One of my soapboxes comes around every year, right around this time, and it is centered around two personal thoughts. I think we rush Christmas and forget the meaning of Advent, and I mostly dislike the pop Christmas music that the radio seems to be playing earlier and earlier every year. This year, I decided that I would take control of my own Christmas spirit and find some palatable music. I love hymns. I'm not so into the Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree kind of stuff. But I also like new and fresh arrangements for the hymns I hold dear. I was look for fresh and different but not puffy. And that's how I came across a song that I've been completely into since I heard it. I already like Dustin Kensrue as he has frequently come up on my Pandora playlists, but I'd never heard this song. It's called "This is War."
This is war like you ain't seen.
This winter's long, it's cold and mean.
With hangdog hearts we stood condemned,
But the tide turns now at Bethlehem.
This is war and born tonight,
The Word as flesh, the Lord of Light,
The Son of God, the low-born king;
Who demons fear, of whom angels sing.
This is war on sin and death;
The dark will take it's final breath.
It shakes the earth, confounds all plans;
The mystery of God as man.
Never you worry. It is not lost on me that the image of war is a troubling image, but in a way (a strange kind of way) it reminds me of what it all seems to be about. The Christmas season is so wrapped up in hope and peace, so how can I get behind a song called "This is War"? Well, for one thing, Dustin Kensrue's voice is pretty sexy. But for another, what is Christ but a paradox? Emanuel...the mystery of God as man. God, in Christ, turns everything, EVERYTHING, on its head. God with us is so countercultural that we can scarcely wrap our minds around the idea. Jesus changes the eveything.
This song has been stuck in my head for days now... Happy Advent! I pray for the wisdom and the courage to be so countercultural that I can be a kingdom maker in the here and now, the already, to prepare for not yet.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Wit
Together with the CPE students from my and two other upstate hospitals, I watched the movie Wit today. Wit is based on a play, which I've never seen (the play, I mean), but I've now seen the movie twice. This film, starring Emma Thompson, is about a Professor of English lit. who is most notable for her scholarship on the metaphysical poet John Donne. Professor Bearing narrates her own experience with ovarian cancer, from diagnosis to death. The interesting thing (and thus the relevance for reflection here) is that the story parallels a lengthy evaluation of Donne's "Divine Sonnet X", the famous death be not proud sonnet. In a stunning flashback, Professor Bearing sees herself as a student learning how to best understand Donne's meaning in proper translation. Her mentor chastises her for the use of an inauthentic translation that punctuates Donne's final line by saying "And Death, Capital D, shall be no more, semi-colon. Death, Capital D comma, thou shalt die, exclamation mark!" The mentor and, subsequently, Bearing understand that Donne's poem is most authentic when it reads, ""And death shall be no more" comma "death thou shalt die." Nothing but a breath, a comma separates life from life everlasting....Very simple, really. With the original punctuation restored Death is no longer something to act out on a stage with exclamation marks. It is a comma. A pause."
The comma, the thin space, the doorframe.
A promise to myself and to any who may stumble upon these reflections: Not meaning to be morbid. This is not a running commentary on experiences with death....just a commentary on today's experience.
The comma, the thin space, the doorframe.
A promise to myself and to any who may stumble upon these reflections: Not meaning to be morbid. This is not a running commentary on experiences with death....just a commentary on today's experience.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The beginning...
Ask just about anyone I’ve lived with and most of the people I’ve worked with and you’ll easily find that I’m a doorway talker. I don’t know how that habit developed , nor am I aware of the subconscious motivation behind the practice. The one thing I do know is that I am perfectly comfortable leaning on the threshold talking to someone sitting inside a room. If standing isn’t comfortable, I am more likely to sit on the floor, still leaning on the door frame, than I am to take an empty chair inside the room.
Perhaps this is what has caused me to notice something in particular about what I do. As a hospital chaplain, in many ways, I have become a minister of doorways, of thresholds. Often, I serve as an escort between waiting rooms and sick rooms. In the ER, I split my time between patients in the trauma bay and family in the waiting areas. I cross those thresholds on my own and often bring family across those thresholds with me. A couple of months ago, I was pulled out of bed sometime around 4 in the morning by a page to the Critical Care Unit. When I arrived, I found that a patient had died, somewhat unexpectedly. She had about a dozen adult children, and by the time the family had gathered, there were around 30 people in the waiting area. The intense emotions and subsequent behavior led to the decision by the medical staff to only let 2 or 3 people into the patient’s room at a time. In our critical care units, there is a hallway that surrounds the whole unit so that the waiting area gives direct access to the room. I would go out to the waiting area and summon the two or three whose turn it had come to say goodbye. I would escort them across the doorway from the waiting area to the room that held death. When they were ready, I escorted them out and brought in the next group. That morning was the first time I realized that I am a doorway minister.
I have grown accustomed to describing experiences such as these as “broken spaces turned sacred places.” In some instances, that doorway represents the broken relationship suffered between that family and the beloved sister, mother, grandmother. And in some ways, the doorway is the separation between two worlds. But I can’t help but think of the Celtic tradition’s understanding of thin spaces, those places that the barrier between the natural and the spiritual world is so thin that it seems to be possible to touch and be touched by God. I’d like to make a habit of recognizing the thin spaces, and thus begins this place of reflection, both on the thin places and all the times in between.
Perhaps this is what has caused me to notice something in particular about what I do. As a hospital chaplain, in many ways, I have become a minister of doorways, of thresholds. Often, I serve as an escort between waiting rooms and sick rooms. In the ER, I split my time between patients in the trauma bay and family in the waiting areas. I cross those thresholds on my own and often bring family across those thresholds with me. A couple of months ago, I was pulled out of bed sometime around 4 in the morning by a page to the Critical Care Unit. When I arrived, I found that a patient had died, somewhat unexpectedly. She had about a dozen adult children, and by the time the family had gathered, there were around 30 people in the waiting area. The intense emotions and subsequent behavior led to the decision by the medical staff to only let 2 or 3 people into the patient’s room at a time. In our critical care units, there is a hallway that surrounds the whole unit so that the waiting area gives direct access to the room. I would go out to the waiting area and summon the two or three whose turn it had come to say goodbye. I would escort them across the doorway from the waiting area to the room that held death. When they were ready, I escorted them out and brought in the next group. That morning was the first time I realized that I am a doorway minister.
I have grown accustomed to describing experiences such as these as “broken spaces turned sacred places.” In some instances, that doorway represents the broken relationship suffered between that family and the beloved sister, mother, grandmother. And in some ways, the doorway is the separation between two worlds. But I can’t help but think of the Celtic tradition’s understanding of thin spaces, those places that the barrier between the natural and the spiritual world is so thin that it seems to be possible to touch and be touched by God. I’d like to make a habit of recognizing the thin spaces, and thus begins this place of reflection, both on the thin places and all the times in between.
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