Buona sera da Roma

Well, I've been traveling for about a week and have seen a lot of Italy that I didn't catch on my previous trip. My classmate and I stayed near Sorrento and saw some of the sights in Naples (yuck), Pompei (extensive and relatively pristine), Capri (touristy but stunning), the Amalfi Coast (a tough drive and a site to see!), Paestum (2500-year-old temples that are apparently in better shape than many of their contemporaries in Greece), and quiet Piano d'Sorrento (home). A happy (for us) plumbing problem at the Porto Salvo guest house got us an upgrade to the really charming Secret Garden Relais (same owner). It's not just a clever name--it took us an hour and a half to find it. It's in an orange grove. Behind a wall. Down a pedestrian-only street (which is saying something in Italy).

Pictures soon and news from the start of our interdisciplinary course on history, architecture, theology, ecumenism, and the ethics of power here in the Eternal City. Ciao!

(Additional) Good News of Great joy

For those of you who haven't heard through other channels (or haven't heard the story), I'm writing to let you know that I am now engaged! Kristin and I decided sometime in November that we were ready to take the plunge, and we ordered a ring at Savitt Jewelers in New Haven when I was there for Thanksgiving.

The plan was for me to propose sometime over our Christmas visits home. Now, Kristin is from Whitefish Bay, and my parents now live in Waukesha. This, combined with the constraint of not involving her parents in the planning (so as not to spoil the surprise), had me feeling particularly anxious. Have you heard people talk about both successful and (especially) unsuccessful proposal scenarios?! We're looking at a lot of pressure here. How do you make it a surprise? How do you make it memorable? Wisconsin, much as we both love it and miss it, seemed fraught with peril.

In case you don't know, my lovely fiancée loves New York, and especially loves the West Village's Church of St. Luke in the Fields. So it was only natural that she plan to be in the city for her birthday on December 18 and for church the following morning. With final exams upon me during that weekend but only one major test to take (and an online one at that), I saw my opportunity for a genuine surprise proposal. I planned to moan and groan about marathon study sessions for a liturgics class that I'd legitimately neglected ("It's only a lot of reading if you do it," is a sad VTS mantra but also sometimes an important survival strategy), while in reality making my way to the big proposal in the Big Apple.

My best friend, Carl, suggested a subway proposal (did I mention she also loves the subway), and our mutual friend and my co-conspirator, Julia, helped me refine the plan--Q train proposal to take advantage of the outdoor East River crossing, rendezvous point at James in Brooklyn if we failed to make the connection.

Of course, the only thing that could possibly go wrong did: as the week before the big day progressed, Kristin got so sick that it became increasingly clear she would not be going to New York for her birthday. With my tail between my legs, I got on the Megabus on Saturday morning planning to hop the Metro North to New Haven for a subdued and less-life-changing birthday visit. I almost left the ring in Virginia to avoid the temptation to propose in a decidedly sub-ideal city and circumstance.

But just before we went into the Lincoln Tunnel, I got a text to the effect of "Antibiotics doing their job! Feeling much better today and might be able to at least make it church tomorrow, yay!" I got off the bus, called Julia, and proceeded to plot a new plan. Julia called Kristin to confirm her improved state of health and insist that they meet at St. Luke's early and grab a quick belated birthday breakfast before the service. I scouted out the beautiful St. Luke's garden (though less beautiful in winter, of course) for a spot where she'd not see me immediately upon entering. And then I had to figure out a place to spend the night, since I'd planned on sleeping on the floor next to whatever friend's couch she'd booked for herself that night. Thankfully, my summer roommates were around and had a couch with my name on it.

The morning arrived, as did the soon-to-be-fiancée, and everything worked out better than I could have hoped. She was indeed surprised, and we had a wonderful morning of sharing our good news with our St. Luke's friends at coffee hour before and after the main liturgy. After that and a quick lunch with friends, I was off to Virginia on the 3 p.m. Bolt Bus. An exhausting weekend, but a wonderful one. To top it off, I was greeted by my classmates back at VTS by a surprise gathering and champaign toast.

It has been lovely being together in Wisconsin for more than a couple of hours, and it has been lovely sharing the news with family and friends. Thank you so much for all your warm wishes and prayers! We'll let you know when we have a date, but our lives are full of uncertainty right now, and it's liable to be a long engagement!

Sermon Catch-Up

It's been a busy couple of weeks (see forthcoming post), so I'm just now getting around to posting my sermons from the second and third weeks of Advent. They were each shortened a bit on the cutting-room floor, but this ought to give you the gist. Indeed, the Advent 2 sermon was given from the aisle with no notes (a new experience for me, and a surprisingly positive one), so the manuscript is really just what I handed in in homiletics class and was the starting point for my oral prep.

Advent 2
Advent 3

A Tale of Botched Science Reporting -and/or- A Plea to Headline Writers

If I'm understanding it correctly, then I'm massively disappointed with how someone (Gizmodo? headline writers?) is shaping reports of NASA's new findings on Gammaproteobacteria GFAJ-1. The first release I read, by Gizmodo at Wired Science via an excerpt on Episcopal Café (I love my church), made it sound like a life form had been discovered in Mono Lake whose biochemical makeup included arsenic in the places we expect phosphorus to be.

Not so, explains a second post on Wired Science by Rachel Ehrenberg of Science News. Researchers believe they have coaxed the bacteria to replace phosphorus with arsenic. The actual situation is still pretty mind-blowing but much more modest than we'd been originally led to believe (apparently Tom Faber commenting on Episcopal Café's Facebbok page has since also caught the error). Here's the NYT's take:

The bacterium, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California and grown for months in a lab mixture containing arsenic, gradually swapped out atoms of phosphorus in its little body for atoms of arsenic.

I'm usually not concerned with "Who's to blame?!" in these situations, but I just spent ten minutes thinking the universe was vastly different from what we thought it was. And now I find out that, well, some people working in a lab think that maybe it might be that way and have compiled some evidence based on a clever experiment. Again, this is still a mind-blowing piece of science news, but the ball has definitely been dropped, journalistically.

So who is to blame? Well, it may be that Gizmodo just didn't write a very good article. But if you go over to the NASA press release, I think you may find that the culprit could be who the culprit almost always is in these situations: the damn headline writer. Sure, the release itself starts with the outsized claim, "NASA-funded astrobiology research has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth." But then it immediately makes clear that the new life form is "able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic." That, in my opinion, is a far cry from the reality touted in the headline: "NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical." At the very least, it should be "NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Capable of Rebuilding Itself With Toxic Chemical."

To go back to Gizmodo: Yes, "This changes everything." But not quite so massively as it would have if they actually "discovered" (instead of, more accurately, "built") "a completely new life form" that, when the experiment started, was a completely ordinary life form with an intriguing habitat and a possibly novel biochemical ability.

My guess is that it started with the misleading NASA headline. How many times do we have to make that mistake? Editors: please, please, please, let your writers suggest the headline. Doing otherwise is just asking to embarrass yourself...and to dash the hopes of excited science geeks.

Update (In Words and Pictures)

A lot has happened in the past few weeks. Here are the ultra-highlights:

(1) I became a godfather. The new Christian in question is Josiah William Paul Kradel, son of my dear friends Adam Kradel and Melissa Wilcox. The baptism took place at Adam's parish, Christ Church in Media, PA. It was a special day. I was struck in particular by the very real connection I felt not just with little Josiah but also with my fellow godparents. That's us, with Adam (collar) and Melissa (right of Josiah).

(2) I ran the Marine Corps Marathon. This was also a really great experience. I will be eternally grateful to my friend and training partner Josiah Rengers (lots of Josiahs in my life), who kept me motivated and talked me through the hamstring cramps that set in as we hit the Pentagon parking lot. Strangest part: the eerie isolation of mile 20, above the Potomac on the 14th Street Bridge. I think there may be more of these in my future. That's us with fellow runners Katie and Lara in our VTS Fighting Friars shirts.

(3) [Not a highlight in the positive sense:] The VTS chapel was destroyed by fire. Many of my colleagues have written movingly about what the chapel meant to us. What I eventually settled on is this: The thing I appreciated most about our little mismatched chapel is that it accepted you where you were. I find the austere Georgian/Colonial style so prevalent around here to be really alienating; it's as if at any second Jonathon Edwards might just ascend the pulpit and preach damnation at me. I much prefer the stone and Gothic Revival more typical of an Anglo-Catholic parish, but for me the space can be almost too transcendent. If I've got an off-hours need for a prayer chapel, a parish whose Sunday worship is like being in heaven throughout the service is probably gonna be overkill. But VTS's Immanuel Chapel did not put on any airs. It was a great place to pray late at night, and it was the perfect place to worship after my grandmother died last year, when all I wanted to do was sit in the back of the balcony and silently lean on my classmates and teachers doing the work of the liturgy for me. I will miss worshiping in a place that was so honest about its own imperfections. And I will miss the Miriam Window.

(4) I wrote some music. Well, I harmonized some music. I'm currently taking Advanced Musicianship at VTS, and it has been a great way to reconnect with my long-dormant jazz training. My final project was to reharmonize a hymn, so I took a few liberties with the Advent plainsong chant Conditor alme siderum ("Creator of the Stars of Night"). My favorite reaction came from my friend Carl: "That's a lot of half-step motion. I think you would've gotten burned at the stake for that."

We're entering finals mode around here, so it may be more radio silence from me for a few weeks, aside from posting the sermons I'll preach at St. John's on 2 and 3 Advent. Exciting upcoming travel includes Milwaukee for Christmas and Rome for January term. Stay tuned!

Sermon: "How do we solve the sandwich?"

I preached my five-minute sermon on Mark 5:21-43 today in homiletics class. I share it below in case (like at least one person I know) you enjoy reading sermons online at every possible moment. Note that it was written for and preached solely to an academic audience; I understand that the very premise of "solving the sandwich" wouldn't fly in a congregation ("who cares!"), at least not without a lot more legwork.

My one other word of introduction is that I think I belong (at least for the time being) to the school of homiletical thought that says a sermon should be inductive, allowing the hearer to "problem solve" along with you and arrive at his or her own conclusions as you go. This is apparently the position associated with Fred Craddock and excerpted nicely here in Tom Long's The Witness of Preaching:

Taken as a whole, then, the sermon form proposed by Craddock is an attempt to organize the flow of the sermon so that it "corresponds to the way people ordinarily experience reality and to the way life's problem-solving activity goes on naturally and casually." (125)*

* In this light, I couldn't help but think about my attraction to exegesis and preaching as looking a lot like my attraction to science and engineering. See Thomas Kuhn's "Normal Science as Puzzle Solving" in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

My way of thinking about this issue is that every sermon is a "teaching sermon" in that every sermon (okay, maybe most sermons) ought to be modeling how we as Christians (indeed, as particular kinds of critically thinking Christians) engage the Biblical text.

So, without further ado...

--------------------------------------------------------------

“How do we solve the sandwich?” This is the question I always find myself asking in Mark. He includes these “intercalations,” where one story is inserted into another, no less than nine times. In a gospel with so much forward momentum, why all this interruption and doubling back? What do we make of this surely intentional storyteller's device? Let's search for some clues about the theological importance of this particular Markan sandwich.

We could start by examining the two main characters, who are a study in contrast. Jairus is named and well-known, male, a religious and community leader (5:22), a person empowered to action. The bleeding woman is anonymous, female, a patient and a victim, almost certainly shunned by the likes of Jairus for her uncleanness (25) and probably taken advantage of by doctors legitimate and otherwise (26). They couldn't be more different, these two, and yet notice where they end up: in turn, meek and mighty each fall at the feet of Jesus (22, 33). Perhaps the sandwich, then, serves to remind us that “God shows no partiality” (Romans 2:11). Both are worthy of Jesus's mercy.

Another approach might be to look carefully at the role of faith in each story. Despite his relative social empowerment, Jairus is the picture of passivity in the faith department. Before we know it, he's just part of the crowd, along for the ride as the throng “presses in on” on the healer headed for his home (24). In contrast to the woman, who reaches out to Jesus on her own initiative and receives his healing power as a result of her faith in action (34), Jairus requires a little encouragement: “Do not fear,” Jesus tells him, “only believe” (36). Perhaps the sandwich encourages us to aim for the faith of the woman at its center, but reassures us that, in the end, grace abounds, and those of us with a more marginal faith will nevertheless receive the saving help we need.

Let me propose a third option. Suppose that, at least stylistically, there is no sandwich. What if Mark is constantly interrupting the narrative because that's just the way things tended to go when Jesus was out among the people? What if the way these two stories comment on one another is to emphasize that Jesus, unlike the disciples, never suffers from tunnel vision? What would that mean for our lives of discipleship?

Well for starters, and this is the hard part, I think it suggests a motto for our lives as ministers. It's a motto you'll recognize if you join us for the fourth installment of our Harry Potter marathon on Saturday night. It's the motto of Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, a hot-shot hunter of evil wizards. The motto is this: “CONSTANT VIGILANCE.” The symbol of his vigilance is his magical left eye, which can rotate a full 360-degrees and see through both walls and the back of his own head. Now, I believe Jesus's instant awareness “that power had gone forth from him” (30) is suggestive of his own constant vigilance: a caring attention to the needs of those around him. As ministers, our own attempts at a Christ-like constancy should always be open to finding the needs of the world in places we wouldn't expect and at times that may not be convenient us. A magical eye sure would help.

Now, this sounds like exhausting news at best, and an unachievable standard to live up to. But suppose again that there really is no sandwich, that Mark's meandering storytelling is simply indicative of God's alertness and persistence and compassionate concern for the needs of all God's children. Then the good news for us and for the those we minister to is that the love of Christ cannot be contained. It is effusive, a cup overflowing, a story that cannot help but meander, an all-seeing eye that longingly but tirelessly seeks us out. And though there will be days when our finite attention narrows or our tired eyes droop closed, we can rest assured in the knowledge that God's never will.

Post-Columbus-Day Prayer

One of my colleagues from the VTS Native American Heritage Month committee distributed this prayer this morning. It was published by the Native American Ministries Office of the Episcopal Church. I thought it did a fairly nice job of addressing what is problematic about Columbus Day in a positive and understated manner:

CREATOR, we give you thanks for all you are and all you bring to us for our visit within your creation.

In Jesus, you place the Gospel in the Center of this Sacred Circle through which all of creation is related. You show us the way to live a generous and compassionate life,

Give us your strength to live together with respect and commitment as we grow in your spirit, for you are God, now and forever. AMEN.

I'm Not A Marathoner...

...but I'm getting close. Yesterday my training partner (the unflappable Josiah Rengers) and I hit the pavement at 5:15 a.m. and did our longest training run to date. We're about a month out from the Marine Corps Marathon and, after a shorter long run next weekend, will start to taper in earnest. It's been an almost uniformly positive experience.

What I was reminded of yesterday was how significant the mental challenge of these long runs can be. Before our last one, which was about eighteen miles, I didn't know what there was to be afraid of. Most of my long runs has gone really well, so I approached this one very upbeat. It didn't turn out so hot (stomach problems, caloric problems), and so yesterday I was kind of a wreck early on. It definitely helped to be with someone who's been through all this several times before.

As much as I love the solitude of running, I'd have to say my biggest piece of training advice is to find a training partner you like spending time with. Preferably one who's already an accomplished runner and with the pastoral skills of a soon-to-be priest. Perhaps that leaves a small pool of candidates. I guess I'll just count my blessings, and the last month's worth of miles.

I'm Not A Poet...

...but I play one in homiletics class. Here's my poetic/midrashic take on Mark 5. Was this poem largely an excuse to write something in iambic pentameter? Yes. But I do really wonder about what it must have felt like for the disciples to be constantly thinking narrow-mindedly only to be rebuked (in words or, as in this case, silently) by a Lord who is always several steps ahead of them. Maybe I wonder about it because it's such a familiar feeling.

A knot between my shoulder blades had inched
Its way from left to right from dawn 'til noon.
And I, for one, the last to disembark,
Had suspected we'd depart again so soon.

It seemed to be our master's way to wear
Our welcome thin with just a single cure.
At least this time he'd cast away a legion
'Ere we casted off again for the western shore.

But still, that afternoon of inching back
Did little to improve my state of mind.
Had I known The Way included so much rowing,
I'd suspect I'd not have left my nets behind.

So shoulder strain and pent up irritation
Came with me as I joined the evening's throng
And jostled just behind the troubled Jairus,
Whose synagogue, en mass, followed along.

En route there was an incident of sorts.
(In hindsight, though, it wasn't incidental.)
What's kept that run-in fresh for me years later
Is that I could be so cold, and him, so gentle.

At first he asked the crowd which one had touched him—
I asked him how and why he hoped to know—
And then, in fear and trembling, came a woman
Who for twelve years spent and suffered, with naught to show.

“It's not good for you to be here,” I'd have shouted,
Since the rules were clear despite her desperate cries.
But before I spoke I glanced in his direction
And glimpsed the sea of mercy in his eyes.

What I've Been Up To Instead Of Unpacking

One of my new leadership positions at VTS is forum coordinator. Part of this job involves inviting famous people (most of whom will turn us down, but a few of whom won't) to come to campus for cheap and give talks during the lunch hour. Part of this job involves recruiting VTS students, faculty, and staff to do the same thing for free. The rest of this job is logistics.

Now, I like logistics. It's (They're?) kinda what I studied in grad school. But this job is taking over my life. I'm cautiously optimistic that my early time investment in a new system will pay off as the year creeps on (thanks, Paul). Let's hope so. Otherwise all I'll have to show for it is this lousy Web site.

Tired grumbling aside, I do think that www.vtsforums.org is gonna make my job a lot easier, and it was actually quite a bit of fun to do. It had been over a year since I'd played around with Google Apps (see the suspiciously similar www.stfrancisuw.org, www.diomil.org, and www.stjameswb.org, as well as previous posts), and I discovered several nifty new features. I still think this tool is one of the best things going for Web sites that are functional, free, and maintainable by non-experts. In particular, I highly recommend it to churches on a budget.

CSC Ethos Scores Scholarship

I recently got some glad tidings about a scholarship I applied for back in the spring. The award is given in memory of Anne McNair Kumpuris, and in their note her parents told me they thought their deighter "would have appreciated [my] view on life." It's a view that's been largely teased out on this blog, so it seemed appropriate to post the principal essay here. Enjoy:

One important ah-ha moment that came in a very different setting from where I am today but continues to shape my life occurred during my junior year of college. As part of a history of science class, I was reading about Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Bohr was influential in developing what came to be known as quantum mechanics, a subject I studied in some depth as an undergrad and then graduate student in engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But the moment itself came as I worked through a piece on Bohr's philosophy. What I already knew about Bohr was that he'd changed physics through one simple but daring mental leap. Scientists were currently arguing about the nature of light, whether it was a wave or a particle. For decades, they'd been successfully studying it under the assumption that it was a wave. The wave hypothesis had great explanatory power, and there was no real doubt that it was true. However, a series of key experiments then came along and seemed just as unambiguously to show that light is, in fact, a particle. Bohr was the one who forced us to get our heads around the fact that it is both; light behaves as a particle or as a wave depending on the way you observe it, the way your experiment aims to study it. Previously, it hadn't occurred to anyone that this was even an option. The idea is part of what came to be known as the “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum mechanics, and Bohr abstracted it into the slogan that would eventually end up on his Coat of Arms: contraria sunt complementa (“opposites are complementary”).

As I read this article on how Bohr applied “a general lesson to be drawn from quantum mechanics” to other fields of study, I noticed a vague but palpable sense of excitement building up inside me. Sitting on a beat-up blue couch in a crummy college apartment, I began reinterpreting whole swathes of my life and studies. I had ideas for research papers, a new understanding of my church and it's dual Catholic-Protestant identity, and some much-needed affirmation that my trying to keep up with honors humanities coursework during engineering school could be fruitful and worthwhile. There were many new facts before me, but the resounding force was more like an emotional understanding: the fact that reality is inherently multifaceted felt right to me, like few things in my life had ever felt. It's an idea that I've in some sense staked my life to, and it's one of the forces that brought my spiritual life into balance with my intellectual life and eventually gave me the courage to leave my Ph.D. program in engineering and head to seminary.

I've learned a few things about the Bohrs of the theological world since coming to Virginia. I've seen contraria sunt complementa at work in the early church rejecting the Diatessaron (the gospel harmony that eliminated the distinct, multifaceted witness of four separate gospels), the Council of Nicea affirming the dual nature of Christ as both fully human and fully divine, and Thomas Aquinas's ingenious philosophical method of engaging the tension between two apparently contradictory truths. Time after time, God prods us into acknowledging that this world we live in is stubbornly resistant to oversimplified or monolithic thinking. It's there in the doctrine of the Trinity and in our Anglican via media and in the sub-microscopic phenomena that I think a little bit less about these days than that morning four years ago. As I reflect on that strange day in my life, I realize the Holy Spirit must really have been with me if today I can sit at my desk at Virginia Theological Seminary and write that—at least in some sense—everything I learned in seminary I learned first from Niels Bohr.

Back on the Hill

The good news about this year's dorm room: more living space. The bad news: less closet space. It's going to be a long day or two. But not just yet. I've got a Web project to finish that I hope to be able to announce soon!

King Jed

I'm in Media, PA, visiting my friends Adam Kradel (Rector of Christ Church, Media) and Melissa Wilcox (former chaplain at St. Francis House). And this is their youngest son, Josiah. I just had to share.



In case you're keeping score at home: After meeting the vestry of my new field ed parish outside of Baltimore (St. John's, Ellicott City), I will finally be arriving back in Alexandria late tonight. Looking forward to no longer living out of a suitcase. At least until Friday, when I leave for New Haven for the holiday.

Preacher Man, Part 2

Madison was, as always, a delight. (The Twitter feed is probably a good summary of my weekend there, in case you're interested.) I still remember visiting Madison during my senior year of high school and saying to my girlfriend, "Man, I can't believe we're going to get to live here for four years." It turned out to be seven in my case, and I still can't believe it. In particular, Madison is an amazing city to run in, and I got my money's worth on Friday. I also got to catch part of a former colleague's Ph.D. defense and another's oral examination practice; turns out I've forgotten a lot of nuclear engineering material already. Other than that, Wisconsin micro-brews were consumed, stories were told, and good times were had.

Also, this sermon was preached. Thanks for having me, St. Andrew's!

Preacher Man (Two-Week Stint)

Yesterday I preached at Trinity Church, my home parish of many years. It was a really positive experience: a warm welcome from familiar faces, good feedback from parishioners and clergy, and a wonderful liturgy besides. The highlight of the morning was definitely the vestry member "faith story of the week," which had us all in tears at the late service.

Interestingly, it turns out that half the retired Protestant clergy in Wauwatosa (Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians) attend Trinity, which made for some interesting conversations in the "receiving line," or whatever we call it. On the whole, though, the lay feedback was much more specific and useful than that from all these retired pastors. The moral of the story: Trinity is a healthy, thriving, and appealing place to be right now. I'm so glad.

If you're interested in having a look, here's a link to the PDF. Bill says the audio will also make it here at some point.

Next week: St. Andrew's in Madison. The service times are 8 and 9:30. The texts?: "a sort of a progressive Miss Manners." Should be interesting.