Angels in the architecture...

I see connections to the holy everywhere: in architecture, history, music, movies, television, nature, love, hate, war, animals. Everywhere. Maybe I invent the connections, maybe I try to hard, maybe I trust the truth of the Incarnation and the mystery of the Trinity too much.  But like St. Paul Simon said:

A man walks down the street - it's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the Third World - maybe it's his first time around
He doesn't speak the language - he holds no currency
He is a foreign man - he is surrounded by the sound
The sound: cattle in the marketplace, scatterlings and orphanages
He looks around, around he sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity he says Amen! and Hallelujah!
Who knows, right?  But if the truth of the Sacred is somehow intimately united as Three-in-One and One-and-Three and the presence of the Divine has truly taken up residence within and among us - sharing truth and grace beyond any separation of the human and the holy - then all these connections fit by faith and I really do hear the whole creation crying: Glory!  Psalm 85 resonates for me:

Show us your steadfast love, O Lord,
and grant us your salvation.
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people,
to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
that his glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.

I mention this "mystical sense of God's unity" because of another series of connections l have been thinking about of late.  As noted earlier this week, my Sunday School teacher from high school days was in town to visit and talk about my doctoral dissertation.  I had sent it to him five years ago but time and circumstances kept him from reading it until recently.  He told me that at first the task of reading this monster was just too daunting, but when he picked it up by accident years later ,it spoke to him in new and exciting ways. I was grateful.

During our four hour conversation he observed that I often made connections in my writing between songs and the Spirit of the Lord that he doesn't get:  How, for example, is Eric Clapton's guitar solo at the end of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" a prayer?  This isn't the first time people have asked me to explain the connections I discern when it comes to music, so I tried to cut to the chase. I believe that something is "spiritual and prayerful" if it:  a) deepens our intimacy with the holy; b) strengthens our union with God's character (and for me this is revealed in both Scripture and Christ Jesus); and also c) increases our awareness of truth, beauty and goodness in the world. 

"So when it comes to Clapton's solo, I continued, "on both the original recording in 1968 and the much more recent concert shared just one year after Harrison's death, I hear the guitar weeping like God weeps over human suffering.  This is a lament - a holy blues like some of the Psalms - that both honor the human experience and challenge us to trust beyond our sin."  After we left time for that to sink in, he said, "Makes a lot of sense to me - so why don't you include more such explications in this book - it will really help others see what is just below the surface?"  And so, yet another revision seems to be in order in the near future, yes? (But who knows when...)
Well, as I was thinking about this call to articulate the sacred connections I feel more clearly, I went to this month's church council meeting.  It is a faithful and fun group of servants striving to make wise and compassionate choices for our community of faith.  And one of these decisions involves how we address prioritizing our limited resources in light of our historic building that demands tons of repairs.  We recently had a full day retreat and found consensus about how to live into our mission while making the timely repairs that neither derails or compromises our momentum. As the various leaders rehearsed their insights from our retreat, it struck me that this isn't the first time I've been down this road.

Back in Saginaw, MI - in my first church - one of my charges was to resource the outreach ministry.  Each year, in addition to encouraging congregational participation in a variety of acts of charity, this ministry distributed close to $20K to local benevolences.  The chair, let's call him Art, was a regional business leader in one of the banks.  He was very successful in his realm and also seriously overweight, generally unhealthy, mostly cranky, unhappy, tired and often sad over family issues.  Regularly he would say to me who in all seriousness that "my definition of a good committee is one where I am the chair, one person is sick and can't come and the other forgot about the meeting."  His polar opposite, let's call him Dick, was a public school teacher who had retired after 30 years of service. He was reasonably healthy, often witty, spent lots of time volunteering and caring for his grandchildren and was fun to be with in nearly every setting.

Every month these two older white men carried on an unresolved public dialogue designed to influence the other members of our committee.  Art spoke about his business acumen - which was considerable - and how that should shape our decisions about what local charities should get our resources.  Dick always listened to Art carefully, accepted his second in command assignment patiently and then insisted that our mission was different from being an appendage of business.  Our mission, he said time and again, was to care for the hungry, clothe the naked and advance the values of Jesus and God's kingdom.  And, as happened more often in those days than now, a tense compromise was usually achieved that mixed the interests of the local business community with the calling of Christ's justice in our small city.

Now here's the connection:  as these dialogues would ripen, Art always threatened to hold the church hostage by withholding his pledge if things did not go his way; Dick, with much less money to throw around, never mentioned his tithe nor conditioned his participation in the church to anything our committee decided.  And that made a life-long impact on me as a young clergy person - one that helped me see how the love of money can corrupt even good souls - and how our commitments to God's grace and justice must never be bought or sold to the highest bidder.  I also couldn't help but notice the congruity between one man's openness to cultivating the fruits of the Holy Spirit - Galatians 5 - that Paul describes like this and the other man's sorrow:

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

One servant of God in a position of secular power usually demanded that the group follow his opinion and experience; another would call upon the testimony of Scripture and ask us to follow Jesus.  One man looked and seemed miserable most of the year; the other was at peace with himself and the world.  As a young minister, it quickly became clear to me that the powerful ones were used to getting their way - and I certainly felt pressured to go along to get along - but more often than not I had to trust and honor Dick's more gentle and humble way.  "Seek ye first the kingdom of God..."
When I was in ministry in Tucson, something similar happened when one of the local millionaire's threatened to pull their pledge if I didn't agree to a building project that they desired.  Having learned my lesson in Saginaw, all I could say was:  "You are free to do whatever you want with your resources - even stop sharing them if yo see fit - but we are going to be faithful to both the values of Christ's kingdom AND good, democratic process. I won't be held hostage..."  Sadly, they eventually pulled their money but the church continued without being compromised or bullied into submission.

And now nearly 30 years later I find myself thinking: how did the old preacher put it in the book of Ecclesiastes?  "There is nothing new under the sun." So, once again, as we wrestle with hard financial choices, we will try to look towards God's kingdom values and the fruit of the Holy Spirit as we move into the future. I really do believe - and sometimes even see - angels in the architecture - and can't help but singing:  Hallelujah!