Faith, miracles and the 'Mystery Priest": better at the end than at the beginning

By now many of you have read about the man in the black shirt and white collar (not a black collar, as some reported with a hint of eeriness) who showed up at a terrible accident in Missouri this month.

He appeared, prayed and anointed the young victim, Katie Lentz, and then apparently disappeared as quietly as he had come. When emergency personnel and police tried to identify the be-collared one, he could not be found in any of the pictures taken at the scene.

I admit it. As I read this story, days after it happened, I got a little emotional.  What a great parable, not to mention a hugely feel-good story. God really does work in extremely mysterious ways, and, in a world starved for miracles, it's lovely to see one happen.

Besides, the fellow was, let;s admit it, right out of the clergy office of central casting (and you didn't know we had one?).

But it turned out this week that the mystery priest has a name: it's Dowling.  Fr. Patrick Dowling to me and you.

Here's a paragraph from the CNN version:

The priest said there really wasn't any mystery to it, and he told a deputy before he left who he was. He took no credit for saving Lentz's life. He credited that to the calm of two highway patrol officers and a rescue team that worked "harmoniously."

I'm guessing that some readers were a little disappointed that the ethereal visitor of our fantasies turned out to have flesh and blood. I know I was, a little bit. 

But then I began to think of the occasions on which I have walked into a situation and, whether garbed in black or not, offered to pray with someone.  It happened last spring, when rangers were searching for a runaway in a local Chester County Park.

Clad in shorts and an old t-shirt, I surely didn't look like a member of the clergy (plus, inconveniently for some, I'm female).

I confess that having those initials at the end of my title helps give me a bit more confidence.

Our culture, increasingly, might view clergy as cultural rather than religious figures -- more and more Americans are growing up without any faith at all. 

That doesn't obviate our need for prayer.  Proclaiming and challenging, serving and praying, clergy still have a role to play.

But the larger lesson of this story isn't about what it means to be a priest at an accident scene. It's about how God can use all of us. 

In a way, Fr. Dowling was doing what any one of us, whether collared or not,  would (or should) have done in that situation. 

He saw a need.

 He stopped.  

He asked God for help.

There is nothing mysterious about that.

The only puzzling thing is why more of us, including myself, don't do it more often.

S....f guys say online...and what it might be saying about us

"You are a very beautiful woman."

Uhh hunh.

I thanked him.  While I'm not buying the KoolAid, one of my rules online is: be polite when someone compliments you.

Whether in the dating arena, basement-dwellers commenting on a blog post, or just everyday communication, online communication can bring out the savage in us.  Sometimes you have to bold your messages in the opposite direction, just to make the point that you are not succumbing to the roller-derby rink atmosphere of the Internet. .

He says he's a lawyer for a major Democratic organization (of course, this was all Weiner, all the time week online, so perhaps...). He's fortysomething,  educated, divorced, more than passably goodlooking. His profile showed no overt evidence of any kind of pathology.

  Of course, online, where appearance is everything, any of these factors could turn out  to be false.

We have a desultory conversation, slightly tinged with flirtatiousness on his part (but not enough to drive me away).   As uncomfortable as I am with the disembodied flirtations that go on online, I try to remain in neutral as long as I can.

 Then he disappeared.  Sometimes that's what happens - often that's what happens. Though to the other person it may feel as if you've just walked out on an unfinished conversation, asynchronous communication is just like that.

I remind myself that no one said this would be easy. As a highly educated middle-aged woman, I am in a minority in the dating circus.  Heck, if Anne Lamott has trouble finding the right guy, my case must be even more challenging.

We're all intelligent in different ways, right? You don't have to have a degree to be smart about things that totally befuddle me, like changing a tire, learning German, or painting without splattering.

Thus is it that  I often find myself imagining sitting on the back of a Harley, helmeted and holding on for dear life as my guy careens down Route 100. What price too big to pay for love? Then I wake up, wipe the sweat off my face, and return to my celibate life.

The fact is (guilty on all counts), I'll talk to almost anyone -- not because I think I can date them (they may be in D.C., or North Carolina, or Boston), but because I want to know what motivates them, makes them tick, gets them out of bed in the morning.  My curiosity about other people's lives is profound and apparently unquenchable.

But I digress.

A few days later, my lawyer pal (every lawyer I've ever chatted with online has been a complete freaking lunatic, by the way, so I should know better), contacted me again.

"Where are you going?" he asked me.  I'm on my way to an appointment, I told him, fully cognizant that this might not be an innocent question.

But I still wasn't prepared for what came next.

"Get back into bed," he said (by the way, it's now around 11:30 a.m., r u kidding? ) "I want  you so aroused that you can't see straight" (I already wear contact lenses, thanks a lot).  He asked me for my phone number.

I gasped. I giggled.  Then I made the mistake of asking him ( I ask a lot of questions) why someone with all of his material and educational advantages would spend his time simulating sex.

Let's just say that he took that as encouragement. He was in LA, he said, and "aware of me" (this, to me, was the creepiest element of the conversation.)

Signing off fast, I deleted the chat, and made sure that he couldn't contact me again. To be honest, I try not to get into a contest of insults. It's pretty easy to find me. It's pretty easy to find. YOU.

As I sit in front of my computer, this conversation behind me, it seems, well, hilarious. But it didn't feel that way at the time. I felt disappointed that once more, a guy who could have been a decent person had turned out to be, frankly, worse than a cad.

The most salacious the approach, the more I push back (unless I have met someone, and like him -- even then, I don't go all Danielle Steele on them).

And yet, I wonder whether the beast in us isn't as real as the man or woman of honor. Is it possible that the  sometimes rank opportunism of the internet (which can be revealed in so many ways other than sexual) allows for us to flash our true selves before we clothe them for more public consumption?

These private conversations (or conversations about privates) allow us the simulacra of intimacy without, it appears, a high price. I don't happen to believe that there is no price.  I know I paid one.  And yet I find my fascinated by that intersection where darkness and light bleed into each other, and wondering what takes people deep into such risky places. While I have no desire to voyage there myself, I wonder what takes someone to that place where they must compartmentalize even their desires.

Are you keeping a facet of your life secret?  What are you hiding, perhaps even from yourself?

I wonder, whether, if some other opportunist contacts me, I will keep myself  from asking the questions. I can honestly say that I don't know.  There's always something new to be learned -- even when, like Lady Macbeth, I have to keep washing my hands for days afterwards.

Gay marriage -- a local point of view

My column for the Lancaster papers on how pastors and other leaders are grappling with the American public's upward trending support for gay marriage. One, the Rev. Geoff Kohler, is talking about our sexuality -- and our humanity.

 http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/881187_Column--Debate-over-gay-marriage-far-from-over.html

Lake Ninevah: Dreams from my father (and mother)

If I'd thought about it at all, as a child, I would have figured that there were two places New Yorkers went on vacation--  Long Island (Sag Harbor, Shelter Island, the North Shore, the Hamptons before they were "The Hamptons"), and New England.

(I didn't understand then, of course, that some New Yorkers never had the money or the time off from work to get out of town at all during the summer.  Lucky for them if they could escape to Jones Beach or Coney Island for a day.)

My folks had friends, a few, who went east to Long Island. But they already lived in Manhattan, with disposable income and higher-paying jobs.  It appears that, long before I was born, or my sister and brother after me, my parents had chosen to spend their leisure time in New England.

My recollections begin, shadowy, in Maine, on the rocky beaches of Bailey Island.

But, as I remember, it was when we returned from a year in Italy and England (my father had a Fulbright scholarship), that my parents turned their gaze to Vermont --  specifically, to a lake near Ludlow called Ninevah.

And that's how it began -- two Jewish intellectuals from New York renting a simple two (or three-bedroom, I can't recall now) cottage just yards from the shores of an uncrowded bit of paradise.

In the city, we lived in a four story brownstone (now I can imagine that dad probably struggled to pay the mortgage on his assistant professor's salary).  Our idea of greenery were the majestic trees and manicured lawns of Prospect Park.

Dad had a mind bent  towards questioning, speculating, pondering.  In fact, he never really stopped questioning, whether it be politics, faith or the mysteries of family.  Did he seek out the serenity of the north as an antidote for the anxiety that sometimes troubled him?

But up in Vermont, we didn't have a schedule. There was nowhere we had to be. The options were limited.  

Yards away from our door,  lake and its ancient rowboat beckoned. While none of us were fans of the squirmy bait we needed to cast our lines into the water, we did not question the order of things. If you were on a lake, well, you fished.

Excitement was a visit to a President's birthplace (Calvin Coolidge's home wasn't that far from us), or to the local general store.

Now and then we'd wander up the road to see Mr. Blakely, who oversaw the vacation cottages, and ran the tiny store lakeside.

Worms.  Ice cream. Candy.  That little shack (I didn't see it that way then) was a wonderland of treats to be doled out according to the whim of a benevolent despot of a parent.

The worst thing that happened to me at Lake Ninevah was being caught once for climbing onto the counter to get at the molasses cookies. Wouldn't you have done the same thing?

Later we would move on to Hanover, where my father would spend summers doing research, and my mother work on a master's degree. But it is those summers in Vermont that reverberate. As my mother and father looked at property to buy, I would seize on a Victorian house, or a twenty-acre lot, and plead with them -- buy this one? Buy that one. Just commit.

Buy something that connects us to this time and this place so that we can keep coming back.

Of course, they had their own priorities. But now, at the distance of so many years, I wonder what drew them there, and back. Was it the beauty of the green hills and mountains, the serenity of the quiet lakes?

Was it the charm of the village greens? Was it deeper, more profound -- a fork in the road not taken?

Far more than me, my parents were urbanites, grounded in the teeming, raucous, literate and endlessly fascinating city of their own childhood.

It took me well into middle-age before I realized that I belonged somewhere radically different. Or, put it another way -- I didn't know where I belonged until I brought my children here.

I get to create my own version of the family story, as they created theirs. And then I will step aside, inevitably, and my kids will take the stage.

Already we know that my daughter finds rural life tedious, leaning towards shops and suburbs rather than cows and village festivals.  My son, on the other hand, speculates that he may end up in a small town with a village green, stores and a church. I tell him that such places exist.

I have seen them with my own eyes. They are the landscape of my childhood.

We went back to Lake Ninevah once -- Mr. Blakely and his family received us graciously in his home.

Years later, I returned with my husband, to find the family long gone, and the lake itself different from the enchanted refuge I recalled.

Yet still, it is beautiful.

For that, and other reasons, including many hikes and rambles around the state,  I have a life-long love affair with Vermont.

Whether what I recall is accurate can be debated, because childhood memories, all memory is selective. But whether it is true? Of that, I have no doubt.

I only wish I knew now what my parents were seeking on the shores of Lake Ninevah, in that bucolic setting so far from home. What did they find in Vermont that beckoned to them so much that  they dreamed of creating a summer life there? It is a question that I must throw out, and let it rest, alone, a monument to memory.

Gay marriage and the evangelical hinge

 I love the idea that we live in "hinged" moments...that there is a whole reality about to unfold just beyond our line of sight.

Thus the conversation about sexuality engages me at the same time that it makes me anxious, because neither I (nor you, my dear) can control it.

 We can't get ahead of these changes.  We don't know what's coming.

Decadence or reform? Redefinition or a new traditionalism? And who gets to define either of these?

So take my Reuters "Guestview" as a snapshot of what's going right now, not necessarily what is to come...which may be much more exciting. Or scary. Or both, depending on where you find yourself.

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2013/08/08/guestview-gay-marriage-and-u-s-evangelicals-conciliatory-tone-traditional-doctrine/

How to be the classier person in a déclassé online world

This past week I participated in derailing a serious conversation my son was having on Facebook.

It became just another ventfest for people voicing their usual positions, another round of blah, blah, blah that goes absolutely nowhere.

And only one person on the thread made a genuine effort to answer the question that he asked.

I knew I was getting sucked into another debate that would go nowhere. I also knew that the adults involved were re-stating positions they had held for a long time, and that no one's mind was liable to be changed.

But I jumped in there. I guess it felt good to vent.

We don't always treat each other well in these conversations. More to the point, we don't make progress in doing anything to solve the problems we all clearly see. It's just blather.

I admire youth -- youth's seriousness, creativity, and most of all, youth's hope. The question could have been asked by anyone's child. I don't think we honored it.

On a completely different front, I was approached by a guy online in a way that seemed innocuous at first, but turned out to be outrageous. As I've noted before, some people behave in the "safety" of their online universe in ways that they never would behave in real life.

I can't imagine  this fellow going all Anthony Weiner on a colleague, but you never know. People feel free to let their libidos hang out (as it were) online. To be provocative -- I'm not sure that there is a big difference between being sexually explicit online and going off on a political rant.

It's not about convincing someone else (unless you are sharing information).  These eruptions are about relieving anger, or sexual tension, or stress, and making yourself feel better.

This week also saw an intense conversation peter out when it was put to the "reality" test. No matter how often I have these communication events (I'm not sure how to tag them), and I am more and more choosy about whether I have them, I still feel burned when the other person disappears into the ether.

I say that I'm not going to let the poor manners and unchained egos of the Internet change me, but I've already been altered.  

Yeah, o.k.,  I'm not hitting on guys or posting rage-filled reactions to someone else's ideas. But I'm still not where I want to be.

In this regard, a few of my elders have been wonderful teachers. They never post anything to Facebook unless it's edifying. 

A few resolutions, then, for leading a more classy online life. Feel free to add your own. It's a good conversation for those of us who can't keep our mouths shut online. Or maybe it's just a constructive one for me.

1. Think before you post. Consider your audience, the ones who speak up, and the ones who are observing you. Do you want to be known as the "village" blabbermouth?

2. If you err, make it on the side of kindness. Do not post in anger, or in snark. 

3. Not every thought that goes through your head is worth sharing, either on Twitter or Facebook.

Cull relentlessly.

4. Does your online persona match up with your real life behavior? I recently read an article in the NYT book review section about famous writers.  Many of them were outright jerks in real life. There are lots of things I'm NOT good at, but I am obsessed by trying to be the same person in "rl" that I am when I'm raving at you on Facebook.

4 a.  Keep it zipped. You know who you are. No one needs to see you exposed in a tell-all, or standing with your wife, husband or partner at a press conference.  Prudence is often a hidden virtue.  Dangerous behavior can be forever. 

5.  Which brings up another point;  Be honest.  Be truthful with others, but above all, don't start lying to yourself.  That's how we begin to live in ways that are splintered and alienated from our better selves (I'm aspiring to better, and letting God worry about "best"). 

I'm pretty darned good at dishing out advice. Let's see if I'm even better at taking it. You have permission to hold me accountable when I err, as I will now and then. Someone has to...

When it comes to leaving church, we're not just "talking about my generation"

Over the past week, there's been a ton of "water-cooler" conversation  over why Millennials (read: twentysomethings with a bit of thirty tossed in) are leaving the church. Rachel Held Evans got it started this time around (as she often does) with analysis: young people are sick of their parents culture wars, and don't want to be in a church that peddles a bunch of predetermined answers. In addition, they are tired of discrimination against LGBT people, tired of exclusivity and tired of the same old same old, even if it's the same old worship music.

It's not about the hip worship, she admonishes pastors -- it's not about the new new thing covering up the old thing.

Then Derek Rishmawy, who is even more of a Millennial than  Held Evans,  (he's 27, she's 32) came out with his own reflections (after hers went viral.)

i’ll be honest, my initial instinct when I come to pieces like these is to balk a bit. I worry that we can tend to come off as whiny, demanding, or entitled. Even worse, there’s a sort of myopia involved in thinking Christianity must change or die every 30 years or so


Part of the reason young people are leaving the church,  he suggests, is that they don't get the whole idea of the Church, the Bride of Christ, the Body.  Evangelicals have "dropped the ball:" in this regard, he asserts.

While I'm happy to hear what Held Evans and Rishmawy have to say, and I'm paying attention,  it seems to me that a larger point is getting lost here.

Every generation is leaving the church.  Millennials are simply leaving it faster -- or never signing up at all.

Here's a quote from Pew's  Research on Religion and Public Life Project "Nones On The Rise." That came out last fall, and caused some consternation among those who run religious institutions. The quote below suggests a steady erosion in religiosity among Americans in their forties, fifties and sixties:

 Generation Xers and Baby Boomers also have become more religiously unaffiliated in recent years. In 2012, 21% of Gen Xers and 15% of Baby Boomers describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, up slightly (but by statistically significant margins) from 18% and 12%, respectively, since 2007.

And we're not even talking about people who claim to be a part of a faith, but never, or almost attend a house of worship.

So what's going on?

I don't pretend to have the answers, any more than Held Evans or Rishmawy do (they might be slightly more confident, but youth does that for  you). 

I do have a few notions. And before you get curious,  I'm not targeting any church in particular. including my own. I happen to love my congregation simply because it is, often, so imperfect. We let our rough edges show. 

But I'm weird that way -- a lot of people want smooth and shiny, a nice rose that goes down easy instead of a biting red.

So - a few ideas.

First of all, we may be trying too hard to get potential attendants  in.  People aren't attracted by showy programs and clever marketing.  They can see right through that.  That includes mass evangelism programs ( not at all my aesthetic, though they do have their appeal to some, I confess.)

Secondly, it might be useful for churches to examine what drove some members of older generations out in the first place. As a member of a tiny, tiny, and shrinking denomination (at least here in America),  I find the wars of the past two or three decades an utter disgrace.  They reflect poorly on liberals and conservatives alike.

I'm a convert -- and a priest, and I considered leaving. When we divide and seek to conquer, we aren't following Jesus. Episcopalians complacent about the way things have turned out might want to look a those empty pews and inner city churches turned into chic condos. Conservatives might want to check out the ongoing splintering among their own, and ask themselves if the "prize" of a sanctuary "untainted" by female and gay clergy was worth the battle. 

I'm not at all sure that, many times, we offer people what they really want.  I'm not saying here that people always want what is good for them, or what the Gospel demands of them.  But those who are broken (aren't we all?) need to be met where they are.  Yes, they are often grimy, and yes, a lot of what they've done ain't purty -- but plenty of times I take a look in the mirror myself and see smudges.

Churches need more transparent and even more transient leadership -- in many congregations, leadership seems to recycle itself, with the same people in the same positions year after year.

Finally, I long for a church where we can be truly honest with one another. I WANT to hear about internet porn on Sundays. I want to hear about people who struggle with their sexual identities.  I want to hear about alcoholism and mental illness and marriages in trouble. Not necessarily from the pulpit, mind -- that's a lot of  stress to put on a pastor.

But he or she ought to feel comfortable or holy uncomfortable, speaking up and out when the Holy Spirit calls. 

Then I want to hear about Jesus, and what He's doing in people's lives.  But our tendency is to start with the good stuff -- and never get to what's really bugging us. 

What if vestry members and deacons, pastors and choir section heads could be open about their fears and doubts and know that they would be accepted and encouraged in love? What if we weren't so darned clubby about who we welcome into such confidences?

There's no guarantee that such profound honesty will bring people of any generation back, encourage them to remain -- or to begin.

But perhaps it's time we took a tough look at ourselves,  instead of wondering "what's wrong with them"?