Earth Day

By Bob Carey

Earth Day seems an entirely appropriate time to look at Creation stories. They make interesting reading and can be summarized in the phrase: "All worlds are local." The stories invariably tell us a lot about the people who told them--how they saw the world, the issues they were sorting out (why there is death, why childbirth is painful, why people can be so nasty.) The world is in a kind of "beginning" shape--not really up and running but almost there needing a few touches to bring everything up to speed.

The "world" that creation stories describe is "back there," some time ago: way back when, a long time ago. That really isn't the point of the stories. The age of things isn't what is at issue. The world is, the stories agree, an old and busy place, but mostly the stories are about us--about how we got to be in the world that the stories are talking about. Creation stories, in sum, are not about the earth; they are about us. I know we have presentations that describe human history as sort of the last coat of paint on the top of the Eiffel tower. We have all I, I expect, our "Wow" moment. But, I think, just for the moment.

It takes awhile to begin to hear the story of the earth, the sheer scope of the thing, the staggering numbers associated with the ages that have come and gone on this earth in which we make our home. If you want to enjoy getting dizzy trying to imagine spans of time that can somewhat numb the mind, read Denis Wood, Five Billion Years of Global Change: A History of the Land.

Wood writes in a kind of blistering forward lurching style that takes a bit of getting used to. But after awhile you do begin to get it; that we are very recent, very new, hardly a major moment compared to all that has gone before. It is all that has gone before that has the affect of making one finally begin to hear the history of the land, of how it has come to be, of the forces that shape it and reshape it even as we read. As you read this, the Himalayas are still getting higher. Not on our scale of speed, but on the earth's. I find that fascinating and calming. What should I do as a child of the earth? First of all, don't confuse its history as being in the service of my history. The world wasn't created for me to simply say, Thank you very much; I'll take it from here. I think that puts the matter exactly wrong. Our history is so dependent, so intertwined with what the earth has been and is, that it really does fall to us to listen, really listen to hear its voice. Maybe for the first time.

Email: wardens@saintsaviour.org

A note from Chris Johnson

I read two articles recently which involved our church; one in the Post and the other in the Times. I’m a Wall Street Journal type, so these were OPP (other people’s papers). And I almost felt compelled to write the editors in each of them. But I’ll quench my compelling need to comment here, where I already am the editor, if that’s OK.

The first article was a review of the current debate in the Anglican Communion over human sexuality and its relation to appointing Bishops and offering liturgy for same sex unions. The other was about Elton John’s 60th birthday party at the Cathedral, despite his oft quoted comments against organized religion.

Each article tried to break down complex issues into two simple camps; for and against. To me, that is both too easy and too wrong. What neither paper picked up on is, that in the US Episcopal Church, and certainly in this Cathedral, there is a wide spectrum of opinion on these and many other issues. No one could ever say we fall into one camp on anything. And that is how it should be.

For a fundamental part of our policy of radical inclusivity is to make sure people we disagree with feel welcome at the table. It is a fallacy, I think, that one can “solve” differences, like you can fix a leaking pipe. Well intentioned, smart people can look at the same set of facts, and come to completely different conclusions. Certainly, scripture falls into this category.

Why is it that we can live in a grey area where scriptural interpretation is never really locked down, but left fluid and open to revelation over time? And why are we happy to continue our financial support of many charitable programs in the Global South despite our differences, yet they feel compelled to refuse it because of our differences?

It isn’t that we interpret scripture differently than the global southern bishops do. It is that we refuse to set in stone any one interpretation at all. I don’t mind if we have members of our congregation, or even the vestry, who think that homosexuality is contrary to scripture as long as they are willing to sit down at a table with people who think the opposite, and that the two can work together to do the Lord’s work. We are not gatekeepers, and the very notion of an acid test for coming to our table is an anathema to us.

So if Elton John wants to question organized religion, no problem. I’ve probably questioned it a few times myself. (At a lunch line at a Warden’s Conference once, I heard someone quip we practice disorganized religion).

But seriously, at the very core of Welcoming, in my opinion, is to invite those who believe we are wrong in what we do. And to create a space in which we can agree to disagree, and still work together in Christ’s name. It is, after all, His life and ministry we are promoting, not our own.

This need to break every problem we have down to two opposing sides, where each is trying to win, is not what is happening here. Or at least, not with us.

Prior to The General Convention of 2003, our Congregation sent a letter (with over 200 signatures) to Bishop Sisk with our thoughts on the subject of the new Bishop-elect of New Hampshire. We wrote to Bishop Sisk our hope that the Convention would vote for or against Gene Robinson on his qualifications for Bishop, regardless of his sexual orientation. It was not a pro Gay agenda, but an inclusive and non-judgmental agenda which allowed all persons to participate.

I wish this subtlety would find it’s way into the press and the public debate on many issues. But certainly, I think this is critical to understanding the debate over the role of human sexuality and all its diversity, and the relation it has to membership and practice of a church.

If you build any institution around its power to divide, then division will be its permanent characteristic. The Global South doesn’t see this. If they succeed in throwing out everyone they disagree with, what will they have left? Their apparent unity will evaporate unless they find a new issue to divide over.

It seems to me a church built on its power to invite all persons to the table will always grow. And be a lot more in line with Christ’s life and ministry.

Chris Johnson , Warden

wardens@saintsaviour.org

The Ethos of Welcome

By Robert Carey

In the reports that follow, beginning with this one, I want to explore the interior of the term. What does it mean for us as a congregation, as a cathedral congregation?

Welcome is a style and a behavior that runs through our most basic texts. The images of the table, of sitting down together, of welcoming the stranger, of offering hospitality. Paul works all the changes on the images of family, of belonging, of enfolding. It is fundamental to what a community is.

But here we come up hard against the realities of our history as a tradition and the particularities of American life. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of the history of the Christian church knows at least two things. That it is a very large tradition, and that it comes in an apparently unending variety of packages.

If we were a store, we would look something like Home Depot. Think about it.

Right from the beginning, the issue of who sits at the table, who can or cannot be in the body, who is or who is not welcome is front and center. Paul's letter are early examples of conflict resolution. The church early on divides into East and West, Greek and Latin. In the West, our branch of the family, the dividing picks up speed with the shattering of Catholic Europe into regional and national churches. The Church of England becomes the mother of a legion of church styles.
None of this divisions was the result of whimsy but reflected deep and, alas, unsolvable differences.

In America, the divisions keep up and keep on. For an astute historical, sociological and theological reading of our immediate divisive religious culture, H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism, remains current and urgently insightful. And these issues are still with us. Who should be at the table? Which stranger do we welcome?

The traditional answer, sometimes appropriate, sometimes wildly narrow and restrictive, is a list of behaviors that represent--at least for those who make the list--the unacceptable. Usually, these have been a string of No's. Can't go here, can't do that. Can't even think of doing that--or the other thing that those people are doing. The result usually has been a dry and angry asceticism that guards the borders while other problems go unremarked--pride, a lack of generosity, an unreflective sense of superiority.

But, I think, this is not the road we want to go down. In the weeks and months ahead, we will want to explore how our several forms of participation can work to create that welcoming place, that sense of the thing that would move a visitor to say: I think this is where I want to be.

Email: wardens@saintsaviour.org

Remembering Dr. King

by Robert B. Carey, Ph.D.

Every celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day makes me wonder about the quality of American memory.

I served as an assistant pastor in Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1963 to the summer of 1965, when I left, first , to get married to Ms. Patricia Morris and then for the both of us to return to New York City where I finished the senior year of my M.Div. program and began working in East Harlem with the City Society of the United Methodist Church. We are still married and we still live in East Harlem.

Part of the difficulty in talking about Dr. King and those times is conveying to someone what that time felt like; what it meant to work in the South, to be arrested, to be held in a holding tank, to be surrounded by people with guns who could "loose" you and not be held accountable. That was the shadow side of the dream, but it was also an incredibly hopeful time, a time of awakening into a thinkable future. Dr. King's speech gave new meaning and luster--since considerably diminished--to the idea of the city on the hill, to America as a beloved community.

I first experienced the problem of remembering him when our children were growing up and had to do a report for school, so they interviewed my wife and me about our lives. Their great organizing question was:” When you were alive.......... " We have always treasured that moment, but it made very vivid the difference between the history that I had experienced and can conjure up even now--dinner at the King house just around the corner from where I lived, talking with Daddy and Mrs. King about programs for the young people at Ebenezer, prayer meetings, paying visits at Grady Hospital and on and on--and the history our children had to get at through texts, pictures, television news clips. All very vivid but just a tad distant. Someone else's history and historical moment.

And accompanying that and shadowing that growing sense of distance is the shaping of Dr. King into a "comfortable saint," the preacher of love and reconciliation. But what could be wrong with that?, someone says. The difficulty with that is what falls away in the American haste to "move on" to come to "closure" over things. What falls away was remembering that he was going deeper and farther at the time he was killed. He was beginning to link racial and economic justice, getting down to the deep disenfranchisement that haunts this country.

We get comfortable in our discussions of diversity at our peril and we bend, fatally, the trajectory of his thought If we settle for simply celebrating the fact that you look like you look and I look like I look--rather an acid way of thinking about diversity. But, alas, it can come to that and no more—everyone comfortably encased in agreed upon labels. But the deep question of Who Gets What? of Who is not at this table? gets too easily swept away when we settle for a group photo reading of diversity.

That is where the permanent radicalism of Dr. King's idea of reconciling love insists that we go. Everyday. All days. Not just his day.

Email: wardens@saintsaviour.org

Timing by Sandra Lee Schubert

Time flies doesn’t it? You hear that all the time. Even as a child my summers went by too quickly. I hated August most of all. It meant September was not far behind and school would begin again. It was also the hottest month, the time when mosquitoes would bite my sunburned flesh and my allergies would have me hating mornings. There are times I wish I could push the pause button on life. Just so I can think a little bit. I could rewind some parts and review, see where I made mistakes. Maybe I could see where I also did some good.

Time flies. It rushes past me, faster and faster, making my head spin. It was more then 30 years ago when I first walked into the Cathedral. I remembered it being dark, and a bit cold. At that time it was not for a church service but for a talk by a woman named Hilda. As I remember she was a medium of some sort. Back then I was a spiritual dabbler, rebelling against my Catholic upbringing. I think it would have been better if I could have built upon my religious foundation. But occasionally you need to wander off into the wilderness and see what there is to discover. I would come back to the Cathedral for an occasional event. But finally after years of exploring I settled down here ready to root someplace and hopefully grow. The trouble for me in this spiritual exploration was that it had left me un-tethered and aimless. I was a spiritual airhead of sorts, my head always in the clouds. Settling here was the only thing I could do. Its roots were built of living stone forged deep into the ground. Here I could begin to find my bearings.

People have talked of going home for the holidays. As you may remember my childhood home is now just rubble, and my parents gone many years. Home is where the heart is. At the cathedral I have found a new kind of home. And even if I were to leave, I would no longer be un-tethered in the same way as when I arrived. I have become bound to something powerful. The stone goes deep.

Time does fly. But there are those things that remain eternal. Even as we speed through this life we are not alone. I can say I am still growing and exploring, following some old paths and forging new ones.

This is the last of my Warden’s letters to appear in Crossings. Come February I will step down and a new warden will write in this space. The two year’s have gone quickly. They have been filled with all sorts of interesting things. I can only hope I have done some good for the congregation. In the meantime, I thank all of you who have supported me, and those people who continue to support the work of the congregation and the cathedral. I know how hard we all work. But we have this lovely stone to support us and the spirit of God who sustains us through all we do.

Happy Holidays to all and the may the very best of things come to you in 2007.

Email: wardens@saintsaviour.org

Budget Time by Bob Carey

Budget time. Always an interesting moment. There is a deep narrative in all budgets. They offer in their dry, columnar way a perspective on what we are about, on what we are doing. The issue of doing is central to seeing what a congregation is, because the budget details the activities that are valued, that a community wants to support and nurture.

It is possible, after all, to think of a congregation in rather static terms. It is a gathered group of people, people who show up regularly for worship and then go home. But that is only the beginning of an interesting discussion. They don't gather just for the sake of gathering; they gather to do a variety of things, to meet and then to be about some work, the work of education, of advocacy, of welcoming, of standing with those who have been forgotten or overlooked.

There is a great term from Anglican use, "surveyor of the fabric" that is useful in this context. I become familiar with the term one summer when I was at Canterbury Cathedral for a three week course on Anglican History and Theology, attended by people from all over the Anglican world--Japan, Africa, America, Central America. We were a very diverse group, but all under the Anglican canopy. In the course of the program, we got to know members of the chapter and the staff that deals with the day in and day out requirements of managing a very old Cathedral, the grounds, shops, offices and buildings that make up the Canterbury "fabric." Overseeing that day to day work is the "surveyor of the fabric." He is a general manager who keeps things ticking along.

I love the term because it captures both the prosaic realities of a place--things do need minding, programs do need tending, budgets and ideas need thought and attention--and the inclusive reality of a place. We are in our own ways surveyors of the fabric, active in the weave of the thing, in adding color and strength to it in the shared work we do, in the new initiatives that we seek to add , the spaces at the table we want to make for others to join us. All this in a budget review. Look closely; it is there.
Email the wardens: wardens@saintsaviour.org

Moving ahead for mission and growth

The Cathedral’s Strategic Plan had been passed by the Cathedral Board of Trustees in November 2005, with input from the Vestry. The Congregational Life Task Force was proposed at that time. The Task Force comprised of the Vicar of the Congregation, the two wardens, a congregation member at large and a Board of Trustee member would address some of the issues raised by the Congregation’s Self Study. Some of the questions to be addressed are; “What things are inhibiting the Congregation's mission, what may be needed to enhance the mission? What would a "strategic partnership with the Cathedral" look like?

The Self-Study revealed that one stumbling block to an integrated relationship with the Cathedral is the name of the congregation. Many have commented positively in our endeavor to integrate both our name and look into that of the Cathedral.

At the July 10, 2006 vestry meeting, the vestry unanimously approved the following; “Recommendation to the Congregational Life Task Force to create a viable d/b/a-name such as "Congregation at the Cathedral", and to bring to the members of the Congregation such recommendation at a special or general Congregational meeting, while retaining the original corporate name for legal and financial purposes. This vote was unanimously approved by the vestry.”

We are entering a new and exciting phase in our life together here at the Cathedral. The renovation will reveal the Cathedral in its original glory. A new playground will flank the south side and construction for the new residential building will begin on the south side. The congregation has gone through many changes. The idea of the congregation as an integral part of the development of the Cathedral has taken hold. In July The Reverend Canon Alan Dennis joined us a Vicar of the Congregation and Sub-Dean bringing with him vast experience at congregational development to continue the work already begun.

As we move forward it may be prudent to consider what changes would be the best for our life together as a faith community, as we seek to grow and serve others. Changing our name to the Congregation at the Cathedral may a first step toward living out the baptismal covenant more fully in growing our Congregation.

At the annual meeting in February we will have the opportunity to vote on the name change. In the meantime we would like to hear your ideas about growing the Congregation. Please email the Wardens directly

wardens@saintsaviour.org

Who am I?

The author in a snazzy outfit in her kitchen, now gone, in Astoria. Her sister is next to her and her mother doing dishes, of course.

I have been thinking a lot about identity. What defines a person? Is it our DNA, where we grew up, or is it the family we are born into?

I have written about growing up in Astoria. The rats bigger then cats, the major heroin ring run from a local diner, the porn ring exposed across the street. A Satanist lived upstairs for a bit and a minor league drug dealer lived next door. The local chicken joint was in trouble for using the more voluptuous river rats instead of fowl for deep fry. I was surrounded by factories and lower and middle class families. The apartment building where I grow up was already a hundred years old. It was one of the first apartment buildings built with gardens in the back. Originally it had gas lighting and no bathrooms. The bathrooms were added later and formed columns in the back of the building. There was no insulation to speak of and winters we chipped the ice from inside our windows. In some ways it was like living in the Wild West; rough and untamed. But it also was the place where I grew up. Behind the yards there used to be stables that my father worked in as a boy. Later he would plant a tree there just outside set into the sidewalk was a horseshoe marking the spot

A couple of weeks ago I brought my niece to see the building where her mother and aunt had grown up. Patrick Hammer was there too. He had wanted to see the river rats I written about in the Wild Angels classes. I had heard rumors the place may have been torn down. My old apartment took an active place in my dream life. At times holding all the fear I felt there and other times the memories. Often I would dream of my mother, sick and frail and my first dog Bella, living there alone and forgotten in the back room. In the dream I would live near by and with horror realized I had left them alone. I found them OK but could never get over the horror of forgetting them. The dreams began to change and suddenly this dark and desolate place began to shift and I was living there again. The apartment now nice and livable and my mother and dog finally at rest as they should be. The dreams prepared me for the rumors but the reality did not. We came upon a desolate landscape bordered by plywood walls. Nothing remained of my former home except a couple of scattered rocks. Even the tree my father planted as a child was gone. Not a root was left for me to dig up and take home. We wandered down to the river just a couple blocks away where friends and I would sit on the abandoned docks watching the river rats play and the green and foamy water of the East River slap against the shore. Even here time had moved on and the old pilings mostly demolished to form instead a nice walkway. A park had been constructed and the dock where we sat held equipment. The old Steinway factory building was still there and the familiar factory buildings still dotted the landscape. The memories and stories so anchored to a place were now dug up and rearranged. The flattened landscape was like experiencing the death of my parents all over again. Soon something new will be built on the ruins and other people will come, live and dream and create new memories.

Who am I? Where does the story of who I am live? I thought it resided in the wood and stone of an old building. Now un-tethered I struggle a bit to find my bearings.

I am struck by the question of what is an identity. Who are we without the people, places and things that surround us? Does my name define me, the place I live or the family I come from? Does my country or the planet define me? Who does God say I am? Will that answer suffice when all around me seems changed? Here I am wobbly, questioning and unsure of my place in the world.

Even at the Cathedral we ask the same questions. I can imagine as the first cornerstone was placed the question was considered. Some of us find our place here in different ways; through worship, classes, groups or fellowship. We may not come or even stay for the same reasons but we all end up here together. Together we gather and discover who we are. I look forward to it.

Email: wardens@stsaviour.dioceseny.org