“This Is What It Means To Say Jerusalem: The Mighty Medicine of Sacrificial Stories”

17 April 2011

The Reverend Jonathan A. Voorhees

St. Joseph’s Chapel, Kent School

Palm Sunday

The entry into Jerusalem by Jesus on Palm Sunday was a peak religious experience.  In the reading from Matthew, there is the sense of living religion, of faith coming to life in a radical new scene, one of power and majesty.  Jesus literally comes down from a mountain—the Mount of Olives—to enter the great city of Jerusalem.  He is hailed as a king, and Matthew takes pains to present Jesus as a messianic king of old, entering the city with a donkey and a colt, as prophesied in Zechariah.  The gathered crowds also speak the language of royal power and divine blessing from the psalms as they hail Jesus, waving palm branches to the chosen one. 

            “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! 
             Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

The city of Jerusalem is alive with Passover preparation, the holiday of liberation for the Jewish people, and Jesus’s arrival adds to the drama and excitement.  But let’s go back to Jesus just before the powerful palm procession; as Jesus stood with his followers on the Mount of Olives.  He has a view of the entire city from an elevation of 3600 feet.  What a view.  What a moment to stand with him.  What must have been going through his mind as he saw the panorama of the great city of his people?  In all of the gospels, Jesus predicted his death as part of God’s plan of salvation.  Yet he must have been torn, there on the Mount of Olives, lingering on the mountain, before going down into the teeming city at Passover.  There is a great tension here.  There is the holiness of the mountain peak experience, but what’s coming is the descent into humanity and human problems and pain.  There is hope in the panoramic vision—seeing the world as God might for a moment, but there is the darkness of human nature ahead in the events to come.  We have all felt holiness in the beauty of creation, but it’s much harder when you go down from the mountain into human community.  I feel this when I hike the mountains around this campus, yet know the demands and stresses of life back on campus.  I want to stay on the mountain top, to stay in the peak experience.    

Our palm branches, like the ones waved to honor Jesus, signify a joyful fulfillment, yet they are also a transitory moment of glory where we rest in the eye of the hurricane.  Surely the greatest chapter of this teaching and healing messiah will unfold in the events in Jerusalem.  How we long to stay in the moments of triumph.  If you’ve ever had a great moment of success, the human desire is to stay there.  I want to stay here; to let Jesus be in triumph, the messiah alive.     

So when Jesus goes down the mountain, he makes a decision to enter into human suffering; he makes a decision to be a suffering messiah.  Or rather, he has made it all along.  On Palm Sunday, we want to linger in triumph, but how can we stay on the mountain when the panorama of this world is so filled with suffering?  Perhaps the great human success, the moment when we are at our best, is when we don’t celebrate, but rather embrace our neighbors in need.  The people of Japan are that kind of paradoxical triumph.  The images of human suffering and human cooperation are breathtaking, mixed up together.  The simple images of compassion touch me the most; images of people carrying others on their backs, both children and the elderly.  What must it be like to be carried by a stranger to safety? 

From images to the stories, the narratives of rescue and heroism, there are too many ordinary miracles to count.  Hideaki Akaiwa returned to his northeastern hometown of Ishinomaki.  He came back to find his wife of twenty years and his mother.  He found his community underwater.  Rescuers were not immediately available, so Hideaki used scuba gear to find his home, and then his wife: “The water felt very cold, dark, and scary.  I had to swim 200 yards to her, which was quite difficult with all the floating wreckage.”  The next day he found his mother, on the second floor of her home.  But he continued to look for other survivors, even with his family safe.  Robert Bailey, a British man teaching in Japan, saved all 42 of his students by running together to a hill, just before the tsunami hit.  And then there are Fukushima 50 who have continued to work inside the nuclear power plant, even as radiation reached 10,000 times the safe level for humans.  They are actually 700 workers, not just 50, inside the evacuation zone.  These are men who have sacrificed their lives for their neighbors, their nation, their fellow brothers and sisters.  How can we not strive to do better as human beings when we encounter stories of the humanity and goodness in ordinary people when they are faced with an extraordinary crisis?  We even have help from another species, with rescue dogs being so essential in locating survivors.  They are truly man’s best friend.  There is sacrificial love all around us.  This is the love that is the love of God.  God loves us that much.  It is humbling, and it is awesome, to think of all the people who would risk their lives to keep you safe.  Jesus is a messiah of extreme help, not personal triumph.  Or rather, that conversion of our hearts to sacrificial love is the greatest triumph of all.         

            Yet all of the sorrow is still before us, as Jesus comes down from the mountain.  With God’s help, we can embrace a suffering world.  In these stories of human hope we can hold better our own burdens and struggles. 

As a faulty member, I recently began a journey by teaching a new course in Native American Literature.  How did this start?  Well, it happened through an event I still don’t understand rationally.  I will share it with you.  I was driving on Route 22 in New York State.  I am often on Route 22, either on my way to New York City, or to see my in-laws in Bedford, New York.  But on this drive, things took a very strange turn.  From a distance of several hundred feet, I saw something eerie and beautiful.  It was a hawk, swooping down from a great height in the heavens.  The hawk was increasing speed, as if spotting prey.  I have since learned that hawks can reach speeds of 120 miles per hour.  This bird was going full speed, right at me.  I began to be quite alarmed.  Even before this event, I have had a powerful connection to hawks, including some uncanny experiences.  But this one was the strangest.  The hawk and I collided at full speed, and the beautiful bird crashed directly into my windshield, right on the driver side.  I thought the windshield would shatter, or break, but it didn’t.  There wasn’t even a crack in it—no blood, no feathers.  I pulled my car safely over to the side of the road.  I wanted to find the bird’s body.  It was nowhere to be found on the roadside.  I looked everywhere.  It could not have flown away; it could not have survived.  Where was that bird?  Did I dream the collision?  I have learned that the hawk is the messenger animal in the Native American tradition, the one who brings messages from God to the humans. 

The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn.

            It took me a few days to tell my wife about the incident.  She is cool, rational, a trained attorney with a skeptical intelligence.  I’m the mystic. 

Her response:

            “I think the hawk flew into you.”

            “I think so too.” 

            At any rate, I can honestly tell you that I’m teaching a new course in the English Department because a magical bird from heaven crashed into my car.        

            In the class, we have been reading Sherman Alexie’s Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  For Native Americans, stories have real power in the oral tradition of a people.  In the language of the Native American world, stories have medicine.  They have healing power.  My study of Native American literature has taught me more about how to go to pain, to human suffering, without there being an immediate answer.  It actually takes a lot of faith to do that.  The collection of stories by Alexie was eventually made into the powerful movie Smoke Signals about two Indian young men on the Spokane Indian Reservation.  The movie is based largely on one short story “This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona.”  The occasion of the story is the journey of Victor and Thomas Builds-The-Fire to Phoenix, Arizona, to pick up the ashes of Victor’s father after his untimely death.  The entire purpose of the journey is to go into suffering--to go deeper into that mystery.  Victor doesn’t have enough money to take the trip, and the Tribal Council doesn’t have any ready funds to help Victor.  So Thomas offers to help pay for the trip, on one condition: that Thomas gets to go on the journey.  The history between the two is not good.  Thomas is a loner; he talks to himself; he’s pretty weird.  In their childhood, Victor and the other boys made fun of Thomas.  Victor even beat him up once, almost killed him.  But now they both need each other.  Thomas is an orphan, and he saw Victor’s father as a surrogate father for him as well.  The one thing that Thomas Builds-The-Fire can do is tell stories, which he does whenever someone asks.      

            “’Hey,’ Victor said.  ‘Tell me a story.’

            Thomas closed his eyes and told this story: ‘There were these two Indian boys who wanted to be warriors.  But it was too late to be warriors the old way.  All the horses were gone.  So the two Indian boys stole a car and drove to the city.  They parked the stolen car in front of the police station and then hitchhiked back home to the reservation.  When they got back, all their friends cheered and their parents’ eyes shone with pride.  You were brave, everybody said to the two Indian boys.  Very brave.’

            ‘Ya-hey,’ Victor said.  ‘That’s a good one.  I wish I could be a warrior.’”

            Sherman Alexie’s writing is inspiring, even as it goes to places of sorrow and suffering, like the journey of two people to pick up a father’s ashes.  Despite their tense history, Victor and Thomas need each other now.  Thomas needs Victor’s father as much as the actual son.   

            “Thomas Build-the-Fire closed his eyes and told this story: ‘I remember when I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane, to stand by the Falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign.  I knew I had to go there but I didn’t have a car.  Didn’t have a license.  I was only thirteen.  So I walked all the way there, took me all day, and I finally made it to the Falls.  I stood there for an hour waiting.  Then your dad came walking up.  What the hell are you doing here?  He asked me.  Waiting for a vision.  Then your father said,  All you’re going to get here is mugged.  So he drove me over to Denny’s, bought me dinner, and then drove me home to the reservation.  For a long time I was mad because I thought my dreams had lied to me.  But they didn’t.  Your dad was my vision.  Take care of each other is what my dreams were saying.  Take care of each other.’”   

            When the journey ends, the two men who have come of age now split the ashes of Victor’s father.  They fulfilled the father’s command: to take care of each other.  Jesus says the same thing to his disciples: To love one another as I have loved you.      

            “Thomas took the ashes and smiled, closed his eyes, and told this story: ‘I’m going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and toss these ashes into the water.  And your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way home.  It will be beautiful.  His teeth will shine like silver, like a rainbow.  He will rise, Victor, he will rise.’” 

The stories of Holy Week lead us to a suffering God; in the falling rain are the falling tears of God.  The events of Holy Week lead us to the simple realization that our purpose in life is to take care of each other.  The message heard, deep in the inner ears of our souls, is that you are not alone.  A long time ago, a Loving God was born into the world, through a crucifixion in Jerusalem, a sacred cross on a hillside.  This week we get to remember the story and feel its medicine.  And like Thomas Builds-The-Fire we must tell it again, to a world so deeply in need of hope and love.  Please take care of each other.        

Chapel Talk: "The Vocation of Public Service and the Life of William Power Clancey"

12 April 2011

The Reverend Jonathan A. Voorhees

St. Joseph’s Chapel, Kent School, with representatives from the United States Air Force Academy

Welcome to the Air Force Academy and Falcon Program representatives, Lt. General Kelley and Colonel Jones. We are honored to have you here at Kent School.  I hope your time at Kent is fruitful.  We enjoyed meeting you, the conversation and fellowship, at last night’s dinner.  Thanks for all you shared about the mission of the Air Force and our common purpose as a nation.    

From the words of one of my favorite movies, Casablanca: “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” 

Your visit became a cause for my own reflection here in chapel, on the theme of public service, and the important people who have shaped my life and yours.  They are our role models and guideposts, the ones who point us to God and the future.  They are the ultimate public servants, made for us and certainly for others in the service of God.  They are teachers, parents, military officers, and sometimes even actual politicians who render service of commitment and integrity.  These are the ones that help us to make the most of our gifts; or the ones that first give us confidence that we have gifts in the first place.    

There are some people about whom you can say: Without this individual, I would not be here.  For me that mentor was William Power Clancey.  He was a cathedral dean in San Jose, California, who shepherded me through the political process towards ordination in the church.  It’s actually a politically difficult process at times, and Bill got me through the maze, sometimes with style points, totally undeserved.  Bill Clancey—Father Clancey was all about service--service to his country first and later to the church.  Bill was a father figure to me when I desperately needed one.  He was also a criminal lawyer, along with being an Episcopal priest.  Powerful abilities and identities could be combined in a single individual, I learned that from Bill.  That was one of the many interesting things about him.  He had significant talents that were employed full time in helping others.  As a priest, he printed his pager number in the Yellow Pages.  He was nearly always on duty, ready to help a person in need.  The joke was that he would always beat the ambulance to the hospital to meet the person in need.  But it was no joke to Bill.  Semper fi was a way of life for him.          

Help is the ordinary and extraordinary offering of the public servant.  Bill was a public servant with extraordinary abilities.  Former Marine: I love that term.  Some would say that there is no such thing as “former marine.”  Like Gibbs on NCIS, if you watch that show.  Gibbs reminds me of Bill.  Bill was a lawyer and a marine and a priest all rolled into one, and he brought all of those experiences and abilities to the table.  He certainly gave away lots of free legal advice.  As a marine, he fought in two wars.  He was an enlisted man, fighting in the Pacific in World War II.  He came back as a captain in the Korean War.  Just like Ted Williams as a marine pilot in both wars, losing many years of his playing career in baseball.  Bill Clancey actually volunteered for Korea.  He felt like it was his duty.  After the war, Bill excelled as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley.  He called Berkeley “The People’s Republic of Berkeley.”  Even though he was a lifelong Republican, he always loved Berkeley: the largest open air mental health facility in the world, he called it.  Bill collected three UC Berkeley degrees, including a JD from Boalt Law School, and then another degree in divinity from the local seminary, where I also went to school.  Four degrees in Berkeley.  He worked for the Justice Department in Washington as a criminal attorney, and then as Assistant District Attorney of San Francisco.  Bill had serious skills, and he even had a cameo in the movie Milk when a real interview with him was placed in the documentary footage.  Bill also argued a case before the United States Supreme Court.  Of course he did this case pro bono.  That was his style.        

Last week, I was aware that something was wrong; there was some subtle change in the universe, like a change in the earth’s axis.  Yes, sure enough, a mentor of mine had reached the end of his life—Bill had died.  He had “crossed the Jordan,” as Bill loved to say about the end of the journey for all of us.  I was able to read the obituary, and reflections by loved ones.  But I also had to write this chapel talk.  His wife described it as a “holy death.”  It’s good to know that such a thing exists; it gives me comfort.  He lived eighty-five years, and nearly all of that time was in public service: both military and religious.  I’m sorry we lost touch, but I always assumed we would reconnect.  I still look forward to that day in faith, the day when we’ll all be reunited.  Bill was an active e-mail guy, but he never made it to Facebook.  He was one of the lucky ones.   

Bill was born in 1926.  He was initially the golden boy of his Irish family.  However, a blot on his early record came when he was expelled from Milton Academy; or rather, he was politely asked to pursue his education elsewhere.  The charge was initially kidnapping.  Because the local bishop’s son had gone missing, the police had been alerted of a missing person--the bishop’s son was nowhere to be found.  Bill and the boy had just gone into Boston for an afternoon away from campus; they were playing hooky.  No one seemed worried about Bill being missing.  When the boys were located back on campus that evening, kidnapping was dropped to mere truancy.  But it was enough to send Bill out to New Mexico to finish high school.  Throughout his life, he took pride in being a black sheep in his family (just so you know, if I were a pilot, my call sign would be Black Sheep), but for Bill all adversity was just grist for the mill; it could and should make you stronger, wiser, a better human being.  My theory is that it was at this moment of his development that Bill decided to be a lawyer.  He did not believe he had been treated fairly.  Bill loved a good legal battle all his life.  The man could cut through red tape like a flame thrower, and I believe he preferred defending to prosecuting (though he was equally adept at both), especially if he thought someone powerful had abused his authority. 

As mentioned, I know that I would not be here today without his expertise and constant stream of advice and wisdom, sometimes more than I wanted to hear, usually right on the mark.  I literally would not be standing here.  Bill was the first person who taught me you better have opinions and you better be able to express them.  There is nothing noble in pretending to be wiser than you are, and just hiding, being aloof, or acting a part without intelligent engagement.  Bill would catch me and challenge me to do better.    

His one liners still echo in my mind.  For a marine, he could be hilarious.  He was a man of ready wit.  People who serve and protect this country include every kind of personality you can imagine.  It could include you some day.  Just a case in point is the character of Abby on NCIS. 

Father Clancey taught me that our duty in life is to make a difference; to make a difference to each other.  That’s how God actually enters this world: through how we love each other as our spiritual vocation.  I would encourage you to imagine forms of public service for your life, including service to your country in the military, or in ministry through the church to those in most dire need, or any helping position that seeks to truly better our world.  Today, this chapel, the invitation to you is to imagine how your own skills are the ones most needed in a world with so many problems.  May God bless you in the ways that you strive to make a difference.     

Chapel Talk on The King’s Speech

7 April 2011

“The Humble Man Who Would Be King”

St. Joseph’s Chapel, Kent School

            During our recent time away from school, I was able to see, finally, the powerful movie The King’s Speech, the story of how Prince Albert, the Duke of York, became King George VI, the unlikely King of England despite a debilitating speech impediment.  Though this movie is about the struggles of a prince to assume his rightful but unexpected position of responsibility, I found the movie to also be about what it means for all of us to be human—to be human beings, and that our hardest struggles might just be the most important thing we do in our lives.    

I was slow in seeing this film, which won the Academy Award for best picture and three other Oscars for best directing, best acting, and best original screenplay.  I also thought Geoffrey Rush deserved the Oscar for best supporting actor in his portrayal of Prince Albert’s unorthodox speech teacher, and many felt the same way about Helena Bonham Carter as the Duchess of York.  I am often slow in seeing movies.  This is because I live in Kent, Connecticut, and work at a boarding school.  Know the feeling?  On our breaks, your Monday of return to Kent has become the day when my wife and I finally go to the movies, after dropping our daughters off at school.

But it wasn’t just my schedule that made me slow to see the movie.  Despite the critical praise, I was reluctant to see a movie centered on a speech impediment.  It sounded awkward and uncomfortable, and it was at times.  When I have recommended the film to others, this is one of the first questions I’m asked.  Is that all it’s about?  Yes, it’s about that, and not that much more.  It’s about the struggle to overcome a disabling condition.  But then you can’t take your eyes off the screen because of two amazing elements in the film: interiors and faces.  Some of these beautiful interiors are, of course, in palaces of royal splendor—corridors of power, and these interiors contrast with the humiliating stammering of Prince Albert.  The speech impediment brings all of the architecture down to a human scale of adversity, of struggle.  But it is still an impressive size where kings and princes and prime ministers and archbishops of Canterbury wander and do the business of church and state.  But even the humble office and building of the speech therapist, the Australian Lionel Logue, was a feast for the eyes; in the descent from royalty to the domain of the common man, even to neighborhoods near squalor, where royalty seek a cure.  It reminded me that interiors do shape us, from the beautiful building where we are now, to our living spaces, and our interaction with the natural world.  The outward world shows us something about our souls, our spiritual shadows in these hallways, or on this New England landscape.

And then there are the faces.  Colin Firth as Bertie; he has the face of confusion, pain, pride, shame, disappointment, anger, resolve, fear, tenacity.  His portrayal of Prince Albert is the broken humility of a powerful person struggling to overcome.  So human.  So like each of us.  And the most striking face of all: Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue the therapist, the one who doesn’t follow the rules and doesn’t take princes or kings very seriously.  It is a face of compassion, irreverence, wisdom, cunning, tragedy, war, survival, wit, opportunism.  The movie reminded me of how much you can see in a human face.  It reminded me of what a privilege it is simply to witness each other.  In our faces, there are the genes and dreams of our ancestors.  In our faces, there is struggle and love and brokenness and hope. 

In all our faces, there is the face of God.    

I didn’t even wait until the end before I said to myself: “This movie is a chapel talk.”  I didn’t necessarily want to give a chapel talk on the movie.  That would be somehow redundant.  But the movie itself was about what we get to do here, in this building, when we’re lucky—or when we’re at our best.    

I also have a personal connection to this movie.  Have you ever played the game six degrees of separation?  Sometimes it’s six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.  We can play it with this movie, quickly.  I have just two degrees of separation from the actual historical figures of this movie.  I have a friend named Jim Leo who is a priest who served as Dean at the Anglican Cathedral in Paris.  He is not a typical priest.  Jim is irreverent and funny and even ribald, and that’s why I like him.  At the cathedral in Paris, two of his parishioners and later close friends were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.  This is King Edward VIII, the one who abdicated the throne to his brother with the speech impediment.  King Edward was unable to remain king because he married a twice divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson, the future Duchess of Windsor.  My friend even accompanied the body of the duchess back to England after her death in Paris, and the first person to meet them when they landed was the current Queen of England, who was one of the little girls of Prince Albert, in the film.  Got it?  Royalty can be so confusing.  Thank God for American democracy…nothing confusing about us.  But to finish the game: now you can get to the historical figures of The King’s Speech with just three degrees of separation because you know me.  You also can get to Kevin Bacon pretty fast too because he lives near us in Sharon, Connecticut, and is sometimes spotted in Kent, even on campus.    

Back to my experience of this movie as a chapel talk, all on its own. 

Here are 8 life lessons from The King’s Speech:

1.       Be humble.  Humility is a wonderful gift.  It means to be of the earth.  Failure can also be a blessing.  I like to remind my basketball team on a regular basis: If you haven’t ever failed, you haven’t tried anything very hard.  Give yourself a good failure.  It might show you the way to your greatest success.    

2.      The one with the disability might just be the strongest one of all.  Though his family made fun of him, Prince Albert actually had a powerful character which was forged in adversity.  His father who mocked him said he was the toughest of them all.  What makes Colin Firth so riveting as Prince Albert is that his humiliating speech problem actually allows us to see his regal character, the makings of a king.  His speech teacher also spots a leader of a nation, not in his grace, but in the simple thing that is the hardest for him.     

3.       We call all relate to a king.  Have you ever had nothing to say?  Have you ever had trouble putting your ideas into words?  Does this happen to you just about every time you write a paper?  Or do math problems seem unsolvable?  It’s completely alright to feel like an idiot.  I try and do it at least once a day.  Bertie’s experience is our journey too, and what’s hard for you may be easy for someone else, and vice versa.  I know a lot of really smart people who don’t know how to say “I love you.”     

4.       You don’t have to psychoanalyze all the time to get better.  I loved the fact that Prince Albert’s stammer might have something to do with being forced to write right-handed when he is left-handed, and wearing braces on his legs as a boy, and being under constant pressure and scrutiny as a prince.  But the movie doesn’t go into the psyche of Prince Albert.  There is compassion in the privacy.      

5.       Work is therapy.  You don’t have to figure yourself out before you get to work.  The work in your life actually helps you understand the real you.  Work can help us heal, and healing doesn’t mean the problems go away.  You can die and be completely healed.  That’s what heaven and God are all about.    

6.       You don’t have to be perfect.  Much of my procrastination has to do with perfectionism, not laziness.  I’m not doing anything because I want my work to be perfect.  Give yourself permission to do something ordinary and then just keep working, keep working at it, keep trying.  It may become something better than perfect.  And sometimes, your country may need you to just read a speech, without throwing up on yourself.  You’ll do fine.      

7.      What you overcome is more important than what you achieve.  When I was Chaplain to the University of Virginia, I found that was the message the students needed the most.  High achieving people need to be reminded of this on a daily basis.    

8.       Create interiors of love.  The most touching interior in Buckingham Palace is the ordinary room decorated by the speech teacher to make Prince Albert, now the king, comfortable when he gives his speech about the British entry into World War II.  It is an act of love by Lionel Logue, with the whimsy and wonder of a childhood fort made with blankets on a rainy day.  Create interiors that show your heart, and your love and care for each other.  Spread success all around your world.      

I recently came across a beautiful quotation from the Hindu scriptures: “God teaches us, not by ideas, but by pains and contradictions.”  Struggle is normal.  Let us all remember that.  That would have been my ninth lesson, but eight is my favorite number.  Sometimes it seems that struggle is what bends us, and twists us, so that we can barely walk, or talk, or love.  But then, there are other days, when I know that the winds of struggle are actually the ones that make me stand upright.  Struggle and adversity help me to walk straight; they help me find the right words, not the easy ones; and they help me rejoin the human race.  May God bless all of you this spring.  May God grant you success, but, more importantly, may God bless your struggles.  Be kind to each other.