I grew up in a traditional church, and that meant I learned a lot of poetry. Maybe not great poetry, but decent poetry. Some doggerel, of course, some mere rhyme, but in spite of that, lots of decent serviceable poetry.
I don't mean the Psalms. Those too, and of course they are poetry, and greatly so.
But what I mean here is the hymns. All the lyrics of the hymns, especially Luther and Watts and Wesley and Doddridge and Cowper and Winkworth. Such great amounts of poetry we regularly repeated growing up, in the form and dress of the hymns we sang.
Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail.
In deep unfathomable mines
of never failing skill
He conjures up his bright designs
and works his sovereign will.
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, how long,
and soon the night of weeping
shall be the morn of song.
The earth with its store
of treasures untold,
Almighty, thy power
hath founded of old.
Hath stablished it fast
by a changeless decree,
and round it hath cast,
like a mantle, the sea.
I could go on. And on and on. My head is full of lines like these. I don't have to look them up, I just know them, and there are lots more I could write from memory. I memorized these on Sunday mornings, quite unintentionally, by simply showing up in church.
No, it's not T S Eliot or Chaucer or Spenser. But it is decent poetry that serves a people. It is memorable, it honors its words and makes its images, it expands the mind and delights the ear, and it has grammatical integrity and discipline.
But this body of poetry seems to be invisible to the academic study of literature. Yes, our greatest poetry is admired and given much prestige, but the decent and serviceable poetry that nourished ordinary people is neglected and dismissed. I can't imagine a graduate student at a university being encouraged to study the common hymns as poetry.
But even in terms of cultural anthropology, isn't it obvous that something like "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" is as significant as any other poem in the English language?
Sadly, our Protestant poetry is being lost to us. Poetry in general is not a value of our culture. And poetry is not a value of our church leadership. Certainly not in my denomination. When our denominational leaders gather us together, all they want to talk about is statistics and organizations and management techniques. They don't want to talk about:
The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I'll never, no never desert to his foes.
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no never, no never forsake.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Julia
Julia Durgee goes to Old First, and she's an artist, an illustrator, and a cartoonist.
Julia has a wonderful style and vision and look of her own. I love it. I haven't seen any cartoons that are like hers.
Julia agreed to make some cartoons for our Seventh Avenue bulletin board. She puts a new one up every few weeks. I encouraged her to build them around a continuing character. So they're about Julia, of course.
And they can be open. They can explore. They can comment. They can simply express and rejoice. They don't have to make a sermon. All they have to do is help us love the world.
Now we get to have them posted here as well. Jessica Stockton knows how to do it (I don't.) You can look forward to new ones showing up here.
I am so happy that Old First is a congregation in which people can use their gifts.
Julia has a wonderful style and vision and look of her own. I love it. I haven't seen any cartoons that are like hers.
Julia agreed to make some cartoons for our Seventh Avenue bulletin board. She puts a new one up every few weeks. I encouraged her to build them around a continuing character. So they're about Julia, of course.
And they can be open. They can explore. They can comment. They can simply express and rejoice. They don't have to make a sermon. All they have to do is help us love the world.
Now we get to have them posted here as well. Jessica Stockton knows how to do it (I don't.) You can look forward to new ones showing up here.
I am so happy that Old First is a congregation in which people can use their gifts.
Julia Durgee Comic #1: Bigger
(Click on the comic strip to view at a larger size.)
Copyright © 2007 by Julia Durgee, all rights reserved.
Copyright © 2007 by Julia Durgee, all rights reserved.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Roller Shoes
I was walking in Astoria this morning, in the bright sunlight, on my way to a church meeting. Something happened that gave me great joy.
A boy and a girl were walking in front of me. He looked maybe ten, she looked twelve. They were both wearing backpacks, like for school. He was dressed "western," but she was in a long dress, and wearing a hijab, the Arabic headscarf.
All of a sudden she pushed one foot forward and started rolling. She had on roller-shoes. She went step - roll - step - roll. Right up to the doorway of the Astoria Islamic Center. And quick and smooth they opened the door and in they went.
I praise you O God for these children, and for that Muslim girl and her roller-shoes.
(And for Jose Reyes who just beat out a bunt to second base!)
A boy and a girl were walking in front of me. He looked maybe ten, she looked twelve. They were both wearing backpacks, like for school. He was dressed "western," but she was in a long dress, and wearing a hijab, the Arabic headscarf.
All of a sudden she pushed one foot forward and started rolling. She had on roller-shoes. She went step - roll - step - roll. Right up to the doorway of the Astoria Islamic Center. And quick and smooth they opened the door and in they went.
I praise you O God for these children, and for that Muslim girl and her roller-shoes.
(And for Jose Reyes who just beat out a bunt to second base!)
Friday, April 20, 2007
Long Distance Grieving
I was on the subway yesterday, reading about each victim of the massacre, and I was sobbing in my seat. I'm glad the car was almost empty. I kept my newspaper up for privacy.
This morning I got an email from our Old First family that moved to Blacksburg two years ago. The mother brought me up to date on the kids, all four of them. And I started to grieve for them too. Quietly crying while at my laptop.
They're safe, they're fine, but I realized how much I missed them. I used to teach them in Sunday School, I used to pray with them and talk to them about God, and I loved to hear what they had to say, not just about God, but about their lives. And then they moved away.
Then when another family announced in November that they were moving to Michigan, with their two little kids, my wife said, "Damn, now we'll never see those kids grow up."
The turnover in our membership is hard to take. You build relationships with people, and then they move away, and all you can do is grieve. You can't hang on to them, they have to join some new congregation where they have gone to live, but you feel it when they're gone. It's a problem in Brooklyn. The turnover, the moving in and out.
And to compound the issue, pastors tend to move around. We leave relationships behind. Our former parishioners have to connect with our successors. I'm in my fifth congregation. I just can't afford to keep connected to the people in my former congregations.
In January a couple from my second congregation had a terrible car accident. He was badly injured, she was killed. I had counseled and married them, they had been our friends. But, not atypically, we hadn't had contact for some years. They have had two pastors since we left. I felt so disconnected. What could I do but grieve at a distance.
It's one of the reasons why so many pastors keep the walls up, why they hold back from opening themelves to their congregations. The emotional outlay is just too great.
Somebody said to me on Sunday that the reason he attends Old First, even though he's Catholic, is that we are "open" with our emotions, we are candid and vulnerable and real. I was grateful that he said that. But I know why many pastors aren't that way---the grief.
This morning I got an email from our Old First family that moved to Blacksburg two years ago. The mother brought me up to date on the kids, all four of them. And I started to grieve for them too. Quietly crying while at my laptop.
They're safe, they're fine, but I realized how much I missed them. I used to teach them in Sunday School, I used to pray with them and talk to them about God, and I loved to hear what they had to say, not just about God, but about their lives. And then they moved away.
Then when another family announced in November that they were moving to Michigan, with their two little kids, my wife said, "Damn, now we'll never see those kids grow up."
The turnover in our membership is hard to take. You build relationships with people, and then they move away, and all you can do is grieve. You can't hang on to them, they have to join some new congregation where they have gone to live, but you feel it when they're gone. It's a problem in Brooklyn. The turnover, the moving in and out.
And to compound the issue, pastors tend to move around. We leave relationships behind. Our former parishioners have to connect with our successors. I'm in my fifth congregation. I just can't afford to keep connected to the people in my former congregations.
In January a couple from my second congregation had a terrible car accident. He was badly injured, she was killed. I had counseled and married them, they had been our friends. But, not atypically, we hadn't had contact for some years. They have had two pastors since we left. I felt so disconnected. What could I do but grieve at a distance.
It's one of the reasons why so many pastors keep the walls up, why they hold back from opening themelves to their congregations. The emotional outlay is just too great.
Somebody said to me on Sunday that the reason he attends Old First, even though he's Catholic, is that we are "open" with our emotions, we are candid and vulnerable and real. I was grateful that he said that. But I know why many pastors aren't that way---the grief.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
God Bless You, Mr Vonnegut
Thank you for giving so much to me in my life, especially joy.
Thank you for The Sirens of Titan. As decent an explanation of world history as any, that the Trafalmadorians were using us to display messages to a stranded traveler. That the "telos" of human achievement was a can opener, as important as the Great Wall of China.
Thank you for Cats Cradle. Your sympathy to religious discipleship was as kindly as your disparagement of it was accurate.
Thank you for Slaughterhouse Five. How it taught us to feel about war. The craziness of it. And our looseness in time and space.
Thank you for Welcome to the Monkey House. You must have known about my people. That the control of population growth should be accomplished by local anesthesia of the body below the waste, and that this should have been invented by a Grand Rapids druggist, with the origianl purpose of giving it to monkeys to keep them from copulating on Sundays when he walked home from church through the zoo. Especially on Easter.
When you lived in Schenectady, did you step into the Dutch Reformed Church there, and meet the pastor, who grew up in Grand Rapids, and whose father was my own predecessor?
Your death is of the sort you might have chosen for one of your characters.
I hope that you're having fun on some planet somewhere with Montana Wildhack.
Thank you for The Sirens of Titan. As decent an explanation of world history as any, that the Trafalmadorians were using us to display messages to a stranded traveler. That the "telos" of human achievement was a can opener, as important as the Great Wall of China.
Thank you for Cats Cradle. Your sympathy to religious discipleship was as kindly as your disparagement of it was accurate.
Thank you for Slaughterhouse Five. How it taught us to feel about war. The craziness of it. And our looseness in time and space.
Thank you for Welcome to the Monkey House. You must have known about my people. That the control of population growth should be accomplished by local anesthesia of the body below the waste, and that this should have been invented by a Grand Rapids druggist, with the origianl purpose of giving it to monkeys to keep them from copulating on Sundays when he walked home from church through the zoo. Especially on Easter.
When you lived in Schenectady, did you step into the Dutch Reformed Church there, and meet the pastor, who grew up in Grand Rapids, and whose father was my own predecessor?
Your death is of the sort you might have chosen for one of your characters.
I hope that you're having fun on some planet somewhere with Montana Wildhack.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
White Pines
I walk from my apartment to the church through Prospect Park. Occasionally, if I have enough time, I cross over Lookout Hill, and especially if it's a windy day. There are white pines up there, and the sound of the wind through white pines is just about my favorite sound in all of God's creation. It always lifts my spirit, but it also stirs my sehnsucht, my longing.
Bruce Caton, in his marvelous and beautifully written history of Michigan, reports that there used to be magnificent stands of white pines all through the Lower Peninsula. These were lumbered early on. He reports that the early lumbermen could find the largest ones simply by listening for their distinctive sound.
I was unaware of white pines till I lived a while in Michigan, and it was there I came to love them. Sixteen years ago I planted one in Hoboken, and it is doing very well. (You can see it on Google Earth, in the backyard of 606 Garden Street, just to the left of the magnolia.)
Now I look for them in Brooklyn. You can see some from the D train, off New Utrecht Avenue.
What gave me special joy last week was to see a young one, a volunteer sapling, growing on Lookout Hill. I praise God for such things.
Bruce Caton, in his marvelous and beautifully written history of Michigan, reports that there used to be magnificent stands of white pines all through the Lower Peninsula. These were lumbered early on. He reports that the early lumbermen could find the largest ones simply by listening for their distinctive sound.
I was unaware of white pines till I lived a while in Michigan, and it was there I came to love them. Sixteen years ago I planted one in Hoboken, and it is doing very well. (You can see it on Google Earth, in the backyard of 606 Garden Street, just to the left of the magnolia.)
Now I look for them in Brooklyn. You can see some from the D train, off New Utrecht Avenue.
What gave me special joy last week was to see a young one, a volunteer sapling, growing on Lookout Hill. I praise God for such things.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
The Unloved Parks of Queens
I know I'm an odd guy and I do odd things. One of the odd things I do is take long walks on my day off. Yesterday I took a very long walk---a hike, in fact---through some parks in Queens.
What, are you nuts?
Two years ago I did Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. It's the city's largest park. I had never been there before. (I went looking for the owls.) Last year I did Forest Park, on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. It's a park I've known since my childhood. Yesterday I did a string of parks: from Flushing Meadow Corona Park to the Kissena Corridor to Cunningham Park. I started at Shea Stadium and ended up on Hillside Ave.
I do these walks in early spring because it's warm but not too warm, and the ground is not too soggy, and the birds are back but the bugs aren't. On a day like yesterday I could almost watch the buds and leaves unfold. The trees were greener at the end of the hike than they were when I set out.
This was the first time I had been in Flushing Meadows since the 1963 World's Fair. I was ten at the time. The park is now a broad expanse of grass and walkways and lines of trees. It's not unpleasant, though it lacks imagination and beauty.
I walked East under the VanWyck Expressway, until I reached the Queens Botanical Gardens. Then I entered the very strange Kissena Corrider. This is a long and narrow stretch of, well, parkland that crosses the broad middle of Queens. It is divided into sections by north-south avenues. Some sections are landscaped and some have ballfields and playgrounds. Some sections are just open fields and scrub woods. These are untended, not wild, and they feel like no-man's-land.
The amount of trash and junk in these sections is distressing. You see evidence of illegal dumping and piles of construction debris. There's lots of erosion and the trails show motorbike tracks. I saw evidence of casual sex in certain places. Yuk.
And yet the birds don't seem to care. There were lots of them. I saw some flickers in one section, and a red-tailed hawk soaring. And if I were a kid I wouldn't care. Not very much.
The Corridor narrows between pristine neighborhoods, and it crosses the Long Island Expressway with a pedestrian and cycling bridge. It runs tightly between a couple schools, which use it for recreation, and it leads you to Cunningham Park.
This park is chopped up by avenues and expressways. (Robert Moses never saw a park he didn't put a highway through.) The northern section is just rough woods, full of junk and much abused and eroded by many paths and tire tracks. The middle section is mostly ballfields.
The southern section is remarkable. It's pristine and almost wild. There is no trash at all, and just two trails. There are hidden ponds and a wealth of birds and great stands of magnificent trees, red oaks and hickories and tulip trees. Such red oaks, lofty and vigorous even in their stillness. You'd think you were in the country, if not for the din of traffic on the Clearview Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway and Francis Lewis Boulevard and Union Turnpike. These very highways have served as moats to protect this hidden forest.
Then you find your way out across a highway ramp, and exit the park and head down to Hillside Ave and the bus and the subway.
These parks do not feel loved to me. Not like Central Park and Prospect Park are loved. It's not just that they are neglected, or that there is no Cunningham Park Alliance or Flushing Park Fellowship or Kissena Kindred. It's more than that. These parks don't seem to mean as much to the denizens of Queens.
Is it because Queens is less dense, and less pedestrian? That its people spend more time in the car, and their connection to the landscape is less about public space and more about private driveway and yard?
Queens people identify with their own particular town or village or neighborhood that with their borough? The Lutheran School my brother and I went to in our childhood was in Queens, but its address was always given as "Glendale, Long Island, New York." That lack of borough-identity might decrease the affection for their borough's central parks.
And Queens is also the most ethnically diverse county in the U.S.A. That too suggests less borough identity, and less identification with the landscape. The people of Queens have just not been here long enough to love the land they live on.
I loved Forest Park as a child. It was adjacent to the Lutheran School. We lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and some years (when we didn't take the city bus) we had to wait for my mom and dad drive out to pick us up, and then we played in Forest Park. We liked them coming late. We played in the narrow woods between the houses and the Interboro (now Jackie Robinson) Parkway. It was our own favorite jungle.
I didn't know Prospect Park well enough to love it. We went fishing there, and ice-skating, but we didn't play there with our friends. But now I do love it. As do many other Brooklynites. And yes, it has its share of trash and erosion, and in many spots it's torn and frayed, but in this case it's because it's loved, like the Velveteen Rabbit.
I saw few other people walking in Flushing Meadow and Kissena Park, and I saw no one else in Cunningham Park. That's never so in Prospect Park.
Human beings were designed by God to love the world, the earth, the landscape. It's what we're supposed to do. Even when we use it, and cultivate and build on it, we are to love it. Neglect can be as unloving as abuse is.
The Biblical story begins in a garden and ends in a city. It goes from Eden to the New Jerusalem. That city contains a "paradise," which is a royal garden. In the middle of Queens is paradise. I hope that the immigrants who put down roots will also come to love the land they are planted on, and the open corridor between their neighborhoods.
What, are you nuts?
Two years ago I did Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. It's the city's largest park. I had never been there before. (I went looking for the owls.) Last year I did Forest Park, on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. It's a park I've known since my childhood. Yesterday I did a string of parks: from Flushing Meadow Corona Park to the Kissena Corridor to Cunningham Park. I started at Shea Stadium and ended up on Hillside Ave.
I do these walks in early spring because it's warm but not too warm, and the ground is not too soggy, and the birds are back but the bugs aren't. On a day like yesterday I could almost watch the buds and leaves unfold. The trees were greener at the end of the hike than they were when I set out.
This was the first time I had been in Flushing Meadows since the 1963 World's Fair. I was ten at the time. The park is now a broad expanse of grass and walkways and lines of trees. It's not unpleasant, though it lacks imagination and beauty.
I walked East under the VanWyck Expressway, until I reached the Queens Botanical Gardens. Then I entered the very strange Kissena Corrider. This is a long and narrow stretch of, well, parkland that crosses the broad middle of Queens. It is divided into sections by north-south avenues. Some sections are landscaped and some have ballfields and playgrounds. Some sections are just open fields and scrub woods. These are untended, not wild, and they feel like no-man's-land.
The amount of trash and junk in these sections is distressing. You see evidence of illegal dumping and piles of construction debris. There's lots of erosion and the trails show motorbike tracks. I saw evidence of casual sex in certain places. Yuk.
And yet the birds don't seem to care. There were lots of them. I saw some flickers in one section, and a red-tailed hawk soaring. And if I were a kid I wouldn't care. Not very much.
The Corridor narrows between pristine neighborhoods, and it crosses the Long Island Expressway with a pedestrian and cycling bridge. It runs tightly between a couple schools, which use it for recreation, and it leads you to Cunningham Park.
This park is chopped up by avenues and expressways. (Robert Moses never saw a park he didn't put a highway through.) The northern section is just rough woods, full of junk and much abused and eroded by many paths and tire tracks. The middle section is mostly ballfields.
The southern section is remarkable. It's pristine and almost wild. There is no trash at all, and just two trails. There are hidden ponds and a wealth of birds and great stands of magnificent trees, red oaks and hickories and tulip trees. Such red oaks, lofty and vigorous even in their stillness. You'd think you were in the country, if not for the din of traffic on the Clearview Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway and Francis Lewis Boulevard and Union Turnpike. These very highways have served as moats to protect this hidden forest.
Then you find your way out across a highway ramp, and exit the park and head down to Hillside Ave and the bus and the subway.
These parks do not feel loved to me. Not like Central Park and Prospect Park are loved. It's not just that they are neglected, or that there is no Cunningham Park Alliance or Flushing Park Fellowship or Kissena Kindred. It's more than that. These parks don't seem to mean as much to the denizens of Queens.
Is it because Queens is less dense, and less pedestrian? That its people spend more time in the car, and their connection to the landscape is less about public space and more about private driveway and yard?
Queens people identify with their own particular town or village or neighborhood that with their borough? The Lutheran School my brother and I went to in our childhood was in Queens, but its address was always given as "Glendale, Long Island, New York." That lack of borough-identity might decrease the affection for their borough's central parks.
And Queens is also the most ethnically diverse county in the U.S.A. That too suggests less borough identity, and less identification with the landscape. The people of Queens have just not been here long enough to love the land they live on.
I loved Forest Park as a child. It was adjacent to the Lutheran School. We lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and some years (when we didn't take the city bus) we had to wait for my mom and dad drive out to pick us up, and then we played in Forest Park. We liked them coming late. We played in the narrow woods between the houses and the Interboro (now Jackie Robinson) Parkway. It was our own favorite jungle.
I didn't know Prospect Park well enough to love it. We went fishing there, and ice-skating, but we didn't play there with our friends. But now I do love it. As do many other Brooklynites. And yes, it has its share of trash and erosion, and in many spots it's torn and frayed, but in this case it's because it's loved, like the Velveteen Rabbit.
I saw few other people walking in Flushing Meadow and Kissena Park, and I saw no one else in Cunningham Park. That's never so in Prospect Park.
Human beings were designed by God to love the world, the earth, the landscape. It's what we're supposed to do. Even when we use it, and cultivate and build on it, we are to love it. Neglect can be as unloving as abuse is.
The Biblical story begins in a garden and ends in a city. It goes from Eden to the New Jerusalem. That city contains a "paradise," which is a royal garden. In the middle of Queens is paradise. I hope that the immigrants who put down roots will also come to love the land they are planted on, and the open corridor between their neighborhoods.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
The Atlantic Yards and Two Biblical Images
There are moral issues with the Atlantic Yards development. The moral issues are what the church can speak to. In the American system of church and state, where the state is meant to be neutral in religion, the moral issues need to be addressed by institutions like the church.
It is not for the church finally to judge the Atlantic Yards project, or to approve it or deny it on behalf of the public. That belongs to the government. But the government, in its judgment, must take moral issues into account. And the voice of the church can contribute to the moral discussion which will inform the decisions of the government.
Let me say in passing, that in the case of the Atlantic Yards, the government appears to be prejudiced. It has bypassed the normal processes of public judgment. If the government is supposed to be an umpire or a referee, in this case, it is playing for one of the teams.
That itself is a moral issue. And it's an occupational hazard of government. Governments are drawn to power. No wonder, because governments are designed to manage power and deal in power. We give power to government, that's the point. Or, I should say, that's one point.
The other point is that we give power to government in order to bring justice (and in the case of democracies, liberty and equity) to all the other holders and users of power. What we see so often is how power loves power. Those who are given power for government are drawn to the interests of those who have power from other sources, especially the economic.
The concentration of power is a moral issue, because it affects human freedom and human choices, especially the freedom and choices of the weak and powerless. The Bible regards the secure possession of private property and its protection from eminent domain as a sign of human freedom and dignity. The defining story is 1 Kings 21, the story of Naboth's Vineyard.
Naboth had a vineyard. A little vineyard, because he was a nobody. But it was close to the palace of King Ahab, and Ahab desired it. Had Ahab been king of any other people than Israel, he could have just taken it. It's what kings do. But the Torah forebade it. The Torah protected as sacred the private property of the family. But Queen Jezebel, herself a gentile, and familiar with the ways of gentile kings, found this preposterous. So she used the tools of royal power to get Naboth's vineyard.
They got away with it. God did not intervene. But the anger and judgment of God was made clear, and in the end, the House of Ahab paid. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house." In the Israel of God, not even kings have eminent domain.
The moral issue is what kind of country do we want? What kind of concentrations of power? What protections of private property? Who determines the public good, especially when the differences in scale are so great, and the government is drawn to the interests of the economically powerful? In the Torah, the public good is determined by the interests of the small piece of private property.
The second Biblical image is the Tower of Babel. It's in Genesis 11. The Torah is pretty clear on this. God was against it.
Not because God is against big buildings and skyscrapers as such, but because of the concentration of power which the Tower represents. Such concentrations always require hierarchies, and bosses, and dictators, and centralizations, and the sublimation of the individual to the vision of the leadership.
The second reason that God was against the Tower is because it represents the refusal to accept our limits. We don't know when to stop. We don't know how to say No, Enough.
It's not wholly different from the original sin of Adam in the Garden. The chance to not eat the fruit is what made Adam a human being, and the opportunity to say no to the fruit is what gave him wisdom. He had to use his judgment. He had to accept his limits.
Tragically, Eve and Adam couldn't accept their limit. They wanted more. They wanted to be like gods. And the builders of the Tower of Babel wanted to live among the gods.
I don't know what Frank Gehry wants. I don't know what Bruce Ratner wants or what Marty Markowitz wants. I don't think they want to be like gods. But apparently they don't know when to say, No, Enough.
The Bible is not against development. The Bible does not advocate a return to the garden. The Bible's vision for the future is a city. Buildings, streets, gates, towers. But it requires some moral expertise to judge between one kind of city and another, between, in Biblical terms, Jerusalem and Babylon.
The scale of a project can affect its relative morality. I recently saw the documentary Brooklyn Matters. The scale of this project is astounding. Are people aware that its size is monstrous? It's a moral issue.
It is not for the church finally to judge the Atlantic Yards project, or to approve it or deny it on behalf of the public. That belongs to the government. But the government, in its judgment, must take moral issues into account. And the voice of the church can contribute to the moral discussion which will inform the decisions of the government.
Let me say in passing, that in the case of the Atlantic Yards, the government appears to be prejudiced. It has bypassed the normal processes of public judgment. If the government is supposed to be an umpire or a referee, in this case, it is playing for one of the teams.
That itself is a moral issue. And it's an occupational hazard of government. Governments are drawn to power. No wonder, because governments are designed to manage power and deal in power. We give power to government, that's the point. Or, I should say, that's one point.
The other point is that we give power to government in order to bring justice (and in the case of democracies, liberty and equity) to all the other holders and users of power. What we see so often is how power loves power. Those who are given power for government are drawn to the interests of those who have power from other sources, especially the economic.
The concentration of power is a moral issue, because it affects human freedom and human choices, especially the freedom and choices of the weak and powerless. The Bible regards the secure possession of private property and its protection from eminent domain as a sign of human freedom and dignity. The defining story is 1 Kings 21, the story of Naboth's Vineyard.
Naboth had a vineyard. A little vineyard, because he was a nobody. But it was close to the palace of King Ahab, and Ahab desired it. Had Ahab been king of any other people than Israel, he could have just taken it. It's what kings do. But the Torah forebade it. The Torah protected as sacred the private property of the family. But Queen Jezebel, herself a gentile, and familiar with the ways of gentile kings, found this preposterous. So she used the tools of royal power to get Naboth's vineyard.
They got away with it. God did not intervene. But the anger and judgment of God was made clear, and in the end, the House of Ahab paid. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house." In the Israel of God, not even kings have eminent domain.
The moral issue is what kind of country do we want? What kind of concentrations of power? What protections of private property? Who determines the public good, especially when the differences in scale are so great, and the government is drawn to the interests of the economically powerful? In the Torah, the public good is determined by the interests of the small piece of private property.
The second Biblical image is the Tower of Babel. It's in Genesis 11. The Torah is pretty clear on this. God was against it.
Not because God is against big buildings and skyscrapers as such, but because of the concentration of power which the Tower represents. Such concentrations always require hierarchies, and bosses, and dictators, and centralizations, and the sublimation of the individual to the vision of the leadership.
The second reason that God was against the Tower is because it represents the refusal to accept our limits. We don't know when to stop. We don't know how to say No, Enough.
It's not wholly different from the original sin of Adam in the Garden. The chance to not eat the fruit is what made Adam a human being, and the opportunity to say no to the fruit is what gave him wisdom. He had to use his judgment. He had to accept his limits.
Tragically, Eve and Adam couldn't accept their limit. They wanted more. They wanted to be like gods. And the builders of the Tower of Babel wanted to live among the gods.
I don't know what Frank Gehry wants. I don't know what Bruce Ratner wants or what Marty Markowitz wants. I don't think they want to be like gods. But apparently they don't know when to say, No, Enough.
The Bible is not against development. The Bible does not advocate a return to the garden. The Bible's vision for the future is a city. Buildings, streets, gates, towers. But it requires some moral expertise to judge between one kind of city and another, between, in Biblical terms, Jerusalem and Babylon.
The scale of a project can affect its relative morality. I recently saw the documentary Brooklyn Matters. The scale of this project is astounding. Are people aware that its size is monstrous? It's a moral issue.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Maybach
Today on 60th at Lex I saw an unfamiliar car, a grand touring sedan, very large and impressive. Kind of ugly, though.
I crossed the street to look. It was a Maybach, a specialty label of DaimlerChrysler. They run $350,000. The plates said MD, and I noticed a parking privilege placard on the dashboard, for Cabrini Medical Center.
We might not like it that a doctor has that much disposable income to spend on an ugly car. (Though I'm sure it's got a great ride and great back seats.) But even if we don't like it, we certainly find it tolerable, and our whole health care system supports it.
In different centuries it was clergy who had that kind of excess wealth. We didn't like that either, back then, but we tolerated it, and our whole cultural system supported it.
I don't want to go back to that. But I do notice that, if money expresses cultural value, how much more our culture values the health of the body than the condition of the soul.
I crossed the street to look. It was a Maybach, a specialty label of DaimlerChrysler. They run $350,000. The plates said MD, and I noticed a parking privilege placard on the dashboard, for Cabrini Medical Center.
We might not like it that a doctor has that much disposable income to spend on an ugly car. (Though I'm sure it's got a great ride and great back seats.) But even if we don't like it, we certainly find it tolerable, and our whole health care system supports it.
In different centuries it was clergy who had that kind of excess wealth. We didn't like that either, back then, but we tolerated it, and our whole cultural system supported it.
I don't want to go back to that. But I do notice that, if money expresses cultural value, how much more our culture values the health of the body than the condition of the soul.
Mary from Midwood
Jesus was Jewish, right? Then how come his mother was a Catholic? I mean, she was born Jewish, and she had a bunch of Jewish boys (you can look it up) and she was kind of pushy about her oldest son's career (John 2), but how come on Good Friday she so quickly turned Catholic and became the BVM?
We were never able to turn her Protestant. We did it with St. Paul, we made him a Lutheran. J. S. Bach tried to convert her with his Magnificat, but she made him write it in Latin, not German, and she only politely applauded.
Bernstein made her Puerto Rican, and there's no Pentecostals in West Side Story. But at least he gave her back some real sexuality. Maybe someone could write music for the Magnificat that sounds like "I Feel Pretty." Only, in the gospels it's not about pretty, even though she's like a handmaiden in the palace kitchen that the king has taken notice of.
I wouldn't make her Protestant, but I would make her Jewish again. I'd put her in Midwood, on Avenue P, and have her fiance come from Borough Park. I would give her hair like Carole King, and her nose, and her voice. I want her to sing the Magnificat like, "I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet." You go girl.
We were never able to turn her Protestant. We did it with St. Paul, we made him a Lutheran. J. S. Bach tried to convert her with his Magnificat, but she made him write it in Latin, not German, and she only politely applauded.
Bernstein made her Puerto Rican, and there's no Pentecostals in West Side Story. But at least he gave her back some real sexuality. Maybe someone could write music for the Magnificat that sounds like "I Feel Pretty." Only, in the gospels it's not about pretty, even though she's like a handmaiden in the palace kitchen that the king has taken notice of.
I wouldn't make her Protestant, but I would make her Jewish again. I'd put her in Midwood, on Avenue P, and have her fiance come from Borough Park. I would give her hair like Carole King, and her nose, and her voice. I want her to sing the Magnificat like, "I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet." You go girl.
Visionary Leadership
Being a "visionary leader" is all the vogue. From Washington to Wall Street to San Jose. Pastors are expected to be visionary leaders too. And that can lead to problems.
My second church was in the countryside of Canada. We had issues. Most of them were cultural. We didn't expect them, because these were Dutch immigrants and their children, and I am considered very Dutch (by Americans) and I even speak the language. But we all found out I was more New Yorker than Dutch. The streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant are not a good nursery for a Dutch personality.
I was out of sorts there. I was determined to love the landscape (a matter of principal for me) so I used to take long walks around the church. The land was flat and open, with straight dirt roads at half-mile sections, and all wide fields with the odd stretch of bog or bush. There were birds and foxes and deer, and you could hear coyotes at night. Parishioners would drive by, see me, and offer me a ride. They didn't get what I was about. Why should they?
We had a conflict raging during my third year there, and my wife and I went for some counseling to an Anglican priest who specialized in helping clergy. One week my assignment was to think about "my vision for my church."
As we were driving to our appointment I told my wife Melody that if she promised not to laugh, I would tell her my vision for our church. When I told her, she broke her promise. I said that, to be honest, if I really tell the truth about my vision, judging by my doodles in my study, my vision for our church was a big tall steeple with a bell in it that you could see and hear from all around the countryside.
Romantic, sentimental, or just plain foolish? If it was right for Groningen and Utrecht and Chartres and Salisbury and thousands of villages in Europe and New England and Quebec, why not our corner of Ontario?
When the guy said "vision," I responded with something visual. I am told that I am overly literal. I always got the color "aqua" wrong as a kid because I thought it should be the color of water and that was kind of brownish-green, like the East River at 67th Street, or at the Battery.
A decade later, in my fourth church, in Michigan--a great big thing with a proud congregation--we were spinning our wheels, and so one of my predecessors, Bud Ridder, whom I came to love, took me out for lunch and said, "Dan, what's your vision for this church?" Oh no, not that again.
I remember going home and thinking, "Vision shmision, they asked me to come here to be their pastor, and I came. What else do they want. I have no vision for this church. I have a scripture lesson every week to preach on and they have kids for us to catechize and troubles for us to help them through. They asked me to be their pastor. Here I am. Who said anything about a Vision?"
So I spent the next year working on my "vision." I attended seminars and confabs. Finally, one day, it hit me, in California. My buddy Orville and I were driving up to Big Sur. We had just attended a conference at the Crystal Cathedral and it was "vision" from morning to night.
Orville was driving, he was turning right at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and I said, "Orv, I have to go to Brooklyn." He asked why. "Because I suddenly see what my vision is, and if I tell my church they won't want it." He said, "You don't know that. You have to give them a chance."
I did. I presented it. They turned it down. Definitively. They said, "We like you, Daniel, as our pastor, but we don't like your vision, we don't want to go where you want to lead us."
Eventually I got to Brooklyn. I told the search committee the same things I had said in Grand Rapids, and they said yes.
And last week, a new person at our worship service told me that what she felt in our church was "room." I was moved and more than gratified to hear her say that because "room," a visual category, has been a key part of my vision for Old First. If she felt it, it means we are achieving it, and that suggests that I am, at least minimally, a visionary leader.
I guess it's a good thing we already have a big steeple. (It might be the tallest in Brooklyn.) Otherwise I'd be imagining that all day. And as I tramp around this landscape (which I have loved since my childhood), nobody stops to offer me a ride.
My second church was in the countryside of Canada. We had issues. Most of them were cultural. We didn't expect them, because these were Dutch immigrants and their children, and I am considered very Dutch (by Americans) and I even speak the language. But we all found out I was more New Yorker than Dutch. The streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant are not a good nursery for a Dutch personality.
I was out of sorts there. I was determined to love the landscape (a matter of principal for me) so I used to take long walks around the church. The land was flat and open, with straight dirt roads at half-mile sections, and all wide fields with the odd stretch of bog or bush. There were birds and foxes and deer, and you could hear coyotes at night. Parishioners would drive by, see me, and offer me a ride. They didn't get what I was about. Why should they?
We had a conflict raging during my third year there, and my wife and I went for some counseling to an Anglican priest who specialized in helping clergy. One week my assignment was to think about "my vision for my church."
As we were driving to our appointment I told my wife Melody that if she promised not to laugh, I would tell her my vision for our church. When I told her, she broke her promise. I said that, to be honest, if I really tell the truth about my vision, judging by my doodles in my study, my vision for our church was a big tall steeple with a bell in it that you could see and hear from all around the countryside.
Romantic, sentimental, or just plain foolish? If it was right for Groningen and Utrecht and Chartres and Salisbury and thousands of villages in Europe and New England and Quebec, why not our corner of Ontario?
When the guy said "vision," I responded with something visual. I am told that I am overly literal. I always got the color "aqua" wrong as a kid because I thought it should be the color of water and that was kind of brownish-green, like the East River at 67th Street, or at the Battery.
A decade later, in my fourth church, in Michigan--a great big thing with a proud congregation--we were spinning our wheels, and so one of my predecessors, Bud Ridder, whom I came to love, took me out for lunch and said, "Dan, what's your vision for this church?" Oh no, not that again.
I remember going home and thinking, "Vision shmision, they asked me to come here to be their pastor, and I came. What else do they want. I have no vision for this church. I have a scripture lesson every week to preach on and they have kids for us to catechize and troubles for us to help them through. They asked me to be their pastor. Here I am. Who said anything about a Vision?"
So I spent the next year working on my "vision." I attended seminars and confabs. Finally, one day, it hit me, in California. My buddy Orville and I were driving up to Big Sur. We had just attended a conference at the Crystal Cathedral and it was "vision" from morning to night.
Orville was driving, he was turning right at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and I said, "Orv, I have to go to Brooklyn." He asked why. "Because I suddenly see what my vision is, and if I tell my church they won't want it." He said, "You don't know that. You have to give them a chance."
I did. I presented it. They turned it down. Definitively. They said, "We like you, Daniel, as our pastor, but we don't like your vision, we don't want to go where you want to lead us."
Eventually I got to Brooklyn. I told the search committee the same things I had said in Grand Rapids, and they said yes.
And last week, a new person at our worship service told me that what she felt in our church was "room." I was moved and more than gratified to hear her say that because "room," a visual category, has been a key part of my vision for Old First. If she felt it, it means we are achieving it, and that suggests that I am, at least minimally, a visionary leader.
I guess it's a good thing we already have a big steeple. (It might be the tallest in Brooklyn.) Otherwise I'd be imagining that all day. And as I tramp around this landscape (which I have loved since my childhood), nobody stops to offer me a ride.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
Or: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
I am a bad Protestant. I love to get ashes on Ash Wednesday, which is a very Catholic thing. The badge of repentance is a badge of joy to me. And when I see other smudgy foreheads on the streets of Park Slope I am most unsuitably delighted. The secrets are out. We are all remembering that we are dust, and that to dust we shall return. I feel like we're all floating in the air of Brooklyn, catching the light as it comes down.
Even more, I love to give ashes, or, in technical terms, to "impose" them. We had the church open all day yesterday, from morning to night, and I spent a very inefficient and wonderful day stationed in the sanctuary, giving out ashes as people walked in. We had more than a hundred this year, very few of whom I knew. I love how this opens us to our community, welcoming "whosoever will," no questions asked.
It is a privilege to do this. I figure just about everyone was having an exchange with God, some contact with divinity, some permeation of the boundary with transcendence. Many people just came in and out. Just as many stayed to pray or meditate.
One woman came in, told me she had never had ashes, asked what it meant, decided to try it, knelt, received them, and then, with sudden tears, told me that her prayer had just been answered! She went to a pew and sat in silence. Holy smokes, what a privilege.
Old First must be getting known as a place to receive ashes. We have our regulars now, from the pizzeria, the bank, the hospital, Con Edison, and real estate. We always have cops, which means a lot to me, because I know what they do for our community and what they carry and how little they are paid.
This year we had crews of firemen from two different trucks. They line up in their boots and suspenders and jackets (not their helmets!), and taking turns they kneel. I put the ashes on their foreheads, I tell them to remember that they are dust and to dust they shall return, and I am moved to be doing this, and I think, who the hell am I to have this honor? I'm giving them ashes? I telling them about dust? These guys should be saying it to me! But, then, I am just the vehicle for something greater than myself. Their business is not with me, but with God, and I just happen to be the coupling. But still, I consider it a very great honor.
The day is framed with opening and closing services. Here the people are mostly from Old First. I like this because it's people I know and love and we are sharing something. The sign is minimal but the depth is great. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Together we accept our mortality, and our need for mercy, and the gift of repentance. It is very much like a children's song. I think that Ash Wednesday makes the lightness of being to be quite bearable.
I am a bad Protestant. I love to get ashes on Ash Wednesday, which is a very Catholic thing. The badge of repentance is a badge of joy to me. And when I see other smudgy foreheads on the streets of Park Slope I am most unsuitably delighted. The secrets are out. We are all remembering that we are dust, and that to dust we shall return. I feel like we're all floating in the air of Brooklyn, catching the light as it comes down.
Even more, I love to give ashes, or, in technical terms, to "impose" them. We had the church open all day yesterday, from morning to night, and I spent a very inefficient and wonderful day stationed in the sanctuary, giving out ashes as people walked in. We had more than a hundred this year, very few of whom I knew. I love how this opens us to our community, welcoming "whosoever will," no questions asked.
It is a privilege to do this. I figure just about everyone was having an exchange with God, some contact with divinity, some permeation of the boundary with transcendence. Many people just came in and out. Just as many stayed to pray or meditate.
One woman came in, told me she had never had ashes, asked what it meant, decided to try it, knelt, received them, and then, with sudden tears, told me that her prayer had just been answered! She went to a pew and sat in silence. Holy smokes, what a privilege.
Old First must be getting known as a place to receive ashes. We have our regulars now, from the pizzeria, the bank, the hospital, Con Edison, and real estate. We always have cops, which means a lot to me, because I know what they do for our community and what they carry and how little they are paid.
This year we had crews of firemen from two different trucks. They line up in their boots and suspenders and jackets (not their helmets!), and taking turns they kneel. I put the ashes on their foreheads, I tell them to remember that they are dust and to dust they shall return, and I am moved to be doing this, and I think, who the hell am I to have this honor? I'm giving them ashes? I telling them about dust? These guys should be saying it to me! But, then, I am just the vehicle for something greater than myself. Their business is not with me, but with God, and I just happen to be the coupling. But still, I consider it a very great honor.
The day is framed with opening and closing services. Here the people are mostly from Old First. I like this because it's people I know and love and we are sharing something. The sign is minimal but the depth is great. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Together we accept our mortality, and our need for mercy, and the gift of repentance. It is very much like a children's song. I think that Ash Wednesday makes the lightness of being to be quite bearable.
Friday, November 03, 2006
The Old First Steeple
A local Park Slope photographer has made a webpage which features photos of the Old First Steeple in different seasons, weathers, and lights. I don't know who this photographer is, but the pictures are beautiful. I love the way the light changes with the clouds and time of day, and the way that the light brings out the different colors of the stone. There is even one picture of the steeple in a snowstorm. The photos seem to be taken from a rooftop on, say, Fourth or Fifth Streets, and the perspective is wonderful. Click here to access the link. The Old First Steeple is an extravagance of an earlier age. No church would build such a thing today. Our culture prefers tall business buildings and condo towers. Let's be grateful to the members of Old First of 110 years ago who invested in such a thing of beauty beyond their own horizons, and such a sign-post of transcendence, the yearning of the earth for heaven.
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