Author Archives: Gordon C. Stewart

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About Gordon C. Stewart

I've always liked quiet. And, like most people, I've experienced the world's madness. "Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness" (Wipf and Stock Publishers, Jan. 2017) distills 47 years of experiencing stillness and madness as a campus minister and Presbyterian pastor (IL, WI, NY, OH, and MN), poverty criminal law firm executive director, and social commentator. Our cat Lady Barclay reminds me to calm down and be much more still than I would be without her.

The Distant Murmurs of Prayer

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“In our imaginations, we listen for the distant murmurs of prayer,” wrote Dennis Aubrey in his post “In Seclusio at Thines” posted on Via Lucis Photography.

Listening for the distant murmurs immediately brought to mind a hymn composed by Anne Quigley in 1992. The tune is LONGING. The textual refrain is:

“There is a longing in our hearts, O Lord, for you to reveal yourself to us. There is a longing in our hearts for love we only find in you, O God.”

It was the recollection of the text that drew me to LONGING. I searched YouTube for possible videos for this post but found that the lightness of the tune, like so much contemporary Christian music, left me longing for “the distant murmur of prayers” that echo down the ages in the Gregorian Chants once sung in the now empty or mostly empty monasteries and churches that inspired Dennis to conclude “In Seclusio in Thines”:

“[PJ and I] … hear the echoes of sandaled footsteps in lonely churches long deprived of their monastic communities. And in our imaginations, we listen for the distant murmurs of prayer.”

I long for gravitas awakened by the beauty of silence.

Two Presidents – November 22, 2014

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Today is the anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK), 35th President of the United States of America.

Who killed JFK remains a question for the ages. Someday, perhaps, we will learn the truth of why and by whom he died, but for now the story must be told again, remembered for what it was and for what might have been.

Some things are,
or, so it seems,
“not meant
to be”

Things like
Jack and us
that almost
were

Yet some things,
I repose,
never fade
or die away

Some things not
“meant to be”
like Jack and me,
live on

As things that are,
I surmise,
not meant
to die

For love is not
a thing,
an object that
can die

It hangs around,
like time,
in spaces all
its own

– GCS, Nov. 22, 2014

 

It must be remembered and mourned afresh today when hatred for his successor runs rampant and “lapses” in White House security inexplicably abound. One theory of President Kennedy’s assassination includes not only a rogue element of the CIA but also the Secret Service, charged to protect the President. Prayers are in order for the President who stood tall this week in his speech on immigration reform.

For our President, Barack, for the leaders of the nations, and for all in authority, let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy.

For the poor and the oppressed, for the unemployed and the destitute, for prisoners and captives, and for all who remember and care for them, let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy.

Defend us, deliver us, and in Thy compassion protect us, O Lord, by Thy grace. Lord have mercy.

[Excerpts from The Book of Common Prayer, Form I, 1979 Pew Edition, page 384.]

Verse – How and Why?

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Some say “God has a
plan for you.” But I say,
“There is no plan. There is
no meaning we find;
only the meaning we make.”

But how do 12 Bald Eagles circle
overhead during simultaneous
memorial services for the slain
children of Red Lake – six over
Red Lake; six over Saint Paul?

Why does the Egret wading in
the pond suddenly stop its fishing
and fly across to the window on
the other side where a mother
grieves her daughter’s death?

Are you and I the only makers
of meaning or is there Another
outside or inside of nature,
a Meaning-Maker inside, between
and among everything that is?

– Gordon C. Stewart, November 22, 2014

 

 

 

The President’s Speech

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President Obama rang the bell last night in his speech on immigration. The President is a Constitutional lawyer. He is also a man of faith, a thoughtful Christian who interprets the Bible the way Abraham Lincoln did, and, like Lincoln before him, the President preached to a divided nation from the White House.

He used the bully pulpit to stop the bullying.

“Scripture tells us, we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger — we were strangers once, too. My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.”

This morning Speaker of the House John Boehner, who for the past year-and-a-half has personally blocked a vote in the House on the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill, filed a lawsuit, alleging the President has exceeded his authority. Mr. Boehner and others also threaten impeachment.

Very few of us understand the Constitutional separation of powers well enough to assess knowledgeably whether the President has or has not exceeded his executive authority, but given similar actions by every recent President, both Democrat and Republican, the Las Vegas odds-makers would surely lay heavy odds in favor of the Constitutional lawyer in the White House.

Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and secular humanist leaders have led the fight for immigration reform for many years. They have commended the President’s actions and have renewed the call for Congress to pass bipartisan reform.

Because they’re not bomb-throwing religious extremists, there likely will be little media coverage of these religious leaders support for the President’s speech and actions. Like Mr. Obama, their faith, and the faith of the people and congregations they represent, are thoughtful and fairly quiet in demeanor. They don’t make headlines. But once in a while, one of gets to preach from the White House.

In the habit of some preachers who invite response from the pews following prayers or a sermon, “Let all the people say ‘Amen!’

Idealism and Terror

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When one thinks of idealism, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi comes to mind. Moral and spiritual giants who stand for ideals that make the world a better place. We think of Idealism as good in the face of evil, or of ideals lifting us up from the dirt of reality, purifying life from its toxins. Ah, but there lies the fatal flaw in idealism itself.

George Will’s Washington Post opinion piece “A Murderer’s Warped Idealism” looks afresh at idealism and evil, not just evil masquerading as idealism, but idealism as a source and form of evil itself.

Will’s commentary zooms in on Adolf Eichmann, executed at midnight 1961 for his role in the German State’s systematic extermination of 6,000,000 Jews. During the trial in Jerusalem Eichmann minimized his role in the Holocaust, presenting himself as a thoughtless functionary carrying out the orders of his superiors.

Referring to newly discovered writings by Eichmann which form the backbone of a new book by German philosopher Bettina Stangneth, Will writes:

Before he donned his miniaturizing mask in Jerusalem, Eichmann proclaimed that he did what he did in the service of idealism. This supposedly “thoughtless” man’s devotion to ideas was such that, Stangneth says, he “was still composing his last lines when they came to take him to the gallows.” (Bolding added by Views from the Edge)

Eichmann and Hitler were not without ideas or ideals. They were not thoughtless. Nor were they irrational, as those who believe that reason can sea us believe. They were idealists who sought to lift up a super race, burning away the world’s impurities as their deranged hearts conceived of them.

The late Dom Sebastian Moore, O.S.B. shone a different light on idealism and the remedy for human madness. He put it this way in The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger:

“We have to think of a God closer to our evil than we ever dare to be. We have to think of [God] not as standing at the end of the we way take when we run away from our evil in the search for good, but as taking hold of us in our evil, at the sore point which the whole idealistic thrust of man is concerned to avoid.”

We are, says Moore, “conscious animals scared of our animality and seeking to ennoble ourselves.”

Eichmann, Himmler, and Hitler were idealists. Nationalist extremists are idealists. Racial and religious extremists are idealists. ISIL is idealist. American exceptionalism is idealist. Whether behind the banner of the State, or of religion, gender, ideology, scientism, or rationalism – idealistic terrorism lives to rid the world of evil as its adherents understand it, projecting evil as “the other” while fleeing “the sore point” that we conscious animals seek to avoid.

Only the God who meets us at the sore point of our shared animality can save us from fantasies. In his last book, Remembered Bliss ((Lapwing Publications: 2014), Dom Sebastian told the reader, “I’m ninety-six, and for most of my life I’ve been a monk. My life as a monk has been, for the most part, the search for God as real.” RIP.

 

 

 

Verse – Invitations

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Invitations once came in the post,
Now emails & voicemails are lost
Amid FaceBook & Twitter,
In Texts & e-clutter:
I can’t RSVP the host!

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Nov. 20, 2014

Finding Our Tree

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We walk the rows of silent trees,
some smell of resin, some of lime
or lemon–six varieties.
Young families rush, we take our time,

enjoy the shades of green, the feel
of needles, sharp or soft into
our mittens. We will cut the real
tree with the saw, then shake a few

brown needles to the frozen ground.
At home the Christmas tree will light
the room and spread love all around
to neighbors who will catch the sight

of the one tree that spoke to you
and said, “It is for you I grew.”

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Nov. 18, 2014

Prayer

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“She saw him standing in the parlor with his beautiful old head bowed down…praying looks just like grief. Like shame. Like regret.”
–Lila, p. 95, Marilynne Robinson, 2014

Head bowed is the posture of humility, the position of a supplicant, petitioner, intercessor, or giver-of-thanks that looks to the eyes of the misinformed like grief or shame or regret. There is certainly all of that in those who pray, but it’s so much more, so much deeper, so much more reassuring.

We are often our own worst enemies. Every experience of the Beloved causes the head to bow and a tear to fall.

Via Lucis (way of light)

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Funny how things slip away. Not really funny. Just strange and sad.

Dennis Aubrey’s posts on Via Lucis Photography have been meaningful to me over the past few year. But because i’m technically challenged and just a bit lazy, Via Lucis has slipped out of site. Until tonight. Wondered why Via Lucis was not popping up on my email notifications. I went to see what Dennis Aubrey and P.J McKay were saying, and there it was. Another thoughtful post , on Weeping for Zion, about which Views from the Edge recently published,

If you haven’t yet noticed Via Lucis Photography, it’s worth your time. Few other authors offer such deep insights into the human condition.

Thank you, Dennis Aubrey and P.J. McKay.

Weeping for Zion (Dennis Aubrey)

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This post by Dennis Aubrey on Via Lucis Photography is splendid.

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By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. Psalm 137:1 (King James Bible)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was quoted as saying, “Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’ Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put…

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