Category: Interludes

Fursey’s Four Fires (redux)

The following article was written for our parish newsletter in 2016. I thought about updating it but aside from references to my former parish and the “Trinity Way of Life” it is unfortunately as relevant in 2020 as it was in 2016:

So who in the world is Fursey? He’s a rather obscure Irishman who gets a mention in Bede’s History of the English Church and People. I read that book in seminary and for something written in 731 AD it’s quite readable. Bede mentions quite a few Irishmen for a book devoted to the development of Anglo-Saxon England. Each year I get a reminder of Fursey for a week during the second week of Advent in the prayers Dorie Ann and I use at the lighting of our Advent wreath at home. One section of the devotional tells of a vision of “four fires through which unclean spirits threatened to destroy the earth.” They are listed as the destroying fire of falseness, the destroying fire of greed, the destroying fire of disunity and the destroying fire of manipulation. And each year, but particularly this one, we comment on how contemporary this feels.

Fortunately, the devotional doesn’t end there. It continues: But Fursey urged everyone he met to do as the angels told him:  to fight against all evils.  He encouraged them with these words he had heard:  “The saints shall advance from one virtue to another;” and, “The God of gods shall be seen in our midst.”

At first the encouragement Fursey offers seems pretty pale against a set of destroying fires. In a world that seems beset by falseness, greed, disunity and manipulation we might be excused for wanting stronger stuff that what is on offer. Yet implied in these messages from the angels is a charge to follow the Jesus path as the means by which God overcomes the destroying fires.

The first charge is to fight against all evils. The first all too human reaction is to take up arms, whether political, economic or military, meeting might with might to set things right. This is not the Jesus path. If we fight fire with fire, fire always wins. There are other ways to fight against evil than to use the tools of evil. Paul enjoins the Roman Christians to follow the Jesus path in these words: “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21) To confront evil with good seems anti-intuitive to us, but only because the Jesus path is not the path that we were taught either by the world around us or even, sadly, by the church much of the time.

To fight against all evils means that wherever we find cursing in word or action we respond by blessing in word and action not only the victim but even the perpetrator. In the orbit of our reach, no evil done to others is irrelevant to us. We are God’s agent of blessing and that is our first duty.

The next word to Fursey from the angels is that “the saints will advance from one virtue to another.” We dare not turn this into an inward concern about building our own character. Virtue has substance only in so far as it is demonstrated by word and action in our relations with others. Advancing from one virtue to another means that our growth in Christ and therefore in virtue is a continuous journey. The primary function of a spiritual discipline, whether the Trinity Way of Life* or any other set of disciplines is to keep and guide us on that journey. Therefore, it is never enough to simply come to worship, listen to teaching, receive nourishment in the Sacrament and then drop back to spiritual passivity for the remains of the week. What we receive we are to apply through the tools of our spiritual disciplines until we rejoin the worshiping community the following Sunday to build one another up, to share the stories of what God has done, accept the divine strength given in Holy Communion and return to the fray growing in the good works God is preparing for us.

The final word from the angels is that the God of gods shall be seen in our midst. In late November we began a preparation for Christmas in Advent and we are just now completing the 12 days of Christmastide. The birth of Jesus is the story of the God of Israel joining Israel in the midst of Israel. The God of gods is seen in their midst even though many do not recognize him. John’s Gospel notes that “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God– children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (John 1:11-13) This adoption by God in Jesus is done through our baptism and its significance extends far beyond our personal salvation.

It cannot be said often enough that Christmas is not the end of the story of God’s redeeming work but its beginning. Jesus’ life, works and words covered a period of 33 years. The culmination of those years was traumatic and dramatic. But even that was not the end of the story. In fact, the Jesus story is still going on, acted out by generation of generation of apprentices of Jesus. The God of Israel entered Israel but now moves beyond the community of Israel into the gentile world. Wherever we are faithful, the God of gods is seen in our midst.

This past year has been a difficult and painful year all over the world and also in our local community. There seems to be an encroaching darkness that fills millions and even billions of people with anxiety and fear. But as John the evangelist also notes: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5) In 2017 the challenge to the community at Trinity (and to Christian communities everywhere) is to be bearers of that light. In times of anxiety and fear we have a mission to carry out. If we take that mission seriously and execute it prayerfully and faithfully the destroying fires of falseness, greed, disunity and manipulation will never have their way.

*As of 2018 the Trinity Way of Life included Pay Attention (prayer), Show Up (community), Serve Others (service), Learn the Story (study), Give as you receive (generosity), Check In (accountability), Practice Gratitude (thankfulness), and Tell the story (witness).

And Now for Something Completely Different

Last week, in a conversation with a co-worker, I heard a lament about a former college professor who’s lecture style was not dissimilar to my preaching, i.e. a lot of rabbit trails. Although the class had a textbook, the professor never referred to it in lectures and the exam only covered what had been said during the rambling lectures.

As I listened to the lament, an old memory surfaced of a similar lament found on the pages of an ancient book (© 1955), Max Shulman’s Guided Tour of Campus Humor. They had been extracted from a number of humor magazines published at various colleges and universities in the US. I found it among my parent’s books in high school and regularly thumbed through the over 450 pages of stories, essays, poem and miscellanea, most all good for at least a smirk and occasionally a belly laugh. I was sadly disappointed when I went off to college in 1970 that humor magazines were a thing of long past. The book is still on my shelves, slowly falling apart. Yet, I do open it up from time to time. You can probably blame it for some of my weirder sense of humor.

But in a time of frustration, isolation, and lamentation I offer this light-hearted lamentation and wonder how many of you had similar experiences as the author’s.


Lamentations of the Times and Customs

On Monday he started to talk about what’s coming up on the test:

Osmosis, hypnosis,
Psychosis, neurosis
We’re keenly awaiting the rest.

On Tuesday he mentioned a few salient facts that he thought we should know:

Machine-gun ballistics,
Insurance statistics,
And homework to do as we go.

On Wednesday we’ve wrestled with all forty questions and problems he gave:

Gyration, vibration,
Amelioration,
It sounds like he’s starting to rave.

On Thursday, he covered a number of various figures and odd little facts:

The Belt of Orion,
The Nemean lion,
And India’s property tax.

On Friday, he lectured on everything east of the Realm of Siam,

Convection, corrections,
Ejection, dissections,
Now bring on your simple exam!

On Saturday what do you think the professor had asked on the quiz?

Osmosis, hypnosis,
Psychosis, neurosis,
Machine-gun ballistics,
Or vital statistics?

Gyration, vibration,
Amelioration,
The Belt of Orion,
The Nemean Lion?

Convections, corrections,
Ejection, dissections?

He did not.

He quizzed about:

Hand-painted ceramics,
And thermodynamics,
Organic detectors,
Mechanical vectors,
Agenda, errata,
Addenda and data,
Transmuting, polluting,
Disputing, refuting,
Exponents of x’s
And why there are sexes.

And any number of other topics not even remotely hinted at during the previous week.Yellow Jacket (Georgia Tech)

Deep Waters

It’s not how I imagined it. Retirement was to be a time of reading, reflecting and writing punctuated by the normal routines of house keeping and our volunteering at the Wild Animal Sanctuary. All of those things have been going on, but what I did not expect was how the reading would lead me into deeper waters. One book would challenge an assumption or open up new possibilities which then led to another book and then another. I’ve stopped trying to count how many I have in progress. The books are in stacks in my study, primarily to keep from driving my wife, Dorie Ann, totally doolally tup (look it up – it’s in Wikipedia).

Bookshelf #1 of six. At least it keeps them off the floor.

The book I am trying to write is like a young, unbroken colt, jumping around in unexpected directions having gone through three different outlines, an introduction that turned out to be a waste of time*, and a first chapter that, like an aggressive virus, keeps dividing into new chapters.

*Robert Capon, in An Offering of Uncles, put the introduction to that book at the end for the excellent reason that he wrote it after the book was finished.

Of course, this means that The Apprentice Priest has been silent for a while. So to keep this blog from tipping into oblivion I’m working on an article on The Subversive Prayer and giving you, my dear friends, some evidence that I’m still above ground, all the vital signs are above the red line and I’ll be posting something a bit more substantial shortly.