Homily – St A’s Reunion – Gillson Park

August 1, 2010

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, `What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, `I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

“Today your soul shall be required of you”

In the 1930’s depth doctor of the psyche, Carl Jung, wrote a book:

Modern Man in Search of a Soul.

What is it?  Where is it?  How do you grow a soul?

Modern man, which includes modern woman,

Typically doesn’t know s/he has a soul.

Do you have a soul?

Are you sure?

 

I am here this weekend for a reunion because this parish, St A’s,

Nurtured my soul, called it out, welcomed it gave it room to breath

And cheered it on.

Truth is, no one but God – as the Sermon on the Mount puts it,

“Your Father who sees in secret,” – can give birth to your soul.

In the secret place of your heart.

But a church can be, and St A’s was, the midwife

Who creates the conditions where that may happen,

Who continually reminds us that’s what we’re here to do.

That the maturation of our souls takes precedence over “larger barns.”

“Today your soul shall be required of you.”

 

When I arrived in this neighborhood, I was 13 years old,

Moved away from my childhood home and the huge gang of baby boomers that surrounded us there.  And took up the journey on Central Avenue.  Six blocks from St A’s, six blocks from Gillson Park, and six blocks from Buddy Scheuble’s house. 

 

Howard School was a shock.  It was huge. 

 

You could lose your soul there if you weren’t careful.

And the probability of that happening at New Trier (there were 5000 students there the year I graduated) was even greater.  It was a brilliant school but heartless. 

St A’s was faithful and good to us, seemed to know we would need a smaller place “where everybody knows your name.”  This parish provided lots of midwives, and holy ground where a soul might grow “in wisdom and strength.”

 

While I indulge my sentimentality, let me invite you to your own recollections.  Can you remember the moments when your soul was teased out into the light?

 

First glimmer was during a retreat at Lake Geneva when I was in 7th grade.  High school and jr hi together.  The older kids, who were so awesomely cool and beautiful, were talking about being cool (which anywhere else was the height of disrespect of “cool”), cluing  us concerning the standards – I remember the example of the blue and white pinstripe, button down oxford shirt, penny loafers and white levis.  Their point was, that in the promised land that was the church, you didn’t need all those things.  You could belong even when you got all that wrong.  The kingdom of God had higher standards, and a much wider embrace.

 

That was what I needed to hear!

 

There ‘s something more to me than that which meets the eye. 

 

A soul?

 

Of course I went home and applied all my persuasive power to my parents to get me white levi’s and a button down shirt.

 

Remember I said, the church is the midwife, but borning the soul is between you and your Maker.  And I wasn’t there yet.

 

I did understand that I needed a group for us young kids, where we could meet and greet our shy young souls. But how to begin a group like that?

 

There were some in Mr. T’s 7th grade Sunday School class – Seabury curriculum, two questions: who are you?  And why?  He teased the truth out of us using that Socratic method.  Socrates was a midwife of the soul.  And so was Mr. T.

 

He told me that if I wanted a youth group, I would have to ask lots of other kids to join and most would say “No.” We got a phone list.

 

And I called week after week.  I was so shy, so awkward, so scared.  Month after month.  I cried and pulled my hair out.  

 

Soul is discovering your heart’s desire and becoming willing to go for it, even when it hurts.  Loving pastors and loving parents and a loving God kept healing us up until the miracle happened.

 

Remember the moments of suffering which called out your soul?

There was the all day Saturday paint party (a miracle! that any got on the wall, followed by the youth group dance.  With the old juke box full of just the right mix, its colored lights, and enough slow dances.  That was the first night, since 7th grade, that I felt I belonged anywhere.  All of me, inside and out.

 

There were the early morning corporate communions.  No one ever said what that meant.  “Uncorporate communion” is an oxymoron.  So “corporate communion” is a tautology, albeit an important one.  Those sleepy mornings were our Emmaus Road, when three or six or nine of us were gathered together and discovered God in our midst.

 

The conferences – did we actually call them “retreats” – at Racine.  The crinkly nuns, still wearing crisp habits, the silent chapels, the bonfires, bed jumping, air guitar playing nights.  Earnest, risky sharing groups all day long.  These events as much as anything else grew our souls and gave us confidence that in the church we could trust our souls to come out to one another.

 

Then there were the real retreats to St Gregory’s in Three Rivers.  What a gift to us.  Pine and cedar, incense, shuffling feet in deep shadow, chants and silence, sweet, soft silence.

 

Every day on the North Shore we saw our parents put on suits and march to work for larger barns.  Here was the proof of the unseen something more, of spiritual pilgrims who dared to give their entire lives to the loving search for God.  The first baby steps in that direction. 

 

And West Virginia mission trips.  Almost heaven.  Blue ridge mountains, dirty funky river bottoms.  St Paul’s, in the Avondale holler, where Jake and Kizzy’s cornbread and beans, met the North Shore.  Our risk and our willingness to serve were met by their risk and good humor, and our souls were wakened and we stretched every nerve to get big enough for one another and big enough to love them.

 

And there were the long hours when Vicky and Kathy and Bud and I sat down in the youth room, planning, some, but mostly just sharing what it meant to be a boy or a girl, a woman and a man.  Thank God for those moments, because without them the soul could never have been made flesh.

 

We were “star dust, golden” (Joni Mitchell).  We were also “caught in the devil’s bargain.”  In 1972, after I’d left Wilmette for college and become a radical and an agnostic.   Home for Easter, I learned that Eric Long, nominal Episcopalian, my best friend in 8th grade, lived on 11th street, jazz drummer, killed himself.  It was about being gay, about growing up with an alcoholic father, about too much psychedelia, and mostly I think, about grief that his huge, beautiful soul could not come out in the light.  Eric couldn’t or wouldn’t ever come to our youth group.

 

There’s a lot at stake.  Today your soul may be required of you.

 

Eric had soul, but he didn’t have a group like ours to surround it with love and prayer.  I think he died grieving his own soul.

 

I remember attending a sunrise Easter service, without my family that Easter.  I was probably worshipping with some of you.  And walking home, through the parking lot, past Eric’s house, weeping and gasping for the beauty and the promise of the resurrection.  Not an Easter passes that I do not thank Eric and Jesus for pushing me to the edge of this faith. 

 

And there were the ordinations.  Ray Britt, our youth group leader with Jean, finding in those day’s, his vocation.  Thunder and lightning, Johnny Walker and Tangueray.  Whew. 

 

And also, (I am being so self indulgent) my own ordination to the diaconate here at St A’s.  I remember being coached by my high church betters that I was supposed to prostrate myself before the bishop and thinking, “Not me, dude.  I am hard core Protestant Episcopalian, free thinking American boy, blah, blah, blah.” 

 

Then Bill Bottom uncorked that organ: “I bind unto myself this day, the strong Name of the Trinity….”

 

“Christ be with me, ………..”

 

And someone – was it Fr Mazza? – started singing the Litany for ordinations, and I looked up and there was no Bishop, but only the cross and the altar, and I could feel behind me my grandmother, and the rest of my family, living and on the further shore, and the whole amazing congregation, on earth and in heaven who had midwife’d my soul, and supported and encouraged me all my unworthy way onward, and I crashed into the floor, face down, wishing I could bury myself under the weight of all that glorious love.

 

What a fool was I.  That day, my soul was required of me.

 

No doubt you can remember many more moments when you soul, in the power of the Spirit, made itself known to you?

 

Treasure those moments.  Forget not.  Find those who can honor and cherish them.  Thank God for them.  And gift those opportunities to your own children and grandchildren.

 

One last memory – we’re making this one up as we go along (memories are made of prayers and soulful longings): picture all of us baby boomer Episcopal kids, young again, wrapt in choir or acolyte robes, red and black, with white cottas, and the organist steps it down to a whisper as communion is coming to a close, and we sing,

“Let all mortal flesh keep silence…. And with fear and trembling stand.”  And in your peripheral vision you see a great multitude whom no one can number, saying, “Amen!”  Glory and honor and dominion and splendor to Christ and to the Lamb, for ever and ever.

 

And now may the long time Son shine upon you, all love surround you,

 

And the pure light of your God given soul guide you all the way on.

 

Bob Towner

btowner@charter.net