Last week I participated in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and took a class led by Doug Goetsch. We wrote four or five short pieces every day spurred by a variety of prompts. We could write in any genre so some were poems, some fiction, and some memoir. Late in the week I tried my hand at some poetry after we had been given the prompt, "Whistling."
Some people whistle as they walk past graveyards.
I prefer to stay in stealth mode
when walking among the headstones,
leaving undisturbed whatever spirits lie beneath.
Not because I’m afraid of what may arise.
I imagine they are peaceful enough
even resting in ties and dresses;
clothes they were relieved to shed in life.
I walk among hard etched names and dates
searching for peace myself.
A peace that passes all understanding
keeping heart and mind in one true faith
It’s a peace I cannot find outside of box and vault.
So silently I stroll between clusters and rows
of loved ones gathered in death
who knew as well the joys and longings of this life.
At first I was
hesitant to believe that this voice I heard in my head was the actually God
speaking to me. I’m still not one-hundred percent certain about it. At the
time, there was only one way to find out if it was or if it wasn’t God speaking
to me. So I started to listen.
Some of the hardest
things in life to see are the incongruities that we have been taught to
overlook. Life is filled with actions, symbols and meanings that contradict the
things we claim to believe. Becoming aware of these contradictions and
resolving them can be both heart breaking and liberating.
The seminary is an accredited institution of higher learning.
Pastors graduate with a Masters of Divinity degree but the seminary can also
grant other Masters degrees as well as Doctorates. So in the spring of every
year, those who have fulfilled all the necessary requirements get to
participate in commencement exercises.
My graduation from
seminary took place at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis. Central
is a huge, cathedral-like building with gothic architecture, ornate wooden
carvings and magnificent acoustics. It’s a church building that was meant to
inspire the worshiper and magnify the wonder of God. The seminary used the
church for graduation ceremonies because it was one of the few churches in the
area that could hold all the graduates, faculty and guests.
Because I played tuba in a brass ensemble that performed at
graduation, I had been to the commencement ceremonies in the past. One of the
traditions of the ensemble was to let the graduating seniors choose a song from
the group’s repertoire that would be played as part of the prelude. As a tuba
player I love John Philips Sousa marches and, since there were a couple in the
collection of songs that we played, I requested “Liberty Bell March.”
When we got together to rehearse for graduation I was not
surprised to be informed that my request had been turned down. I was, however,
annoyed by the short, but stern rebuke from the campus pastor who sat next to
me in the group and played baritone.
You see, Liberty Bell March is the theme song from Monty
Python’s Flying Circus. Most people don’t know it by name but when you hear it
you immediately think of the irreverent comedy show. Someone on the worship
planning team caught it and didn’t see the humor. Not only did my request get
rejected but as a punishment I wasn’t allowed to make another request. I
remember something being said about the seriousness of the occasion, apparent disrespect
to my classmates and the whole seminary community, and disappointment that I
would try such a prank.
I thought about playing dumb at that point but I didn’t really
care. It would have been so amazing and
more than fitting, in my mind, to hear the strains of the Liberty Bell March
echo through that august sanctuary right before my graduating class processed
in. The only thing that would have made it even remotely better would have been
to shout “And now for something completely different” immediately before we
launched into the song.
To me this was more than a prank. It was a statement about
everything I had been through in seminary. It was about the hoops and hurdles.
It was about the seriousness with which the church and its leaders tend take
themselves. It was a statement about the silliness of the whole commencement
exercise compared to what we were being asked to do as pastors. It was about
the incongruity of graduating in a building that was the showpiece of 19th
century, urban church architecture and the reality of being sent to serve in
rural churches with cracked walls, crumbling foundations and mildew issues. It
was about the sheer audacity to put on this show of pomp and circumstance highlighting
our mastery of a theological education without the slightest hint of irony in
claiming that we were going out to be servants.
There are other places where the symbols of master and servant
clash in the church . The stoles that pastors wear over their robes represent
the yoke of Christ and are a symbol of a servant. Clerical collars that peek
out from under the same robes are modernized versions of the collars professors
wore in centuries past to symbolize their authority and learning. We are taught that these are symbols of the
“office” of ministry so we overlook the way they contradict each other. But you
can’t be both master and servant at the same time.
I
am frustrated by the incongruities and the lack of clear vision within
religious systems. And yet such uncertainty seems to hint at much greater
liberty for individuals and communities than most of us expect. Opening our
eyes to the contradictions between our personal (and corporate) actions and beliefs,
being able to laugh about them in a forgiving way, and making adjustments to
resolve them is the way towards peace.
