Kristin Stoneking

Maybe it’s because, in academic communities, by the time we get to this point, the quarter or semester has worn on so long, and our cumulative weariness is compounded by the fact that the hardest part, finals and endings, is yet to come.  Or maybe it’s because, for many of us, the coming Thanksgiving holiday means going home to whatever demons or skeletons we’ve conveniently forgotten while constructing our own lives for ourselves.  Or maybe it’s just because it gets dark and cold outside, signaling to us that it’s time to go internal.  Whatever the reason, Thanksgiving seems to bring with it a swirling of the unresolved, a crashing in of fear and pain and despair, as arms held out straight buckle against the force of brokenness on the other side of the wall.

There is no liturgical reason why Thanksgiving is (almost) always followed by the first Sunday in Advent.  Thanksgiving, a secular holiday, is tied to the end of harvest and celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, while Advent, the season that prepares Christians for the birth of Jesus, begins four Sundays out from Christmas Day.  But Advent begins in chaos, and Thanksgiving forever to me seems the true inauguration day to that season of madness.  The scriptures we read as the season begins put this squarely in front of us:  “In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken” and “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint for fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.”

When Dylan Thomas said, “Do not go gentle into that good night.  Rage, rage against the dying of the light” he was talking about his father’s impending death, knowing that while his father was yet old, more life was worth the struggle.  And struggle it is, so much so that we can sometimes scarcely perceive what future or life might mean.  But, what we learn each year in Advent is that the struggle is the generative time, the time when we can do nothing else but embrace the work of grief and hope.  It is not gentle work.  There is so much in our lives that, in order to survive, we must suppress and wait for a more convenient time to deal with, or deny that there is any dealing to do.  But loss and brokenness always demand our willingness to feel , to rage, to confront, to weep, and only then to move on.

What is hope when there has been no despair?  When we finally get to Christmas Eve, the scriptures give us, “The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.”  There is no way around suffering, only a way through.  On the way through, we are changed:  strengthened to accept paradox, able to live with open hearts, changed to allow the messiness of honesty and disorder to be a part of life.  Our salvation is in the chaos, which leads us into light and life and birth.

Elizabeth’s mother, Dot, turned 80 Sunday, and though we celebrated with the broader Campi clan on Long Island this summer, we flew to Phoenix last week to engage in part two of this milestone on the actual day.  As always, Dot wanted us to attend church with her and to sit on the front row, making sure the pastor knew that she wanted time to introduce us to the congregation.  Though I’ve tried to explain the risk she’s taking with this, basically outing me in a United Methodist Church where anyone who felt the need to uphold the UMC’s prohibition against ordaining gay and lesbian persons could push the issue and send me to trial, I’m not sure she really gets it.  When she introduces us, we all smile graciously, but I also harbor a mix of pride and bemusement.  This time, I asked her again if she cared what people thought, and the octogenarian adamantly replied, “I don’t give a shit.  Excuse my French.”  But caring what people think and understanding the risk are two different things.

I have no issue with the risk she’s taking; I’m out by my own hand in publication (this blog post being just another example.)  But I do think that many of our allies have a tendency to overlook, or just not be aware, of what it means to be gay clergy in the United Methodist Church.  Still, I think this is the only way forward.  Acknowledging the risk, even in a small way, only gives this unjust rule power, and I would hope we would all choose not to bow to it.  And gently educating our congregations about this injustice within our denomination is also incumbent on all of us.  I’m reminded of two quotes:  one by Ghandi, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” and the other the title of one of my favorite books, “This bridge called my back.”

Dot’s church is a relatively new church, started to be a United Methodist presence north of Phoenix, basically out in the country but where population expansion looked immanent.  After eight or so years, the church is still struggling, and that very afternoon the congregation was voting on whether or not the church would close.  In the children’s sermon, the pastor named veterans as heroes and suggested that the children might one day also have a chance to serve in the armed forces and be a hero, (Dot, herself as patriotic as they come, a member of the GI generation and the mother of a Navy vet, whispered, “I hope not!”) and then the leader of the group of recovering drug addicts who were present in worship to give testimony said, in explaining his program, “We teach Jesus Christ above all others, not Buddha, not Mohammed, not Allah, or whatever they say” and I put my head in my hands and almost left. 

But then the young men who were there sang, and shared their stories of recovery, and I was moved, and inspired, and humbled.  When I talked to one of the guests after the service, I cried, at his strength, his perserverance, his faith, his embrace of life after death.

And this is how it is with the church.  So broken, yet so full of promise.  So human, yet our chance to see God.  So ailing, yet a path to true healing.  I do not know the outcome of the vote later that afternoon, but I do know that God will continue to move in our midst, finding ways, as we risk and as we fall, to help us soar and heal.

The twenty-four hour period peaking at midnight on October 31 is a time when some believe that the line between the living and the dead becomes thin, and we can touch our departed loved ones in ways that we can’t the day before or the day after.  In the Christian church, we celebrate All Saints Day on November 1, honoring and remembering all in our community who have gone on to the church triumphant.  For the last several years, Davis UMC has sung a requiem on this day, or the closest Sunday to it, connecting us to that part of our Christian tradition, modeled after a Latin high mass, where we can find comfort through the sublime in music and poetry.

I got to hear the requiem twice yesterday, once as a parent to hear the small part of the children in the larger piece (to my delight, John actually seemed to know some of the Latin) and once in my role as pastor, as we officiated a virtually silent communion while the choir sang, “May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs welcome you upon your arrival, and lead you into the holy city of Jerusalem. May a choir of angels welcome you and, with poor Lazarus of old, may you have eternal rest.”  All of this took place while the names of the dead flashed on the screen overhead—mostly names of persons who I knew that conjured memories and scenes, smiles and stories as I thought of them.

This summer my family and I saw the King Tut exhibit at the de Young along with thousands of others.  The Pharaohs believed in an afterlife even more amazing than their lives on earth wherein they essentially became gods.  Their elaborate mummification rituals, burial chambers and included riches were all part of this belief, as they thought their bodies needed to be fully preserved, and their possessions would all be necessary in the next life.  And while we may consider this belief merely interesting and historical, it seems to me that the Pharaohs were right:  their faces and their stories are being read by hundreds of thousands as these exhibits travel the world and people line up around the museum to get in.  In their commitment to their beliefs, the Pharaohs have made those beliefs true; however powerful and influential they were in life, they are much larger in death.  Their lives, their movements, their actions, their stories are known among the generations.  What do any of us really have, in life or death, but our stories?

Which brings me back to the requiem and the remembering of our own dead.  Our communities hold who we are, in life and in death, by knowing us well enough to know our stories, to hear our stories, and sometimes even to add their own mythologies to what we have done and been, as these stories are told among the generations in our communities of faith.  We live on because we have been known, and because our spirits and stories now exist in the faith of those we have touched.  What a blessing.