BRING BACK THE MYSTERY

In November, 2105 I attended the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in
Atlanta. One of the hundreds of sections was on C. S. Lewis and the Bible. Lewis (1898-1963) was a well-known British Christian, author of many books including The Chronicles of Narnia.One very interesting paper presented by Leslie Baynes of Missouri State University was titled “Lewis vs. Bultmann: Myth as fact or Fiction.” 

Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was a German theologian who tried to make Christianity relevant for the modern world. He was heavily influenced by the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger. His approach was “demythologizing” in which the message of Christianity is separated from the supernatural or mythological aspects of the story of Jesus. Lewis was an absolute contrast to Bultmann. Part of Lewis’s path to Christian faith had come through the influence of J. R. R. Tolkien, of War of the Rings fame, who helped Lewis see Christianity as a “true myth.”

All of the New Testament professors I studied with in seminary were well-versed in Bultmann’s approach to myth although I think it was more his methodology rather than his theological approach that influenced them. They passed on the method to us. 

I can’t recall any professor in seminary mentioning C. S. Lewis. In the mid-1970s Lewis wasn’t taken seriously by most mainstream professors of theology. We got a lot of Paul Tillich, another person influenced by existentialism, but nothing so simple or down to earth as Lewis. (By the way, don’t ask me to explain existentialism. I took an entire course on Heidegger, but I still don’t understand it.)

One of the problems with all this Bultmann and Tillich is that it’s all right for sophisti- cated theology classes, but it doesn’t translate into anything comprehensible for congregations. Maybe you can preach on the “ground of being” in Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, but it won’t work at First Lutheran in Little Falls. More than one pastor has done some “demythologizing” and then had to look for a new call. 

The truth is, I think the whole existentialist approach and especially demythologizing was a dead-end for Christian theology. In trying to make the faith relevant, it has robbed it of its power to transform people. That is illustrated by this wonderful section of Kathleen Norris’s book Amazing Grace.

I once heard a Protestant clergywoman say to an ecumenical assembly, “We all know there was no Virgin Birth. Mary was just an unwed, pregnant teenager, and God told her it was okay.  That’s the message we need to give girls today, that God loves them, and forget all this nonsense about a Virgin Birth.” A gasp went up. People shook their heads. This was the first (and only) gratuitously offensive remark made at a convention marked by great theological diversity. When it came, I happened to be sitting between some Russian Orthodox, who were offended theologically, and black Baptists, whose sense of theological affront was mixed with social concern. They were not at all pleased to hear a well-educated, middle-class white woman say that what we need to tell pregnant teenagers is, “It’s okay.”

I realized that my own anger at the woman’s arrogance had deep personal roots. I was taken back to my teenage years, when the “de-mythologizing” of Christianity that I had encountered in a misguided study of modern theology had led me to conclude that there was little in religion for me. In the classroom, at least, it seemed that anything in the Bible that didn’t stand up to reason, that we couldn’t explain, was primitive, infantile, ripe for discarding. So I took all my longing for the sacred, for mystery, into the realm of poetry, and found a place for myself there. Now, more than thirty years later, I sat in a room full of Christians and thought, My God, they’re still at it, still trying to leach every bit of mystery out of this religion, still substituting the most trite language imaginable. You’re okay, the boy you screwed when you were both too drunk to stand is okay, all God choose to say about it is, it’s okay.

We have lost a sense of mystery in the Lutheran Church. It’s a process at work since the late 18th century. The 19th century Romantics knew some of what was wrong. The 20th century liturgical movement knew some of what was wrong. Many of our church leaders today have a sense that something is wrong, but few put their finger of the missing element of mystery, awe, transcendence or even beauty.

It comes up in Evelyn Waugh’s book, Bridehead Revisited. Two Oxford friends–upper middle-class art student Charles Ryder and the aristocratic, but tragic, Lord Sebastian Flyte–are talking about religion. Charles is an agnostic. The Flytes are Roman Catholic. Charles says to Sebastian:

“I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?”“Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.”“But my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.” “Can’t I?”“I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”“Oh yes, I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.”“But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.”“But I do. That’s how I believe.”’

Is it enough to believe just because something is a lovely idea? Probably not. But something moves Charles Ryder in the story. After an adulterous affair with Sebastian’s sister, Julia, Charles is himself transformed and becomes a believer. 

I have attended two services of Lessons and Carols over the past week and listened to one recording. I heard again the annunciation to Mary, the angelic message to the shepherds, the coming of the Wisemen, and St. John’s unfolding of the great mystery of the incarnation. It’s beautiful and mysterious and it probably has the demythologizers spinning. Let them twist and turn as long as they leave the rest of us alone. 

May Almighty God, who sent his Son to take our nature upon him, bless you in this holy season, scatter the darkness of sin, and brighten your heart with the light of his holiness.

And may God bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

MANDALA

This past November I was in Atlanta at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings. One of the features was the creation of a mandala by a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks. A manadala is a representation of the universe. As the leader of the monks (the abbot?) explained, the creation of the mandala was to bring blessings on all people.

The Tibetans create very complex mandalas out of sand. The very impermanence of the sand is intentional. Shortly after being created, the mandala is destroyed representing the impermanence of everything.

The making of the mandala began with a 20 minute ceremony of chanting and playing instruments. I had to ask myself about the propriety of attending what is clearly a worship service of a religion I do not share. It didn’t bother the monks that all these people were watching a spectacle, but I wonder what would happen if the roles were reversed and a group of Buddhist monks attended a Christian worship service. There was a time in the early church when that wouldn’t have happened. Worship, at least the Eucharist, was closed to non-Christians. With the push on for “hospitality” and “inclusivity,” I suppose some of our churches would declare that of course non-believers are welcome to commune with us. What non-believers are welcome to is to have faith in Jesus Christ and be baptized, but I increasingly feel like that is a minority position in the ELCA. No wonder we’re in trouble. Sorry for going off on a tangent, but it bugs me.

Anyway, after the ceremony, the monks started making the mandala. Although I didn’t see the very beginning, it looks like they traced the pattern on the table first, and then filled it in with the various colored sands. The monks “paint” with a long, pointed device that they vibrate with a scraper letting tiny amounts of sand flow into the patterns. It took over two days to complete the mandala. I stopped in a couple of times a day to check on the progress. The finished project has the classical form of a mandala with the center consisting of a square enclosing a circle and with four T-shaped gates on the sides of the square.

Then came a closing ceremony at which the leader used what looked to me to be a feather or maybe a flower to disrupt part of the pattern. Along came another monk with a brush who entirely destroyed the work. People were invited to take part of the sand home with them. The rest would be dumped into a body of water to spread the blessings as the water flowed.



The process of painting a mandala as a religious act reminded me of Orthodox painting (or writing, as it is properly called) an icon. There are precise rules for the pattern of icons and the act of creating them is itself an act of worship. I don’t think Protestant Christians have anything similar. Some of us use art, but we don’t treat the making of art as itself an act of worship. Maybe the exception is J. S. Bach and George Frideric Handel signing their musical compositions with S.D.G., Soli Deo Gloira, to God alone the Glory. 

It was an interesting experience. I’ll try to write a bit more about what I learned at the meetings next time.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

PEOPLE LOOK EAST

People, look east. The time is near 
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

Its Advent again, a new year of Grace. Advent looks in two directions at once: to the First Coming of Jesus as the Child of Bethlehem and to the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time. A. R. Kretzmann, the celebrated Pastor of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Chicago, once said in a sermon, “The purpose of the church is to bridge the two comings of Christ.” The church is an Advent people.

Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare,
One more seed is planted there:
Give up your strength the seed to nourish,
That in course the flower may flourish.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the rose, is on the way.

I have run into folks who actually hate Advent. They don’t like the Advent hymns. They don’t like the church waiting until Christmas to put up a tree. Like little children, they want it all now. But a good life always involves waiting, and Advent is for waiting.

Birds, though you long have ceased to build,
Guard the nest that must be filled.
Even the hour when wings are frozen
God for fledging time has chosen.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the bird, is on the way.

I think I came to love Advent when I was a child and sang in the Carol Choir at Ascension Lutheran Church, Chicago. There was a pattern to the anthems we learned under Eleanor Knobloch. “Hark, the Sabbath Bells are Ringing” was always the first anthem in September. “O, how amiable, are thy dwellings” was for Thanksgiving, and “People Look East” arrived in Advent. 

Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim
One more light the bowl shall brim,
Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the star, is on the way.

The poet Eleanor Farjeon wrote “Carol of the Advent” (People Look East) for the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols. The text is set to a Besançon tune for the carol “Chantons, Bargiés, Noué, Noué.” The bouncy 6/8 melody reveals the carol’s origin in the dance. How can you sing it and not feel the joy? How can you not love Advent.

Angels, announce with shouts of mirth
Christ who brings new life to earth.
Set every peak and valley humming
With the word, the Lord is coming.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the Lord, is on the way.

What else is there to say, but the ancient prayer of the church:
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus.!

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

WILKOMEN TO HELEN, GEORGIA

Hoo Boy! Went to Georgia for a week and came back with enough material for a month’s worth of blogs at least. I just don’t have the time to write everything. (I am currently still working on my training for Contemplative Outreach, I shortly start teaching a course for the Florida-Bahamas Synod Diakonia Program, and have two preaching assignments coming up after Christmas.)


I spent two days In Helen Georgia. I never heard of the place until friends Cherie and Juan Carlos went there. Helen is a small town (population 430) in north Georgia. Its life was typical of a lot of small towns. It started off as a mining town. When that petered out it turned to logging until they had just about stripped the mountains clean. There wasn’t much of a future until someone came up with the idea of reconstructing the town as a Bavarian Alpine Village. New fronts went on the buildings and zoning laws required a German look to new construction. Even the hamburger chain Wendy’s had to put Bavarian doodads on their standard construction store.

I talked to a very nice volunteer at the Art Gallery and History Museum who told me that during Oktoberfest (which runs from September to November) the town is so crowded that the traffic backs up for miles on the one main road. I arrived at a good time to avoid most of the tourists, too late for Oktoberfest and too soon for the Christmas celebration. Of course it poured rain for the first day which also kept the tourists off the streets. 

What’s this little bit of Deutschland in Amerika like? I described it to a friend as looking like something Disney designed after drinking too many Hefeweizen (that’s German wheat beer, a beverage I’m rather fond of.) You sit down in a German-looking restaurant and the waitress has a southern accent–and I don’t mean southern Bavaria. You never lose the sense of being in a southern town with Alpine decorations pasted on. The residents tolerate it because it brings in the tourists with their money. I don’t fault them one bit for that. They have arrived at a solution to a problem that would have eventually destroyed their community. We do it here in Ocala. First the community developed horse ranching and then shifted to retirement communities to keep the place running. You do what you have to do. 

I went to Helen to see what it was like and to eat German Food. My first caution: Don’t come on a Wednesday because a lot of the restaurants are closed. I have to say I was disappointed in half the places I ate. There wasn’t anything essentially wrong with the food, it just wasn’t what I anticipated. I visited the Bodensee and nothing was quite the way I was used to it. The goulash soup and potato pancakes were not like Mother used to make. The Wiener Schnitzel wasn’t pounded thin enough. The Erdinger Hefeweizen was served in a mug and not a Weizen glass. 

Thanks to friend Chris’s suggestion I went to Old Heidelberg where the food was much more to my liking Jaeger Schnitzel (breaded pork cutlet with a mushroom sauce), delicious red cabbage and spaetzle (small German noodles) and a nice König Ludwig Hefewitzen served in its proper glass. Only disappointment was they didn’t have liver dumpling soup as publicized in the online menu. 


The real gem is Hofer’s Bakery and Cafe. Go there for breakfast and order the Bauern Frühstück–two eggs, Roasted potatoes, rolls, and a Kassler Ripchen (smoked pork chop).  It’s the way to start a cold morning. Or stop by to buy a pastry or some sausage (imported from Stiglmeirer’s near Chicago).

What else is there to do besides eat and buy souvenirs? Head a few miles out of town to Anna Ruby Falls in the Chattahoochee National Forest. I don’t know what it is about water falls that so attracts human beings. This is not Niagra, but it’s still a sight to be seen. Anna Ruby Falls is actually twin waterfalls created where two Curtis Creek and York Creek join at the base of the falls to form Smith Creek.  It’s about a half-mile on rising terrain to reach the falls from the parking lot. 

I stayed at the Heidi Motel, a quaint family-owned place complete with windmill at the top of a hill. There is a steep drive up to the motel. It made me nervous driving down it, and I would hate to negotiate it if it were icy. The driveway is also the only way up or down on foot, so if you have trouble walking, you need to stay somewhere else. It’s very convenient, however, to all the shops and restaurants. Oh yes, make sure you have a cell phone as there are no room phones. 

I probably won’t ever go back to Helen, but I want to explore the area. I am thinking about a trip to Ashville, North Carolina in the Spring. 

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

THE STRANGE HEADSTONE AND THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AT WACAHOOTA

This headstone is at Shiloh Methodist Church cemetery, Marion County, Florida. Laura Frances Geiger Born 19 May 1858, Died 25 Nov 1864. Why is it strange? There was no Methodist church at Shiloh until 1880 and the first burial was 1883. This peculiarity is partly cleared up when we discover the land on which the church is built was given By Mary “Polly” Nunnmaker Geiger, the mother of Laura Frances. According to an article by David Cook,* the headstone was found buried on the church grounds. Frances Geiger was actually buried at the Lutheran Church at Central which was destroyed some time before 1880.

Articles about the Dreher, Geiger and Letiner families indicate that they had originally belonged to the Lutheran Church at Central, a community now vanished, in Northwest Marion County. Mary Geiger’s son-in-law Luther Dreher was the grandson of Godfrey Dreher, one of the founders of the South Carolina Evangelical Lutheran Synod and Ministerium. These families were from the Dutch Forks area of South Carolina which had been settled by Germans.

That’s about all that can be found in local Ocala resources. Another part of the story can be traced by following the work of Charles H. Bernheim, the first Lutheran minister to work in Florida and in Marion County. See  http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/2010/05/mystery-of-lutheranism-in-marion-county.html  and 

http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/2010/06/mystery-of-lutheranism-in-marion-county.html

In 1860 he reported to the South Carolina Synod.

Rev. C. H. Bernheim, our Missionary in Florida, seems to be still prosecuting his work with untiring energy, having now five or more places at which he preaches. The Church, near Long Swamp, has been completed; and also the one at Wacahoota, and the membership of his charge amounts to forty communicants.

Wacahoota was the largest town in Northwest Marion County, although it’s exact location seems to be vague. Old maps show it sometimes in Marion County, sometime to the north in Alachua County and sometimes to the west in Levy county. It might be taken as the general name for the area rather. Eventually Shiloh  would form to the east of Wacahotta and Central between them. The church Bernheim writes of in Wacahoota must be the same as the church in Central.


In 1863 he reported again to the Synod.

Rev. C. H. Bernheim, of Ocala, Florida, informs me that he has resigned the charge of Luther Chapel. He writes: "The Church must be supplied with a pastor, or else the members there will be lost to us." He further states that he has "three other preaching places," that "the Church at Wacahoota is in a flourishing condition, and the audience respectable, but at the other two places the attendance is small."

I have no information about Luther Chapel at this point.

The years following this were filled with turmoil. In 1864 the only major battle of the Civil War in Florida took place in Olustee, about 90 miles north of Ocala. A small battle took place in Gainesville, 45 miles north of Ocala.  Between 1864 and 1866 Bernheim wrote several times to the Synod that he was leaving Florida or that he had changed his mind and was staying. The Synod advised him to transfer to the recently formed Georgia Synod.  For a few years from 1863-1865 he was joined by another Lutheran minister, William Julian.

According to marriage records in Marion County, Bernheim performed three weddings on February 25, 1866 and one on April 18, 1866. That is the last wedding by a Lutheran minister in Marion County in this time-frame. George Wesley Leitner married Caroline Lavinia Geiger on May 31, 1866 at Central Lutheran Church. The minister recorded was E. S. Tyner, a Methodist.

It was not unusual for clergy to serve churches of other denominations. In 1867 Bernheim was working for the Methodist Episcopal Church in Apalachicola, Florida. I think Bernheim left Marion County sometime in the spring of 1866 leaving the church at Wacahoota-Central to fend for itself. Sometime before 1880 the church at Central was destroyed, possibly in a fire. There is no trace of the church or cemetery today. In 1880 Mary Geiger formed a Methodist Episcopal church in her home in Shiloh. It appears that the families that had formed the Lutheran Church at Wacahoota-Central became part of the Shiloh Methodist Church. 

So ended the Lutheran churches in Marion County until the abortive attempt to establish one at Martin a decade later See http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/2010/07/short-history-of-lutheran-church-at.html

That’s what I have for now. I hope to do more research in The Crumley Archives in Columbia, South Carolina this fall to fill in some more of the blanks.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.


Wayne

*David Cook published his last article on the history of Ocala this past Sunday, August 30, 2015. He will be missed,

PADDINGTON

I had been working on a thoughtful piece about prayer, but it remained unfinished when I went off to the Synod Assembly. I could write a blog on the fiasco of depending on online electronic equipment to run a meeting, but I’ll forgo that pleasure. After a week of dealing with credit card fraud (my card got skimmed at a gas station) and then getting a fake phone call threatening me with a law suit by the IRS and having to deal with an insurance company to get my car repaired after it was rear-ended for the second time in a year (in between it was also sideswiped in a parking lot), I decided I needed a break.

One advantage of being retired is that I can go to the summer kid’s movies at the local theaters. So for $1 I saw “Paddington.” I had wanted to see this because I found the trailer so inviting, but I didn’t want to pay $8 or $9 when it was first released. (Yes, I am a skinflint.) 

I hadn’t read any of the Paddington stories, but I have a soft-spot for Teddy Bears. I understand that the film takes some liberties with the Paddington story, but is well within the spirit. The character of Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) is a computer-generated figure who interacts flawlessly with the live actors. (I probably should mention that Paddinton’s voice was originally to have been done by Collin Firth, but his voice never quite worked right so he stepped aside.  I don’t think he really needed the work anyway.)

The cast was amazing. The British have so many great actors who can perform anything. It’s almost like a giant repertory company. You get big-name actors playing relatively minor roles. Mr. Brown was played by Hugh Bonneville. That’s right, the Earl of Grantham himself not only performing comedy, but doing one scene in drag. His wife, Mrs. Brown, was portrayed by Sally Hawkins. I had not seen her before, but she is a very talented actress, the winner of a Golden Globe award for her role as Poppy Cross in “Happy-Go-Lucky.” 

There is Nicole Kidman playing an over-the-top villain assisted by Peter Capaldi (the latest Dr. Who) as a cranky neighbor.  For the Harry Potter crowd there was Michael Gambon (Professor Dumbledore) voicing Paddington’s Uncle Pastuzo, Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge) providing the voice for Aunt Lucy, Jim Broadbent (Professor Slughorn) as an eccentric shop owner Samuel Gruber, and an almost unrecognizable Julie Walters (Mollie Weasely) as Mrs. Bird, the Brown’s live-in housekeeper and nanny. The casting is not surprising when you realize that David Heyman, the producer if Harry Potter, also produced Paddington.

The film takes place in London, and all the exterior shots seem to look quite normal to my eye. The interiors are something else. The Brown’s house has a touch of whimsy to it, not what you’d expect from someone like Mr. Brown who is a straight-laced risks analyst. A multi-storey tree is painted behind the spiral stair case. The Geographer’s Guild headquarters combines dated computers with and elaborate vacuum tube system that could have found a home in the Ministry of Magic. At Mr. Gruber’s shop, tea is delivered in a toy train. These are the fantasy touches that make the film even more enjoyable.

Mike Reyes wrote of Paddington in CinemaBlend “Paddington is an impossibly charming affair, going down as one of the best family films since Hugo.” I  agree with that. Like Hugo, this is great family entertainment and the sort of thing an old curmudgeon like me can enjoy immensely. 

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival. 

Wayne

THE OLD GRAY MARE SHE AIN’T WHAT SHE USED TO BE

Say “Ocala” to anyone in Florida and they will reply, “Horse Country.” The 1960s saw horse ranches replacing farms and cattle ranches in central Florida. It was actually a rather short-lived change since by the 1980s the ranches were being sold off to developers who stuck up houses, apartments, and shopping malls. I live in an apartment complex called Paddock Park after the ranch it was built on. (I just discovered that the new management is changing the name. Shame on them.)

When I arrived here in 1998 there were ranches on three sides of the main intersection. At night I could hear the horses whinny. Saturday mornings I would walk over to see the horses at one of the ranches. Things changed. One ranch gave way to a Catholic High School. It’s a nice school, and they have to build them somewhere with enough land. Last year another ranch became a shopping mall. Don’t know why we needed that since it just meant the grocery store moved from a location about a mile away. Now there are seven empty stores in the old mall and about the same in the new one. That’s progress of some sort, I guess.

It’s now final that the last two ranches, Red Oak Farm and Ocala Stud, will go the way of the developers. The locals fought against the re-zoning. The planning board recommended against it. The city council, which is in thrall to the developers, overruled the decision. So a couple of thousand more houses and apartments will be sprouting up soon.

Housing developments seem to be the only going concern here. The leaders of the local guv-uh-mint manage to jinx every attempt to bring in businesses with good paying jobs. There may be some logic behind this. More jobs would increase the need for workers and raise the pay scale. That would increase the demands of the grossly underpaid  EMTs, firefighters, sheriff’s deputies, and teachers for raises. The guv-uh-mint can’t allow that because it would mean higher taxes and higher taxes means not getting elected again. 

Allowing more houses and stores, however, means more tax revenue without raising taxes. Everybody’s happy–until they get stuck in th traffic jam near the new development  That’s going to require a bigger street to replace scenic Shady Road. And if we add thousands more people, where are we going to find room in the already overcrowded emergency rooms? The result is that everything gets uglier, services worse, but the good ole boys keep getting re-elected. 

I understand the problem. It isn’t profitable to run a horse ranch, at least not so many of them. Nobody will make money putting the land back into agricultural production. The only choice seems to be sell to the developers, but do thy have to pack in so many houses and apartments and strip malls? That was the planning board’s objection. The usage was too intense. 

I don’t know if you have ever seen Riverside, a suburb of Chicago planned by Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1869. It’s a gorgeous community. I suppose it couldn’t be reproduced today, because most people would be able to afford living there, but it is at least an inspiration for what might be possible. I’m fortunate to live in a place where there was some imagination. They kept the old trees. The buildings are staggered so that you don’t look out your living room into someone else’s. The probably could have crammed 50% more apartments in here if they had laid out the property like a military barracks, but they didn’t. 

I believe that designing ugly developments with people living cheek by jowl makes life more unpleasant. Surely we can have the sense that some people had 150 years ago in how to plan communities. If only the little minds could dream of something better without looking first at the bottom line. As Robert Kennedy said paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not?”  Sadly, the satire of Carl Hiaasen comes closer to reality: “Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others see things that might be and ask: How much?”  

May he Lord bless you on your journey and great you on your arrival. 

Wayne

Pictures from top: Red Oak Farm, Ocala Stud, Paddock Park as an apartment complex.