former marine, now in a Na’vi body (it’s complicated).

Jake prays to Eywa to help him stop the humans, whom he has come to see as the enemy. Netiri, Jake’s fetching Na’vi love interest, tells him that Eywa doesn’t take sides, just seeks the balance of all things in nature. Well, apparently this time is different, since the out-gunned Na’vi defeat the human military with the help of everything on Pandora that crawls, runs, swims, or flies, with Jake banding together the scattered tribes in solidarity against the rapacious humans.

Jake becomes the unifying leader, a sort of Messiah figure to the Na’vi, only instead of an atoning sacrifice, he just blows everybody out of the water like Rambo or a blue Clint Eastwood.  One of the morals of the film is don't mess with a blue Marine!

There are deaths, but not atoning ones, to some of the main characters, mostly woman I noted, as the head scientist, Dr. Grace Augustine, head of the Avatar program, (played nicely by Ripley, I mean Sigourney Weaver) and Trudy, a spunky pilot (played by Michelle Rodriguez, and arguable the most interesting character in the movie) don’t live to see the closing credits roll. Trudy does get the best line in the movie, “I was hoping for a mission that doesn’t involve martyrdom.” She doesn’t get one.

To be fair, this is James Cameron and not Karl Barth, and a Hollywood movie is not required to uphold standards of religious orthodoxy, unless it’s by Mel Gibson, but that opens up another whole set of sticky issues. But by any measure the faith here is not remotely Christian, or Jewish for that matter. For one thing, the whole idea of the Avatar project hinges on a mind/body separation that is more Neo-Platonic dualism than biblical. As one of my Old Testament teachers like to say, “You don't have a body, you are a body.” But Jake Sully has two! And although Christians and Jews share an affinity with the whole created order by virtue of our shared Creator, and are given responsibility to be good stewards of creation, we transcend creation as well as being part of it. We may enjoy the rocks and trees, but we are not at one with them the way the Na'vi are, and we certainly don't worship the creation, but the Creator who made them as well as us.

But hey, it's only a movie, although at times it slips into propaganda, and so deserves some scrutiny. It is also extremely violent, which underminds the whole “respect for all life” beliefs of the Na'vi, who turn out in the end to be pretty badass in a fight, even if they only have bows and arrows against gunships.  Of course in the real world the aboriginal people never beat the invaders who have better technology, but Pandora is most dramatically portrayed as anything but the real world.  Perhaps it gives us some comfort to imagine a world where such turnabouts could happen.

Cameron throws everything but the kitchen sink in here, but some themes emerge. The scientists, like anthropologist Grace Augustine (who smokes to show her humanity), are good, if wooly-headed and overly idealistic. The military (basically paid mercenaries) are bad. But the most evil is the boss of the corporation RDA, which is basically there to make money from mining unobtanium (apparently named that because it is unobtainable without despoiling the Na'vi's world.)

The noble savages are, well, noble, and their way of life is very attractive, and above all green. Cameron has admitted an implicit critique of the war in Iraq (fair enough) and there is mention of “shock and awe” as the humans get ready to wipe out the locals.

So imperialism, colonialism, militarism, capitalism, corporations, and environmental irresponsibility all get sent up, giving us lots to cheer about. But it has not been lost on the critics that it is a “white guy” who has to come along to save the wise but backward Na’vi. The action takes place in 2154, and apparently earth is a dying, lifeless, and very non-green dystopia, whereas Pandora is teeming with biodiversity. Eden in 3D.

And the religious faith of Avatar? It is a hodgpodge to be sure, but essentially it is the old pagan mother-earth goddess worship, as old as Ishtar in ancient Assyria and Babylonia. Ross Douthat of The New York Times wrote that Avatar is “Cameron's long apologia for pantheism . . . Hollywood's religion of choice for a generation now.” I think he’s spot on.

Nevertheless, go see Avatar, wear the silly 3D glasses, and enjoy the spectacle.  But don't buy the half-baked faith that is proffered.  For the real deal get yourself into a pew.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Was Scott Brown telling the truth about Health Care? Not really! Part 1

My new United States Senator Scott Brown is all sworn in, and rolling up his sleeves to get to work.  Only twelve days after his stunning upset victory over Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special senate election Brown made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows last week.

How did he do? On the January 31 edition of This Week with Barbara Walters he encouraged President Obama to put a freeze on federal position hires and raises because, he said, “as you know, federal employees are making twice as much as their private counterparts.”

This just doesn’t sound right to me, and it didn't sound right to the Web site PolitiFact.  Here's what they had to say:

PolitiFact | In PolitiFact debut, Brown says federal jobs pay twice as much as private sector jobs

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Was Scott Brown telling the truth about Health Care? Not really! Part 2

Then later (on her show last week)Barbara Walters asked Senator Scott Brown, “Why isn't what's good for Massachusetts good for the whole country?” Brown responded, “In Massachusetts, the free market, the free enterprise has taken control, and they're offering a wide range of plans. I've never ever said that people should not get health insurance. It's just a question of if we're going to take a one-size-fits-all government plan or we're going to do something where the individual states can tailor their plans as we've done.” 

When Walters asked him, “Do you think the whole plan should be scrapped?” Brown said, “Yes.” 
“The whole plan?" Walters pushed him on it.

“Yes,” Brown said again.

In the Roundtable discussion afterwards liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman expressed incredulity at Brown’s statement, claiming that the Massachusetts health care bill, which as you may recall, was pushed through by Republican Governor Mitt Romney with Brown voting for it in the Massachusetts senate, is nearly identical to the Senate bill.

Was Krugman right? PolitiFact says he was, that the differences in the bills are few and in the small print.  Here's what they had to say:

PolitiFact | Krugman calls Senate health care bill similar to law in Massachusetts
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So Brown is off to a bit of a rough start in his relationship to the facts, not an entirely unknown flaw in a politician.  But he's in the big leagues now, so he better do his homework before he talks on national network TV, or else Tina Fey might be impersonating him on Saturday Night Live sometime soon. People loved his populist truck driving image on the campaign trail, and his fiery rhetoric about the rascals in Washington. But now he’s in Washington, and people do actually pay attention to what you say there.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Rick’s Oven-Braised Straccato (Pot Roast) over Polenta

1 Tb. olive oil
1 3 lb. chuck roast, tied with twine ( I like Black Angus)
1 medium onion chopped
2 carrots chopped
1 celery stalk chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2 sprigs of fresh parsley (optional)
1 cup hearty dry red wine
2 cups beef stock plus more if needed.
1 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes
1 tsp dried sage leaves
1 tsp dried oregano
Kosher salt and pepper

This is basically a pot roast.  Eliminate the tomatoes and garlic, substitute dried thyme for the sage, add a bay leaf, and you have my basic pot roast recipe. That one I would serve over mashed potatoes, but this one I like over polenta. A straccato is a regional Italian pot roast, and this is my take on it. Let’s call it a North Jersey pot roast!

This is easy but takes a bit of time, which is what braising is all about.  I cook it all in my cast iron Dutch Oven, but you could do it in any fireproof pot that can go from the range to the oven. You can also cook the whole thing on the range top, but I like the even heat of the oven. I made this yesterday, put it in the oven at 4 p.m., went and had my daily nap, and it was all ready to eat by 6:45 (it needs to sit for a bit). Even better make it the day before, slice the cooled meat, heat up the sauce, and you are ready to go.

Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees F.  Heat the oil over medium high heat and swirl it around until it covers the bottom. Dry off your roast with paper towels (it won’t brown if it’s damp) and sprinkle it liberally with Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Then using tongs, or two wooden spoons, put it in the pot and brown it on all sides (don’t use a fork, because it will release the juices and you want them in there,). Depending on your heat this will take between ten and twenty minutes, but the trick is to get it a very dark brown without burning it, so pay attention (which is what good cooking is all about).

When the roast is nice and brown, take it out and put it aside on a plate, and reduce your heat to medium.  Put in your chopped onion, carrot and celery, and stir with a wooden spoon now and again until the veggies are also nice and brown (but not burnt!), about ten minutes.

Add the garlic cloves and cook for another minute or so, then add you wine, beef stock, herbs and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Then lower heat to a simmer and, stirring occasionally, let it cook for about ten minutes.

Then lower the meat on top of the veggies.  The braising liquid should come about half way up the meat.  If it doesn’t add more stock, but don’t put too much liquid in, because you want to braise it and not boil it.

Bring it back to a good boil, put the lid on it, and put it in the oven.  A 325 degree oven will typically keep a simmer just about right for braising, though you may need to adjust your heat according to variations in your oven temperature.

You want to cook this for about 2 and 1/2 hours total.  After about an hour, check the pot, lower or raise the oven temperature if needed and flip the meat over. If the liquid is low top it off with some more stock.




After two and one half hours, check the meat. It should be nice and tender but still firm enough to cut.  Put it on a platter, tent it with foil, and let it sit for fifteen minutes. While the meat is cooling, put your braising liquid on the range top and simmer it to reduce the sauce a bit, stirring now and again. Remove the parsley sprigs, taste and season for salt and pepper.

Slice your meat against the grain and plate it over the polenta or mashed potatoes, then ladle the sauce generously and enjoy.  We had this with steamed brussel sprouts last night for a hearty winter meal, but a green salad would work fine.  A dry red wine will be just right. We drank a Masciarelli, a nice inexpensive Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, that is our current house red. This makes a nice, pretty easy, meal on a cold winter night that will be a crowd pleaser.

(Photos: R.L. Floyd)

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

“Then, Now, and What’s Next?” Ruminations on Time and Technology

(I delivered this paper to The Monday Evening Club on January 25, 2010. I have slightly revised this version.)

As the first Monday Evening Club paper of a new decade I want to do some looking backward as well as gazing forward. Looking backward is not so hard, since we all have 20/20 hindsight, but gazing forward is more difficult. It was Søren Kierkegaard who once said, “Life must be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.” So let me do the easy part first and look backward, telling a couple of brief stories about two men who were born in the late Nineteenth Century, came of age in the early part of the Twentieth, and lived long lives in which they witnessed technological advances unparalleled in any other period of human history. Then I will briefly try to look forward to take some guesses about “What’s next?”

The first story is one you may have read about in the paper this past year. It is about Henry Allingham, one of the last British soldiers to fight in the First World War. He died last July at the age of 113. He was, for one month of his life, the oldest verifiable living man on earth. Asked about the secret to his longevity he credited “cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women – and a good sense of humor.”

Originally a Navy man, Allingham was first assigned as a mechanic, and later a spotter, to a unit that carried out anti-submarine air patrols for the newly formed RAF. Keep in mind that the Wright brothers’ first flight had been launched as recently as 1903, so airplanes were just a decade old when the Great War broke out, and this would be the first significant use of them in war. The Sopwith Schneider seaplane that Henry’s unit flew to look for German U-boats and other ships was really nothing more than a big box kite with an engine. It had to be lifted by cranes in and out of the water from a ship every time it went on a mission. The plane carried no parachute, no navigational instruments, save a map and a compass, no radio, only a carrier pigeon. To us it sounds primitive, yet at the time air flight was so new that it was cutting-edge technology. Today those fliers needn’t have risked their lives in reconnaissance missions. They could rely on satellites.

The second man whose story I want to tell is my maternal grandfather, William Ira Laffoon. I only knew “Granddaddy Bill” when he was an old man, for he turned seventy the year that I was born. He was born on October 8, 1881, and when he was a boy of eight he traveled with his family from Missouri (“Missour-ah” is how he always said it) to Indian Territory on a Conestoga wagon to participate in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. The Land Rush offered 2 million acres of free public land for homesteading on a first come first served basis. The rush, or “run” as it is more properly called, began at high noon on April 22, but many of the participants had already picked out choice parcels and hid on them until the official time. These were the “Sooners.” The ones who played by the rules and went when the cannon was fired were called “Boomers.” Unlike Rome, Oklahoma City, was built in a day, for there were over 10,000 inhabitants by late afternoon of the first day of the run. My grandfather and his family were the opposite of the “Sooners,” and waited until the next day to quietly go in to stake their claim, which is how my mother came to be born in Oklahoma City.

Granddaddy Bill outlived both my mother and grandmother, and was still living on July 20, 1969, when he watched on his television set as Neil Armstrong of the Apollo 11 crew stepped onto the surface of the moon, exactly 80 years after the Oklahoma land rush. My grandfather died the following year at the age of 89.

As a boy he could scarcely have dreamed of the changes that he would see in his lifetime, especially in technology. And it is hard to imagine anyone in previous human history experiencing in the span of one lifetime such technological development as he and others such as Henry Allingham did in the Twentieth Century.

Yet, today we all live such lives, and increasingly so, as the time increments between world-changing inventions and innovations gets increasingly smaller and smaller, as if the world were somehow speeding up.

Just think of the changes that have taken place in the generation since my grandfather died forty years ago. We are prone to think of the moon landing as the apogee of human achievement, but in terms of the history of technology it is from a time gone by. This was dramatically brought home to me when I watched that great 1995 Ron Howard movie “Apollo 13,” in which we see the space engineers in Houston making calculations on slide rules to bring the troubled ship home from the moon. When we watched it my children didn’t know what a slide rule was, since the pocket calculator, once a luxury item that now sells for next to nothing, had replaced it. And those big room-filling mainframe computers that sent the Apollo missions to the moon and back had less memory and file space than your laptop computer, or, for that matter, many iPods and cell-phones. We all live in a brave new world of dizzying technological innovation unthinkable even a generation ago.

My ruminations on time and technology require pinning down what exactly is meant by “technology,” that big word with such a slippery meaning? The ancient Greek word, techne, is often translated as “craft or art.” Another Greek word, logos, is often translated as “word,” or “something said,” and by implication, “a subject of study.” Together they provide the roots for the word “technology,” literally “the study of craft,” to mean the knowledge and use of tools and crafts. It is this knowledge of the art of making and using tools that best defines technology.

So in the span of human history technology begins with our ancestors’ use of simple tools, sticks and stones really, and continues through the developments of the ensuing centuries. Today our understanding of what constitutes “tools” has broadened to include all manner of using human knowledge to manipulate our environments, so that the term technology can be rightly used to describe work in genetics, medicine, biology, physics, and the like. I was reading yesterday in the Economist about the huge 15 billion dollar underground supercollider in Switzerland, which is expected to unlock some of the secrets of how our universe works to the physicists. It is a long way from stone tools to a supercollider but both are examples of humans using knowledge and tools to influence our environments, and so both are technology.

One of the features of technological innovation is its reliance on what has gone before. One could use evolutionary theory in biology as a rough metaphor for the way technology develops. The invention or innovation that is more useful or efficient replaces what was used before, and seldom does a new breakthrough come about in isolation from the work of predecessors.

For example, my grandfather’s family’s Conestoga wagon itself was the result of generations of accrued technological advance. Carpenters in Conestoga County, Pennsylvania, invented the clever tapered design that kept the thing from tipping over. Metallurgists had learned to fashion iron into the bands that covered the wheels. The wheels themselves were the result of an innovation first made in Mesopotamia in about the fifth millennium BCE, most likely for making pottery. The horses that moved the wagon were the result of the domestication of the wild horse around the same period. The horse and wheel together revolutionized the way people could move from place to place, including conquests by traveling armies. As people traveled they learned new techniques and practices from those with whom they interacted, and a kind of technological cross-fertilization took place, to borrow another metaphor from biology.

We take travel for granted, but for most of human history most people lived and moved and had there being within a few miles of where they were born. Changes in transportation technology changed all that. For example, Granddaddy Bill was born in Missouri, but at least according to family lore, his father Stephen was from Kentucky, and his people had been Huguenots, French Protestant refugees who had come to this country on sailing ships fleeing bloody religious persecution under Louis XIV.

In 1889 the Laffoon family was on the move again. But how did they, and the other tens of thousands of Sooners and Boomers like them who headed West, even know about the Oklahoma Land Rush?

Most likely from a newspaper, that now threatened technology. But how did the newspaper in Missouri find out about the Land Rush in Oklahoma? Most likely by a telegram, which was the result of the invention of the electric telegraph, developed by Samuel F.B. Morse in 1837. The invention of the telegraph is a good example of a new technology driving out an older one, for in 1861, when the wires for telegraphy were finally in place from coast to coast, the Pony Express, heralded just two years before as the great new advance in continental communication and mail delivery, was shut down for good.

And so it goes. The story of one technological innovation supplanting another is not new, but what once took centuries, decades or years now can happen in a very brief time, as a quick look at some of the newest innovations that didn’t even exist at the turn of the millennium will show.

As we have been seeing the story of technology has been going on for a very long time. What is new is the pace of its change, so much so that the technology of the last hundred years or so constitutes one of the great revolutions in human history.  This rapidly accelerating pace of technological change in practically every aspect of our lives means that things we never dreamed of are now commonplace.

To give some personal examples let me look at the way technological advances have impacted my own life. When I became the minister of First Church in 1982 I was only the eighteenth person to hold that position, parson Thomas Allen being the first in 1764. The basics of the job haven’t changed all that much, prepare and deliver sermons, preside at worship, oversee the workings of the institution, be a presence for the good in the community, visit the congregation, marry and bury and the like.

Now I am not what is called an “early adopter,” the person that has to acquire the newest gadget as soon as it is available. I am more of a “that looks like a fun and useful thing and the price has come down” kind of guy. So I didn’t get my first personal computer until 1991, a Mac classic with 4 MB of memory, and only then because I enrolled in a doctoral program that required me to have one. So I am hardly a cutting edge technophile.

Nonetheless, by virtue of my 22-year pastorate, which encompasses multiple generations of technological advance, I marked a number of firsts among the ministers of First Church.

I was the first to use a word processor, a personal computer, a Palm Pilot, a cellular phone, a scanner, E-mail, a Power Point presentation, or an e-ticket to board an airplane to name a few.

I was the first to have an MRI, orthotics in my shoes, a CD player, a VHS video recorder, a DVD player, a BluRay player, a digital camera, hearing aids with handless Bluetooth wireless capability to hear phone signals and music, a Global Positioning System in my car, an iPod, a video game, a digital picture frame, side airbags in my car, a Fast-Lane account. The list could go on and on, but you get the point.

In my first ministry after ordination, in 1975, I served two small rural churches in Maine. There was no secretary so I ran off the Sunday bulletin on an ancient hand-cranked Liberator 500 mimeo machine. I would type the copy onto a flimsy blue stencil sheet with my manual Olivetti Typewriter, ink up the drum on the machine, attach the stencil, and then turn the crank as each copy came out. If I tore the stencil I had to start all over again, or try to repair it with a glue-like substance. I hated doing it and it often went undone 'til late Saturday night.

In those days I wrote out my all sermons in longhand on 4 by 6 cards, later switching to 8 ½ by 11 inch sheets of Corraseable Bond paper made by the Shaeffer Eaton Paper Company in Pittsfield, long before I had ever arrived Pittsfield. That product was wonderful, allowing you to eliminated errors with a pencil eraser. But, to illustrate my earlier point, it was driven off the market by the advent of word processors and personal computers.

By contrast I wote this paper on my 15 inch Apple MacBook Pro laptop using Microsoft Word. My first computer twenty years ago had 4 MB, this one has 2 GB, not even that muscular by today’s standards. I ran this paper off on my Hewlett Packer OfficeJet 6500 Three-in-One Printer/Scanner/Copier. Tomorrow I will send it to Martin as a file attachment in an e-mail, and he will post it on the Monday Evening Club blog.

Which leads me to the next first for a minister of First Church of Christ in Pittsfield. I blog. Blogging is so new my spell-check underlines it every time I use it in a Word document. The term, short for Weblog, was only coined in 1997. Ten years later, the blog search engine Technorati tracked more than 112,000,000 blogs. There are certainly many more now. I have three. This one, my main one, “Retired Pastor Ruminates,” was started last March and is nearing the nine thousand visitors mark.

I am also on Facebook, a social networking site that was launched on February 4, 2004 by a Harvard sophomore, and in that short six years is now approaching 400 million users. Through Facebook I have reconnected with old friends from high school and college, some of whom I have met face to face for the first time in decades. Through Facebook I have also found out about world and national breaking news events in real time, in addition to finding out quickly about a variety of personal news from friends, such as illness or death in the family.

The widespread use of cell-phones with text-messaging capabilities is also changing the way the world works. Twitter, the microblogging and social networking service, was only launched in 2006. It limits users text-based posts, known as “tweets,” to 140 characters. Most tweets are mundane comments about what people are doing, but the social implications of such interconnectivity are breathtaking, and the immediacy of Twitter has made it a useful up to the minute communication tool. One study claims that blogs, maps, photo sites and instant messaging systems like Twitter do a better job of getting information out during emergencies than either the traditional news media or government emergency services. The study  cites as an example, that Twitter, during the wildfires in California in 2007 kept their followers, often friends and neighbors, informed of their whereabouts and of the location of various fires on a minute by minute basis.

Another example of the usefulness of Twitter is the 2008 Mumbai bombing attacks. Eyewitnesses sent out an estimated 80 tweets every five seconds, enabling the creation of lists of dead and wounded, giving out emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals giving blood.

Just a year ago, when US Airways Flight 1549 had engine failure from bird strikes and had to ditch in the Hudson River, a passenger took a photo of the downed plane with her cell-phone and sent it to Twitpic while people were still evacuating the plane and long before any media arrived at the scene. It was the first picture we all saw.

Also last year NASA astronauts gave real-time reporting on Twitter of the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission.  And the most recent example of a new use for text-based communication is the quick raising of tens of millions of dollars for Haitian earthquake relief using cell-phones.

All this illustrates the power of the new information and communication technologies, and I think this is where the most stunning of the technological advances are right now and will be in the future.

When Granddaddy Bill was born in 1881 he came into a world transitioning from an agrarian to an industrial economy and society. In the years he lived we had been gradually transitioning from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Today we are squarely in the post-industrial Information Age, especially here in the West, but also in countries that are industrializing at the same time, such as China and India where cell-phones are proliferating exponentially.

If you think about the list of my gadgets many of them had to do with information and communication. And since my grandfather’s death in 1970 we have seen the rise of the Internet, email, the personal computer, the World Wide Web, the laptop, multi player on-line games, cell-phones, MP3 players like the iPod, web-cams, digital television, broadband, wireless networking, wireless headphones, GPS, Satellite radio, podcasts, Bluetooth, Digital Audio Players, Digital Video Recorders, smart-phones like the IPhone, and e-books like Kindle. [Note: Two days after I delivered this paper Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple iPad.]

And there is a new dynamic at work in the Information Age. In the past, it was defense and the massive government spending that goes into research and development that often drove the technological innovation that eventually trickled down to consumers. A good example is the Internet, which began with researchers and the military. And the space program was a great hothouse for technological innovation. The now common GPS came out of such defense and space programs, although I have it on good authority that the ones we can buy are calibrated just inaccurately enough to make them ineffective for a terrorist to use as a guidance system for a SAM missile.

But today, in a turn about, civilian technology is often being used by the military at a fraction of the cost it would take to develop it. The US Air Force recently bought hundreds of Sony PlayStation gaming platforms with the plan to link them together and make a supercomputer. And US snipers in Afghanistan are using an inexpensive iPhone application that aids in sighting targets, even calculating for the “Coriolis Effect” that allows for the earths rotation.

This blurring of the lines between civilian and military uses for technology brings up another point for rumination about the way humans utilize the knowledge and tools they develop. We have already noted that the domestication of the horse was quickly utilized for military purposes, to carry chariots and cavalry. The satellites that circle our globe and make our GPS work are used as well by farmers in France to monitor sunlight and weather to improve crop yields. But they also are used in the kind of military surveillance Henry Allingham’s unit did in a seaplane, and today they help guide the Predator drones that target and kill terrorists (and sometimes civilians) in Afghanistan and Yemen. It is no accident that the Air Force ads aimed at potential young recruits look like video games.

In the early Twentieth Century it was suggested by Hannah Arendt and Max Scheler that we might more properly be called Homo Faber, “Man the Maker,” than Homo Sapiens, “Man the Wise,” since it was our control of the environment through the use of tools that best characterizes us as a species. The term Homo Faber is from antiquity; the Roman Appius Claudius Caecus wrote; “Homo faber suae quisque fortunae” (“Every person is the fabricator of his or her own destiny”).

The philospher Henri Bergson also referred to Homo Faber in his book, The Creative Evolution (1907), where he defines intelligence as the “faculty to create artificial objects, in particular tools to make tools, and to indefinitely variate its makings.”

So are we merely advanced toolmakers, or is there something more required of us as humans? Along with techne, the ancients valued sapientia, “wisdom,” from which our species gets its biological name, but our ruminations so far raise the question, “Has our wisdom been progressing along with our knowledge?”

Would Homo Faber be a more accurate name for us than Homo Sapiens? Our knowledge, as we have seen, is vast and ever increasing, but what about the wisdom to use it in a manner that enhances human dignity and freedom and the well-being of the created order?

Which also raises the question of the difference between knowledge and wisdom. The difference between knowledge and wisdom has been expressed by the axiom: “It is knowledge to know that a tomato is a fruit, but it is wisdom to not put one in a fruit salad.” I would suggest that, like our technologies, human wisdom never reaches some kind of ultimate perfection. Our reach always exceeds our grasp, which should, but often does not, make us humble. Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote about this tragic quality of human striving, “Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.”

So I must leave it as an open question whether we have the wisdom to properly use our knowledge. But it is not a new question. The Tower of Babel story in Genesis suggests that the works of our hands can become idols when they seek to replace God as the highest good.

So our technological feats, impressive in themselves, need to be understood within a loftier perspective. In my sojourns through Europe I have seen dozen of glorious cathedrals; great works of art crafted over generations by skilled workmen. These beautiful piles are not glorious by accident but by design. They were dedicated to the greater glory of God, their lofty spires pointing heavenward. They reminded those who saw them that the works of our hands take their place under larger and transcendent purposes.

I wonder what check on human pride and vainglory holds today in a secular society entranced by its own inventions? These inventions, as we have seen, are marvels of human ingenuity and have enhanced the quality of human life for many, indeed most, of the peoples of the earth.

But they come with a price. Granddaddy Bill grew up before the internal combustion engine and the widespread use of carbon-based energy sources. The automobile was one of the great technological advances in Twentieth Century life that he knew, but what he didn’t know, and we do, is that carbon gas emissions are threatening the well being, perhaps even the existence, of our planet, or at least our species.

This threat represents the unintended consequences of technology. The hope is that we will develop new knowledge and tools to alleviate the problems we have created, and along with them, the wisdom to use them wisely. But we have seen that the will to deal with such concerns often lags behind short-term economic and political preoccupations.

I don’t want to leave you with a dystopian dyspepsia after such a lovely dinner. I started with the stories of two old men who had seen so much impressive technological change in their lifetimes. Both were wise in their old age. Henry Allingham, the war hero, spread a message of peace, visiting graveyards in France. He confessed in his latter years that he did not realize what war meant when he signed up. He lamented the incredible and wasteful loss of life his war. He once told the BBC: “War's stupid. Nobody wins. You might as well talk first, you have to talk last anyway.”

My Granddaddy Bill was a kind and gentle man with a dry sense of humor. A pious Midwestern Protestant he read his Bible every day, and riddled his conversation with biblical references. I never heard him exhibit any prejudice toward anyone, although like all of us, he must have had some. He was a learned man who loved books, although he had never gone to college. But both his daughters did, a rare thing for women in the 1930’s, and both went on to get Master’s degrees.

Did age make these old men wise? I don’t know, but it is people like them who help me to remain ever hopeful for the future.

At the beginning of this paper, I promised a look forward and here goes. What is in store for us? I am aware of the dangers, for predictions of the future are notoriously off the mark, from Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, Jules Verne’s futuristic fantasies, George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and, of course, the Jetsons.

Nonetheless, let me take the chance. In truth, I’ve already played my hand, for I see the same kind of serial innovation that has characterized the recent past continue unabated. But I see it speeding up, because of the interconnectivity of the information age. Global cooperation will speed the development of new products. My Apple computer, an American product, was manufactured in China with parts from Japan and other countries. There will be more and more of this, so that innovation now isn’t just collaboration with the past, but with a thoroughly connected global community. This will speed up innovation and also break down, but not eliminate, national boundaries and interests.  It will also raise concerns about human rights and freedoms, the treatment of workers, and standards for environmental responsibility, as part of the cost of doing business globally.

New technologies will continue to replace old ones. It is impossible to imagine all these changes, but I’m guessing that newspapers and network television are two that will not be around for long in their present form. I expect wireless technologies to increase, and I expect more and more information to be stored in and accessed from “clouds,” remote giant servers, rather than on personal computers, making limitations of file space and memory obsolete.

I expect a revolution in biotechnology, one that is already taking place, with microbes that eat industrial waste and pollution. I see continued advances in agricultural technology that will help feed a hungry world, and in epidemiology and disease prevention and control, leading to the elimination of certain diseases. The mapping of the Human Genome will lead to many medical discoveries, and both diagnostic and surgical procedures will become less invasive and safer.

I see information technology harnessed to create smart homes, cities and highways that lower energy cost and use. Green technologies in transportation and housing will save fuel use. Electronic highway passes (like EasyPass and Fastlane) will become mandatory for all drivers here from coast to coast within a couple of years, with a chip planted in your driver’s license.

China, whose economy will surpass Japan’s this year as the second largest in the world, and ours in the not too distant future, will be the great engine of technological change in this century and beyond as it brings its millions into modernity.

Along with these innovations will come challenges. One I have already mentioned, global warming. Will we have the knowledge and wisdom to fix the problems our own technologies have created?

Another is the threat of terrorism, where advanced technology puts in the hands of the angry few the power to destroy the lives of millions. Here again, the cooperation of states is critical, as well as continual attempts by the global community and all people of good will to foster a world that leaves fewer and fewer people behind economically.

And finally there remains the danger that technology will create new classes of “haves and have-nots,” as those without the access to these new technologies and the information that comes with it will be left behind.

You would be surprised, I know, if I didn’t end by saying that religious faith will play a significant role in what happens next, and whether our technology ultimately helps us or harms us. The question for religious faith is whether it will be a toxic faith that fosters hate of the other, or a large-hearted faith respectful of the other, and committed to a path that leads to human dignity and freedom, and the well-being of the created order. Time will tell.

I remain hopeful, but not Utopian.  So I must close with one of my favorite quotes, also by our former neighbor, Stockbridge resident Reinhold Niebuhr: 
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.”

© 2010, Richard L. Floyd