Tim Rogers-Martin, our former associate pastor, was installed last week as an associate pastor at North Avenue Presbyterian Church, and Susan and I got an opportunity to attend.
The installation was woven into the regular 11 a.m. service. I think that’s because North Avenue isn’t so much a neighborhood church as much as it’s a citywide church, so once people leave for the day, it’s more difficult to get them back for a midafternoon service than it is here.
I’d never been to North Avenue. They have what I think is a great asset for a church in their location; a parking deck underneath the church. The sanctuary is similar to ours, large, with an elevated choir loft but with no privacy rail.
Julie and all of Tim’s kids were there, Jacob unshaved and sleepy. He’s a freshman at GSU—typical. Tim’s mom and dad were there too, up from Florida. Bo and Maureen Emerson (with Joey in tow, cleaned and pressed, I might add) were seated when we got there as were some folks related to persons Tim had asked to perform certain parts of the service. You remember Jane Hubbard. She had a part in the service, the charge to the congregation.
I had more than idle curiosity about the choir and the music. There was a processional, in red robes, and I’d say there were about 20 singers, seven of which were men. Susan says she thinks Julie told her they have a couple of paid section leaders, and given the number of men you can almost guess that one would be a tenor. At 900 members, a ringer as a section leader becomes an affordable luxury.
I’d have to characterize the music as diverse, almost like touching all the bases; “Shine, Jesus, Shine” as the introit, “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name” as the opening hymn, followed by “Spirit of the Living God.” There were a couple of special anthems presented, Faure’s “Cantique de Jean Racine” and something evangelical, “The Prayer” which was performed beautifully by their praise music director. She had a voice like Kay Potter’s granddaughter. To finish up we sang, “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less.” So it seems that there was something for everyone, the hymns were all easy to sing, and the sound filled the space.
Over the years, David Flick, der choirmeister, has drug me screaming and kicking to certain music that on my own I would’ve never been exposed to. Especially the French stuff. Well, the Faure piece I mentioned above has become one of my favorites. The French love their tenors to get the mustardy parts and their paid section leader earned his money on this one. There were two other tenors with him but I could hear him clearly even though he wasn’t belting it out like I would’ve been. You see, there’s a part to that piece where the Lord is being implored and the tenor part floats throughout it, all longing and sadness like Dido on the shore of Carthage abandoned. Oh, my friends, music will preach! He gave us this gift to lighten our load in this dark world.
The whole installation thing was joyful. The main pastor there is a fellow who’s been a prayer partner of Tim for years and his charge to Tim demonstrated his regard for Tim both as a man of God and as a human being. And Jane, you’ve come a long way baby. It was great to share Tim’s joy.
They had a guest preacher too, and to be fair, sometimes I only hear what I’ve walked in with. But his sermon about “loving Jesus so much you can’t help but talk about him all the time” left me discouraged and doubting because my spiritual experience didn’t parallel his, and I didn’t hear him acknowledge the “many rooms” idea.
Sometimes I think of PC-USA as spiritual triage. People like me, maybe you, and (I know) some of my friends can come, be exposed, and somehow find their way despite the heterodoxical thinking we walk in with. Grant it, sometimes I long for the robustness of 5—point Calvinism, and chafe under the “God’s Community Group Speak” which seems to be our specialty at times. But at least I know all—the good, the bad and the drunks—are encouraged to continue to seek the Lord, The Linguist.
And bottom line: the gospel is sometime an anvil to me, defying my efforts and wish for personal righteousness. I am thankful—besides all my theories and confabulations—that there exists that one tiny mustard seed of hope.
And that was the point of the last hymn,
“My hope is built on nothing less, Than Jesus’ blood, and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
Man, I sang that like my life depended on it, Susan looking at me out of the corner of her eye, shaking her head, wondering “what next?”
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Quality of the Ride
The last night I drank was like the first night I drank: I drank until I blacked out and I woke up in trouble. The drinking that night had been the same but the morning after was different. I had what we call in AA, “a moment of clarity.” That is to say it dawned on me that I couldn’t control my drinking and that if there was to be any aspiration of a decent future my drinking had to stop.
As a newcomer to AA, I was relatively “high-bottom;” that is, I still had what passed for a job, a place to stay, my health and civil relations with my family. If you didn’t know about the hair-raising things I’d done while drinking, you’d say the main consequence of my drinking was a failure to get started as an adult, at least in a fashion commensurate with the advantages of my upbringing and education. As I said, I came in to recover my future.
Now it’s not like that for some. There are recovering alcoholics who through their addiction have lost nearly everything you can call your own: family, career, house, health, freedom and the most energetic years of their life. I know a guy who comes to the AA meetings here at Columbia Presbyterian Church on Saturday nights. He now has double-digit sobriety and sponsors newcomers but he had walked the long road. Early in his addiction, he used to take a couple beers into the shower with him in the morning to wake up. In his later addiction, he was homeless and initially cleaned up with street people at CARP, a recovery program located on south Candler Road. In transitional housing when he first came to AA, he’d try to speak at meetings but he couldn’t maintain his train of thought. He’d end up having to stop abruptly so for a while he just stopped talking. All he wanted from AA was to not take a drink that day.
Not me, not this drunk. During my early recovery, my first sponsor told me I “came in talking. And,” he continued, “you haven’t said a thing yet.” And he was right. It was all about getting my life on track—better job, another degree, moving to Atlanta, and don’t forget the females. It wasn’t about me changing. Therefore, I wasn’t willing to do the work AA promises will change you, for instance, steps 2 through 11. I was a classic two-stepper: for Step 1, I admitted I was powerless over alcohol, got active in an AA clubhouse, and passed directly to the service work part of step 12. It worked for a few years.
My “long-road” friend discovered before he came to AA that addiction is a fatal disease. But arriving, for me, it wasn’t life or death so much as it was about the quality of the ride here on the planet.
In prayer meeting last week, a friend in Christ brought up something that was breaking her heart. Her unmarried, younger sister had quit her job as a teacher (with six years to go for her pension) to work in an unfunded hospice in a remote part of India that can appropriately be called “Third World.” She said her sister told her that she had received “a special call.” There the sister cares for the dying night and day. Medical supplies and assistance are scarce. They frequently don’t know where their next meal will come from. Per our friend, the sister, in her late 30s, appears to be in her 60s. Her mother and father send what assistance they can, but the mom, at times, is inconsolable. She cried when she told us this.
So this is a dark treasure; a sister who is called to martyr herself; “a special call” indeed.
And it calls to us as well. As creatures, we grieve the hardship and eventual loss of her sister even as believers something inside us shouts for joy at her Christ-likeness. But, for goodness sake, doesn’t this illumine our expectations as American Christians by the length of the shadow it casts?
I originally came here, to Columbia Presbyterian Church, as an extension of my AA program. On firm footing there, the literature (if not the people) encourages church participation. But I told you, I joined for my future, for the quality of the ride. I want to look good and make a lot of money. I want to know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I want everyone to admire me, and I don’t want to break my mother’s heart. Every single element of her sister’s call defies my initial hope for chasing a relationship with a Higher Power. I am schooled by this.
My brother wrote something to me in the same vein a couple months ago. He wrote, “The tendency in our own selves to expect comfort, joy, security, serenity as a result of our relationship in Christ is frankly intractable. Worse though, is that our expectation is further fueled and endorsed by folks who think and teach that fulfillment of the kind that Christ offers can somehow be gained in a way that does not include something dreadful—we gain only by a well-trod path, the way of the cross.
Now I don’t wish to demean our efforts and hope here at CPC by launching into a condemnation of my efforts for the Lord to date or promising (yet again) an effort-driven decision to do better. Yet that’s my first reaction. But I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt and there’s little power in that for broken-old me. At the same time, this “special call” calls me to sit in Romans 8:13A for a time with her in mind. For instance, maybe amortization of the flesh might call for more than leaving work early to attend a church meeting. Clearly, I am in need His mercy now, more than ever.
Romans 8:13A “for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.”
Learn more about the 12 steps: http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/smf-121_en.pdf
As a newcomer to AA, I was relatively “high-bottom;” that is, I still had what passed for a job, a place to stay, my health and civil relations with my family. If you didn’t know about the hair-raising things I’d done while drinking, you’d say the main consequence of my drinking was a failure to get started as an adult, at least in a fashion commensurate with the advantages of my upbringing and education. As I said, I came in to recover my future.
Now it’s not like that for some. There are recovering alcoholics who through their addiction have lost nearly everything you can call your own: family, career, house, health, freedom and the most energetic years of their life. I know a guy who comes to the AA meetings here at Columbia Presbyterian Church on Saturday nights. He now has double-digit sobriety and sponsors newcomers but he had walked the long road. Early in his addiction, he used to take a couple beers into the shower with him in the morning to wake up. In his later addiction, he was homeless and initially cleaned up with street people at CARP, a recovery program located on south Candler Road. In transitional housing when he first came to AA, he’d try to speak at meetings but he couldn’t maintain his train of thought. He’d end up having to stop abruptly so for a while he just stopped talking. All he wanted from AA was to not take a drink that day.
Not me, not this drunk. During my early recovery, my first sponsor told me I “came in talking. And,” he continued, “you haven’t said a thing yet.” And he was right. It was all about getting my life on track—better job, another degree, moving to Atlanta, and don’t forget the females. It wasn’t about me changing. Therefore, I wasn’t willing to do the work AA promises will change you, for instance, steps 2 through 11. I was a classic two-stepper: for Step 1, I admitted I was powerless over alcohol, got active in an AA clubhouse, and passed directly to the service work part of step 12. It worked for a few years.
My “long-road” friend discovered before he came to AA that addiction is a fatal disease. But arriving, for me, it wasn’t life or death so much as it was about the quality of the ride here on the planet.
In prayer meeting last week, a friend in Christ brought up something that was breaking her heart. Her unmarried, younger sister had quit her job as a teacher (with six years to go for her pension) to work in an unfunded hospice in a remote part of India that can appropriately be called “Third World.” She said her sister told her that she had received “a special call.” There the sister cares for the dying night and day. Medical supplies and assistance are scarce. They frequently don’t know where their next meal will come from. Per our friend, the sister, in her late 30s, appears to be in her 60s. Her mother and father send what assistance they can, but the mom, at times, is inconsolable. She cried when she told us this.
So this is a dark treasure; a sister who is called to martyr herself; “a special call” indeed.
And it calls to us as well. As creatures, we grieve the hardship and eventual loss of her sister even as believers something inside us shouts for joy at her Christ-likeness. But, for goodness sake, doesn’t this illumine our expectations as American Christians by the length of the shadow it casts?
I originally came here, to Columbia Presbyterian Church, as an extension of my AA program. On firm footing there, the literature (if not the people) encourages church participation. But I told you, I joined for my future, for the quality of the ride. I want to look good and make a lot of money. I want to know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I want everyone to admire me, and I don’t want to break my mother’s heart. Every single element of her sister’s call defies my initial hope for chasing a relationship with a Higher Power. I am schooled by this.
My brother wrote something to me in the same vein a couple months ago. He wrote, “The tendency in our own selves to expect comfort, joy, security, serenity as a result of our relationship in Christ is frankly intractable. Worse though, is that our expectation is further fueled and endorsed by folks who think and teach that fulfillment of the kind that Christ offers can somehow be gained in a way that does not include something dreadful—we gain only by a well-trod path, the way of the cross.
Now I don’t wish to demean our efforts and hope here at CPC by launching into a condemnation of my efforts for the Lord to date or promising (yet again) an effort-driven decision to do better. Yet that’s my first reaction. But I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt and there’s little power in that for broken-old me. At the same time, this “special call” calls me to sit in Romans 8:13A for a time with her in mind. For instance, maybe amortization of the flesh might call for more than leaving work early to attend a church meeting. Clearly, I am in need His mercy now, more than ever.
Romans 8:13A “for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.”
Learn more about the 12 steps: http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/smf-121_en.pdf
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