Easter 42: Up to us

5/31

Early on a Saturday morning. (Relatively speaking) Not really wanting to be at work, but  meeting with Presbytery’s Committee on Ministry and Nurture of Congregations. They have been friends. But what can we say about these first six months? Good to find Steve S there, ready to set everything up for me. I can focus my time on preparation.

We’ve got Naomi, the chair. Wise and compassionate. Even though she’s from tall steeple  5^th Avenue, ready to take risks and has a quiet commitment to justice inside her. And Jill S. Retirement age. Rooted in the reformed tradition. A long time advocate in Jewish-Christian relations. A lover of organized, classic liturgy, like the Lutherans. Hugo told me after the workshop he helped lead, she took him aside, wanted to know more about organizing for justice, And Henry F. Disbarred lawyer, open about his own time in prison. With a fiery passion that won’t quit about criminal justice and  justice in general. Brokenhearted when our best organizer and pioneer in criminal justice, Annie Rawlings, died tragically earlier this year. (Her old school organizing was worth so much more than all the hired guns Presbytery paid for on the landmarks struggle.) She helped found our national PHEWA* Criminal Justice Network.

And from the church, there’s Hugo and Arcadia and Marsha.  We’ve got to review how we lost the deal with the dance company that was supposed to secure our future for 15 years. How we’ve stopped searching for the white knight to save us in one big move. How we’ve gone back to the original idea for the center. How they will manage the church house. Our whole DIY strategy.  And how we still believe the church can grow. Thing is, after years of fighting just for the right to continue, that’s what this committee wants from us. To see us revitalized, as a sign that justice can be a base organizing principle for a church.

We are open about the cost. To us as people. Our losses. The short window facing us. Hugo’s painful awareness of what we have lost. Marsha’s question as to how SPSA can be thriving and how my friend Elise’s Advent church can be thriving. (Both had assets from the presence of another congregation in their building….and Advent of course has Elise…) We’ve won the right to live. We’ve got resources. The only question is can we turn the corner and believe in ourselves enough to do what s necessary to grow. I believe it in my heart. I know it should work. But the history of these years leave me with doubts that gnaw. The question remains open.

The meeting  ends. They are supportive of us. Believe in us. That is new.  It’s up to us. It’s a heavy responsibility.

And now to do all the things I didn't do yesterday. Service. Update. More work on the Goodman event….

And then tonight to Milica’s benefit to raise money for Balkan relief.

*Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association

Many thanks to all the blog readers who made this a record-setting month readerwise....

Music lesson with Andre

7/7

And again. This morning three different places. And this morning, 45 minutes. It’s 92 degrees, I’m mopping sweating, chasing the flies away as I clean. Anger and frustration rising. Finally get Project Reachout on the phone. A night team has visited hb. He’s got no interest in cooperating, sharing informtion. They agree:  next step can only be the police.

Quiet and alone in the church. Until a lean white guy, all in white, with a black cap walks in.  They told me you help people get back on their feet here, he says.  Well, who did? I ask. Catholic church about ten blocks down, he says. I doubt that, I think to myself.  But I listen to his story anyways.

Just out of prison. Some kind of domestic thing. Had been on his way to being a cop. Did three years on a plea. Living with his brother. Can’t find a job.  Wants a place to live. A typewriter. (He likes to write) A new bike. (He likes to ride) Begins to sound like a Christmas list. 

Tell him we’re a small church with little money. He asks can he work for money? We’re a small church with little money.  Call Marc Greenberg of the Interfaith Assembly. We’ve started a new employment readiness program for formerly incarcerated persons. I know Marc is busy working on a grant proposal for the Presbyteran Hunger Fund. But maybe he’ll call back. Then I call Annie Rawlings, formerly of the Presbytery staff.  One of the founders of our new PHEWA Criminal Justice Network. She has good information on  a multi service place. In Long Isand City.

I share all this information with Joe. He asks for directions to the restroom. When he returns, he’s been wandering around, looking in different tooms. This is a remarkable place with many memorable items, he says, I like remarkable places. I like memorable items. Can I have some things? Like our old books of hand written records? No. Our old communion ware? No. I lead him through the sanctuary. I’d like a memento, he says, to remember being here, reaching for our cross. Uh, no. We may be small, but we’re still a working church. Well, what about a hand drum? No.( Sigh.) Tell you what, come back tomorrow when the dumpster is here. You’re welcome to anything being thrown out. And I usher him out, thinking there may be more than one issue at work here.

Andre shows up to prepare  for his lesson with Caleb. When Caleb arrives, it’s time for a little music history.  Via Youtube. Andre starts with John the Revelator, by Son House. From there it’s Soul of a Man by Blind Willie Johnson. Then Bruce Cockburn’s cover. I remember Andre singing that at West-Park accompanying himself on a washboard. But he thniks it was John the Revelator. 

ThenVera Hall and Wild Ox Moan. Then I take them to my favorite New Orleans singer Meschiya Lake singing Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down.  Andre says, you like that roots music, don’t you? And then our own member, Jack Sheedy and Gambler’s Blues.  And Libba Cotton singing Shake Sugaree. I remember hearing Danny Kalb sing that late on an afternoon, Everything I had is done and gone, that line always kills me. I think I heard my grandma sing that, says Caleb.

I have to show him Amanda’s video of our worship service on the steps last August. Andre jazz chanting the psalm. We’ve come a long way since then, Andre says, we couldn’t even be inside. 

And to come closer to where Caleb feels himself drawn musically, Andre finishes with Hero and Leander by Vanjah Boika. 

I leave for dinner. Come back hours later. A young soprano, Chanae, has joined them. I’m amazed watching Andre work as a teacher. Breaking down, deconstructing pieces. How Gershwin can be modern complex and yet street authentic simultaneously. And then listen to them working on Tonight, same with Bernstein. Gershwin and Bernstein, the quintessential New York composers. I’d love the theological/eclesiatical version of that. 

Andre rcommends that Caleb read the Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse. The struggle of every African-American moving into classical realm to stay connected to roots. Caleb and Chanae’s voices entwine in harmony. At the end of the lesson, Caleb asks Andre if he would continue to work with him and Andre agrees. He is a great teacher. I tell Caleb and Chantae that their voices have now become part of the building. 

Out on the steps, hb is asleep. I tell him he’ll have to move. That I don’t have time to be cleaning up crap every morning. He says why woudl I mess where I lay my head? I say, you don’t, it’s over there. He says it’s someone else. I say I don’t see nobody else. I point to the broken St. Ides bottle on the sidewalk. He responds, Someone else did that. You see me, you bust me, you don’t, you can’t. So this place is a mess tomorro morning, I say, I call the police next time I see you. That’s it. And I walk up the street wondering if I should have called  just then. And what I’ll find in the morning. 

Transfiguration

3/5
Quiet, warm, windy day. A one woman in a wheelchair, blanket across her lap, in front of Barney Greeengrass.

3/6

Walking up 86th, I see Marty. He’s holding his hand out, asking passersby for “tips,” as he puts it. I walk over and say, “hi.” “So, Reverend, have you had a lot of legal fees, with the building, you know?” I think, if he only knew. “Yes,” I say. “Litigation and all,” he says, “my brother’s an attorney. Specializes in real estate. I should have put him on your case.” “The whole landmarks thing,” I say. “Went on for years,” he says, “but thank God you’re back in, thank God you’re in.”  “Yes we are. We’re back in,” I say. “Hey, and they’re sleeping on the steps again, you know?” “Who,” I ask, “anyone we know?” “No, I went by there this morning at 6 am, there was some guy I didn’t know...” “OK, Marty, thanks, I’ll check it out. You have a good one, ok?” “And you , too, Reverend.”

Under the scaffolding I see one of those SUV shopping carts. Think it might be George. But then I see a giant plastic bag filled with aluminum cans and I realize it’s an independent recycling entrepreneur. Together, they keep the city streets free of cans. When I open the doors and begin to sweep, he gathers his cart, his cans and takes off down the street. 

It’s a mild, windy, rainy, typical March day. One that will be warmer outside than in.  

The line of people  waiting to get into Barney Greengrass winds in front of the church steps. Getting through the crowd to get to the restroom at Popover’s is like trying to get onto a crowded subway car at rush hour. I’m remembering what was in the Church Information Form when I applied for this job. On this block, the main Sunday morning ritual is brunch. Maybe that’s what we need, good coffee, good pastries,a warm place to sit and talk. 

I go back to the church and find Jim inside getting ready. An older African-American woman dressed for church has arrived. I welcome her, invite her in. She’s a soloist at a church in the Bronx just moved to the neighborhood. Juan comes by with his guitar, Amy will not be coming today. I see Rachel’s walker right inside the door. I’m talking on the steps with  Elder Philip. Then we see her, Philip drops to the steps in mock shock. An elder has returned.

She had left several years ago.  It  was in the midst of what felt like an endless church fight. The kind that make people ask themselves why they need this. They’re worse in a small church. Less of a buffer zone. It took me a long time to realize that in a church with a culture of conflict, you can change all the people  and the conflict continues. Until you change the culture itself. It’s sad when good, faithful, committed people get driven away. She’s heard good things are happening. Has come by to see.  

As Church begins, I share with the congregation my thanksgiving for the group that met at Stony Point last weekend to take the first steps in creating a new criminal justice network. For me, the issue has been primarily pastoral. I’ve performed the marriage of a relative in New York City’s Tombs. I’ve been to court with numerous members, have had members and members’ children incarcerated. Enough so that I’m always immediately dismissed from jury panels even though I’d gladly serve. The worst was a (then) teen age girl, victim of  fetal alcohol syndrome, who through a kafkaesque sequence of events has had simple arrest for shoplifting jeans turn into a 15 year state prison nightmare. This is part of the human reality behind the fact that the US incarcerates more of its citizens than any other western industrialized nation. And more proportionately than China. 

It’s Transfiguration Sunday. That final blast of light before the shadows of Lent begin. The season that began with a star shining over Bethlehem ends on a mountaintop.  The season of Epiphany ends. That word I love, that moment where like in a flash of light you just get it. It’s a portal, a door way Sunday, like Christ the King into Advent, this Sunday opens the doorway into Lent.

Our story begins on another mountain, with Moses. Receiving the Law. How the giving of the law created community. Made community possible. On the seventh day, like a new creation. Fire and smoke up on the mountain. Moses coming down, shining. And coming down to find the people already dancing around a golden calf. Mardi Gras run wild. 

Paired with Moses is the story of the Transfiguration. Jesus appears in his one shining moment with Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets. But since it’s the end of epiphany, we need to be on the lookout for ongoing  epiphanies, moments of getting it. And allowing ourselves to be and changed by the experience. Ongoing epiphanies. It leads to the question, are you born again? In our tradition, we don’t have a particular day when we met Jesus. We don’t make a decision for Christ. It’s a gift of grace. And the reality is, yes we are born again--over and over and over again...

It’s a daily experience of dying and rising again. In the Jewish tradition, the first thing you do when you wake up is to give thanks for another day of living.  Daily. 

I’m thinking of the song from the movie 127 Hours: 

If I rise, one more chance

All our dreams, more than this  

It plays as Aron Ralston frees his pinned arm from the rock in the cave that holds him and comes back into the sunlight, back into freedom. At the cost of leaving part of himself back in the cave. For us, to free ourselves, to move back into light, back into life, we may have to leave part of ourselves behind. Not something physical, like Aron’s arm. But maybe something even more painful, something from inside. 

Our church is moving into the light, vote by vote, into the world of full inclusion for lgbt folk at every level of church leadership. Don’t forget, that started here, in 1978. We called it More Light. Because in our tradition, the scriptures are not frozen, they are a living word. The Holy Spirit can always shine  more light on the word and lead us to deeper understanding. 

So, the voice breaks through the clouds and says, This is my son, my beloved. Listen to him. Just like at Jesus’ baptism. And what happens? The disciples fall to the ground in fear.  And what’s important is what Jesus says, and in what order. He says Get up...do not be afraid..and touches them in their fear.

Make sure you hear that, it’s rise first, then not fear...Living in  fear is a form of death. To be afraid is to be controlled by that fear. To be afraid is to bring what you fear closer into being by the power of your fear. And the way to get out of it is to rise up, get up, get moving, even as you tremble. Think of how we’ve begun to do that. And maybe you get a little taste of what it was like to be in Egypt as people got up and step by step stopped being afraid. 

Christ has risen...and we are int the process of rising. We called our old project rebuild for rebirth. Now, we’re about being reborn to rebuild. And the way we do that is to take on concrete actions towards transformation. Specific, real, visible steps. Like when we committed to coming back here. 

Years ago in this sanctuary, there was a controversy when we used the Battle Hymn of the Republic in this service. Too martial. Too militant. But it was these words that drew me:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free;
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.

Julia Ward Howe. Abolitionist. Seeing in the midst of the Civil War a transcending cause, the freeing, the liberation of people. And in that transfiguration...

That’s where it has to be lived out, not on a mountain top, but here right where we live. As we rediscover our own call, our own witness in this place. 

Deacon James and Elder Ana help me serve the communion. Philip sings Let the light of the lighthouse shine on me. And then we all sing Canto de Esperanza (Song of Hope) and its time for our circle of blessing. And Ana’s coffee again.

Out on the steps, Jim is relating an incident at Presbytery. A trustee talking about West-Park having spent all its endowment and now trying  to hang on. In a totally unrelated meeting.  Where do such narratives come from? Get told  until they’re accepted as true? Become the basis upon which people make decisions without our even knowing it? And how much damage is done? In PHEWA, we have a principle we learned from our Disabilities Concerns Network, namely,  nothing about us without us. At every level of the church we need to stop talking about and start talking with.