Here's A Chance to Experience Van Gogh's Spirituality

Those of us of a certain age might deem a popular song of 1972 as a touch stone of our youth and the nativity of our fascination with all things “Vincent.” Don McClean’s paen to the artist Van Gogh is also known by its opening line, “Starry, Starry Night,” referencing the artist’s 1889 masterpiece THE STARRY NIGHT. Van Gogh’s paintings inspire a devotion that is unmatchable and his life story is so mirrored in his art that one is inseparable from the other. His work is so rife with the ebbs and flows of the artist’s spirituality, that as one stands before one of his paintings the observer becomes rapt and transformed. Van Gogh’s spirituality was rooted in the Dutch Reforn theology of his childhood faith. Judgement and condemnation took a back seat to consolation and solace. For the artist, Christ is the ultimate comforter whose gaze is directed to the broken in body and spirit. So compelled was Van Gogh to share this message that he felt called to follow in his father’s foot steps as a preacher. Finding himself delivering his first sermon in a Methodist pulpit in the English village of Richmond , he spoke with great passion regarding the Christian life even as his sermon may have overwhelmed his hearers as he spoke in broken English. His struggle to live out a Christian vocation was marked by rejection and disappointment. The solace he found in the hymnody and music of the faith sustained him in the face of these trials. He stated that he desired for his art , “to say something comforting as music is comforting ….something of the eternal.” The Museum of Modern Art in New York houses his masterpiece THE STARRY NIGHT. To see the painting there is unforgettable at every level. It is not only the painting itself that moves one but bearing witness to those who have made the pilgrimage there to see it. Painted in June of 1889 the mystical qualities of the painting reflect the revolutionary hermeneutic that ultimately was so unique in Van Gogh’s vision. While the church may have rejected him, the Creator not only embraced him but enabled him to transcend his own suffering and redeem it on canvas. As Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith remind us in their majestic and enthralling biography of Van Gogh, “In his reading, in his thinking, in his seeing, Vincent had long looked past the “real” night sky-the tiny, static specks and sallow light of the night paintings he detested - in something truer to the vision of limitless possibilities and inextinguishable light- the ultimate serenity….” Naifeh and White’s pioneering treatment of Van Gogh sheds new light on his tragic death and enables us to see the artist in remarkable new ways. And to see this artist’s work is indeed a privilege that we who live in the proximity of the Columbia Museum of Art will now be able to exercise, “Van Gogh and His Inspirations” opening October 4 and organized by the museum in partnership with Steven Naifeh will include twelve paintings and drawings by Van Gogh as well as over thirty works by artists who helped shape Van Gogh’s vision. This unparalleled exhibit will include lectures by Steven Naifeh and many events connected to the exhibition. Further details are available online at columbiamuseum.org Several books in addition to Van Gogh The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have been invaluable additions to my personal library including Cliff Edward’s fascinating study Van Gogh and God, A Creative Spiritual Quest and Kathleen Powers Erickson’s At Eternity’s Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent Van Gogh. In this age in which we need the transcendent to help us see anew the world around us, I urge you to make your pilgrimage to Columbia and get more than a glimpse of the eternal,

LIVING NATIVITY The ramshackle Victorian house was situated outside of town and by all appearances all her pride was long lost. Many of her windows were missing and in their place crumpled up faded newspapers were her only defense from the elements. Her front porch was warped from neglect and lack of paint and like Boo Radley’s scary house in To Kill A Mockingbird , it shouted STAY AWAY! As we meandered up the dirt road drive up to the house in the back seat of our Sunday school teacher’s station wagon on that cold December Day, he reminded us of why we were there. WE were there “to bring Christmas “ to those inside. The back of the station wagon was filled with carefully and colorfully wrapped packages and Piggly Wiggly bags filled with groceries collected from the congregation. A Cedar tree was tied to our vehicle’s roof and as the tree bounced up and down as we hit the washed out gully that was the drive up to the house ,“The Little Drummer Boy” kept rhythm on the radio. The boys in the front seat of the Station Wagon were soon to play shepherds in our church’s Living Nativity that coming Sabbath night. I had been chosen as one of the three Wisemen and “we three kings” found ourselves in the back seat with the only girl accompanying us on our mission of mercy. Appropriately, she had been chosen to be an angel and as her carefully rolled long blonde tresses framed her face it was obvious why. Reaching our destination as we got out of the station wagon while our teacher made his way up the front steps ,the angel in our midst made a pronouncement to the shepherds and we three kings, “Mom says this family are poor white trash.” Her snobby words lingered in the air as we made our way up the front steps. Our Sunday School teacher’s knock at the door echoed throughout the house as the the sound was overcome by the sudden rush of children's footsteps. As the door creaked open their unwashed but beaming faces welcomed us in. The smell in the house was the same barnyard smell that permeated the air when the station wagon doors had been flung open. Out of the group of five children, a little girl’s voice was heard to say, “Daddy's outback feeding the goats. and the donkey and Mama said to come on in because Santa Clause is coming tonight.” Bearing the tree, as we made our way to the back of the house, the dimly lit hallway echoed with a baby’s cry. Entering the room where the fireplace humbly offered the only heat in the house, the baby lay wrapped in a tattered blanket in his mother’s lap. She smiled at us as our Sunday school teacher introduced each one of us and asked where we could situate the Christmas Tree. While we placed it in the opposite corner from where she sat cradling the baby, the five children watched in wonder as we began to attach the multicolored lights to the trees branches. “We never had a Christmas Tree before ,” the little girl who had greeted us upon our arrival confessed. As the angel unpacked the ornaments, the shepherds and wisemen assisted the five children in placing them on tree. Finally it was time to crown the tree with its star and we all watched as little Billy the youngest of the five stood on the shoulders of one of the wisemen and placed the star at its pinnacle and as one of the shepherds plugged in the lights. The tree worked its magic as a hush fell across that room and the only sound heard was the happy sounds of the baby still wrapped up in his mother’s arms. “ Why does that tree have a star on top of it ?” little Charlie asked. And for the first time the mother who had sat quietly with baby in arms spoke up and said “ Cause Charlie that star was how everybody knew where to find the Baby Jesus.” And her words had barely been spoken before little Charlie chimed in “So the baby Jesus got here tonight before Santie Claus did.” And his mother looking at we three kings, the shepherds, and the angel with blonde hair and back at her 5 little ones and the baby in her lap all gazing up at that star replied “ Oh yes he did Charlie….yes he did.” Our Sunday School Teacher who had disappeared briefly suddenly appeared and before he could say a word without hesitation, our friend the angel whose harsh and judgmental words had by now turned to tears began singing as we all began to one by one join her, “Silent Night Holy, Holy night all is calm all is bright, Round young virgin mother and child, Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace , Sleep in heavenly peace….” The house echoed with the carol’s words as our Sunday school teacher who was now joined by the Daddy entered the song filled room. They had secretly unloaded the gifts and groceries at the front of the house. The Daddy, his hands smelling of his goats approached each one of us. He humbly grips the hands of the wisemen, shepherds and the angel and thanked us for coming. And the angel without hesitation enthusiastically said,” Oh no sir. Thank you sir, Thank you.” The children followed us to the door and told us to come back soon. As our station wagon wound its way down that dirt driveway that December night, one bright Star looming through the vehicle’s windshield seemed to light the way for we three kings, the shepherds, the angel and our Sunday School Teacher. And as we made our way home that chilly December night, in the silence and the holy hush there was not a doubt in any of our minds as to who had brought Christmas to whom.

ALL EASTERED UP!

ALL EASTERED UP! Getting all EASTERED UP use to mean that every lady had to have the perfect hat and real men could wear pink. The Easter Parade still takes place on Easter Sunday on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Starting as a spontaneous event in the 1870’s, the parade grew to such popularity that in 1947 over a million processed up the avenue. While the stroll may not have all the panache it had when Fred Astaire and Judy Garland made the avenue their runway in the Irving Berlin film musical EASTER PARADE, it annually draws a crowd and the strollers still make their bold fashion statements and the more colorful the better. Do they realize they are actually participating in a ritual that dates back to the Roman Emperor Constantine who in the 4th century instructed the empire’s citizenry to wear their finest and parade in honor of Jesus’ resurrection? We read in the Gospel of Luke of another Easter parade. The women who had attended to Jesus’ burial go to the tomb on a mission of mercy. They know they can not change the dark shadow cast by Good Friday but the went there carrying with them spices to preserve his body . And so their procession that first Easter morning was less than festive. In their state of mourning, the women’s clothing blended with the shadows cast amongst the tombs. There were no spectators for this sad little parade. No gawkers. The women make their way determined, yet weighed down with grief. And what do they find? A stone cold sepulcher greeted them with the shock of emptiness. Robbed of the beloved’s body, it must have echoed their cries. Turning away from its emptiness, only to be greeted by two men in “gleaming bright clothing” , the mourners we are told “didn’t know what to make of this”. If their garb wasn’t startling enough, the men dare to ask the real question of the day, “Why seek you the living among the dead?” Obviously these two would have flunked out as grief counsellors ,but their question does give pause to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James and the other women as it should us. That dark day that was Calvary had so overwhelmed them they had forgotten what he had said when he said ,” I must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Even then hearing him say “I must be crucified” would have been all they heard him say. Stunned as they are, we are told “they remembered his words.” While they nor anyone else witnessed Jesus being resurrected what they did see changed their lives forever. They looked away from a grave no longer seeking the living among the dead and faced a day like no other . A new day in a new world. And what a different parade it was as they returned from the tomb. All EASTERED UP, they make their way radiant with good news. Their faces had to tell the story as they reached the disciples. But they encounter resistance and doubting disciples do all they can to rain on the Easter parade. And they still do. Luke tells us they think the women’s words “nonsense.” Yes, the women might have asked of themselves, “why seek we the living among the dead?” The disciples desperately needed to get all EASTERED UP. And so de we. Even as we have been reminded this Holy Week, suffering and the unfathomable deaths of innocents are never far from us these days. All the more we need to get all EASTERED UP and join the throng to announce that death is the real loser, as are those who seek to thrive by inflicting it. SO get out your feathers, your beads, your buckles and bows. Get all Eastered up and if someone tries to run you out of town for doing so, get out in front and make it a parade.

CHRISTMAS WITH THE GOAT MAN

CHRISTMAS WITH THE GOAT MAN The well traveled road upon which my childhood home is situated, bore witness to me as a boy, that people are always headed somewhere. Night and day it mattered not, determined travelers were constantly making their trek. Their passing vehicles would often give me pause to wonder who they were and where their pilgrimage was taking them. One Christmas, a different kind of traveller made his way through our town and he found his way on the path in front of our home. His chariot was not splendid, but it mattered not to me as I heard his approach heralded with the clanking of bells and a chorus of whining sounds. The Goat Man set up his encampment within a throw of our front yard. As his goat pulled ramshackle wagon found its resting place, he stepped down dressed in an animal skin coat looking like the shepherds in the dime store manger scene I’d admired at Darling’s 5 and 10. I was sure he would smell like them too. His greying beard came to a point somewhere around his navel and he had obviously missed his Saturday night bath. The twenty two goats infused the chilled December air with his same scent. Bible in hand, I watched as he tacked a sign on one of the tall slender pines next to the road. The sign pronounced to those slowing down to take note of the sight of him and his entourage, PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD! After nailing the placard in place, he stood up on a stump. He then proceeded to open his tattered Bible and as he channeled the words of John The Baptist, he read “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” By now onlookers had pulled off the road to form a congregation of curious witnesses. Many in the crowd muttered under their breath like they new who he was. The bleating goats offered their chorus in glad reply to his proclamation, forming his amen corner. His fiery message was not like any Sunday sermon I had ever heard at First Methodist. He offered not only his message to us, but a taste of goat’s milk which made the Welch’s Grape Juice served at the communion rail at my church pale in comparison. Situating myself close to the iron wheel of his wagon, I could see its contents. Looking closely I spied a paperback copy of one of my favorite books, Robinson Crusoe. “Read that book boy?” he quipped. “Yes sir I shyly replied. “ “ I got Crusoe’s itch for wandering . My goats and me want to see all 48 states, and Alaska and Canada. All them places better get ready to meet the Lord. He’s a coming soon and next time it won’t be as as little ole baby. These here goats will recognize him sooner than a lot of these here people in brick houses that go to them tall steeples on Sunday morn. I’m just gonna keep on wandering every where I can til he gets here.” ‘Where you from?” I asked. “Oh all over the place, but Twiggs County is where I hung my hat the longest. But I got to keep moving till He comes back. I had to admit to myself that there was a secret longing in me to join up with his band, to hitch my wagon to his. That night as I pulled up the quilt on my bed, I could see his kerosene lanterns illumining that chilly night through my bedroom window and the goats were bleating a lullaby that soon lulled me to sleep. The days waned fast and my own wanderings found me in Macon, Georgia as a robed and collar clad preacher. Those days had receded in my memory, although when I ran up on John the Baptist in the Bible, clad in animal skins and living off locust and honey, something would take me back to that December day. I had heard that in 1970 Charles McCartney known as The Goat Man had been attacked by three young men while he slept in his cart. Two of his favorite goats were killed. The Goat Man had retired to Jeffersonville. And then on another waning December afternoon I found myself serving communion to residents and members of Mulberry Street Church at a local nursing home. After praying over the communion elements, I began to move around the circle of wheel chairs serving the gathering one by one, when before I could intone the words ‘The Body…The Blood of Christ” a blue haired messenger whispered to me, “That’s The Goat Man next to me.” And there he was. Shorn of his beard. Goatless. Made respectable in a flannel shirt, yet his dog eared Bible in his lap, I bent toward him. Before I could speak a word his eyes though aged with cataracts looked into mine and as if I were being transported back to that December afternoon of my boyhood , I heard him say “He’s coming back.” And he was right. You see, that December afternoon He had for me.

OCTOBER LIGHT

OCTOBER LIGHT Summer’s solstice has ended and October’s light gives us all a chance for new perspective. Even as that light brings a fresh clarity to my thinking, it also foreshadows what the Apostle Paul characterized as “the partial passing away.” The passing away of much that seemed permanent but was only partial has been accelerated in this world where that we thought was built to last is actually an illusion. The One who sits on the throne in The Revelation given to Saint John announces “Behold I make all things new!” We would do well to look to how nature’s patterns echo that promise. Summer’s excesses are pared down as her days wane and just as the harvest is gathered in so we have need to gather up what the waning year has shown us. Most of our days are consumed with the now. What was fulness to us ,what seemed so complete was actually only the partial, for as Paul so aptly puts it “now we see through a mirror dimly, then we shall see face to face.” How can we be shed of that? Autumn forces us to confront in nature’s dance of shedding her clothes an ending that bespeaks a new beginning and the promise of the complete. As the poet Keats aptly puts it in his poem To Autumn, “Thou (Autumn) hast thy music too.” How we need to stop and listen to it! Even as we wind the back roads and circumnavigate the high places on desperate pilgrimages to glimpse the colors of autumn leaves, we know they will soon be driven and tossed by the wind. In a flurry of color, the trees will release their foliage without hesitation. For us this seems the dreaded end. But, we see only the partial. Looking out the picture windows on the front of my home as a child , I would watch the trees on our front lawn in their Fall litany. The leaves would change from green to yellow. Finally, the day would arrive in late October when my brother and I, rakes in hand, would pile the frosted brown leaves on our front lawn while the air hung heavy with the incense of burning leaves in our neighborhood. The smoke would send its signals heavenward, as if we needed to let the Creator know we knew winter was soon upon us. But the falling leaves were not indiscriminately sacrificed. They met their end as a gift to the very earth that gave them life. As Lewis Thomas the biologist and writer reminds us , “we have always had a strong hunch about our beginnings, thus we took the word for earth humus and came to know our selves as human” and one might add, hopefully humble ones at that. It is in these patterns of Autumn that we can see our own life patterns and humbled we must be. As a pastor and hospice chaplain I am a witness every day to the truth that “to every thing there is season.” Our souls need and require this time of gathering in . As nature knows her time has come to settle in, we should know by now the sign when that Fall morning arrives a little sharper and we greet with gladness the woodpile mom remembered to have stacked up beside the house. And so we build the fire, we sip the cider, and we settle in so all can be made complete.

BEYOND THE PEW

BEYOND THE PEW The gurus are scrambling. The recent Pew Report documenting the decline in our nation’s Christian population from 78 per cent to 70 percent is sure to stir up those who busy themselves crunching the numbers and pushing the paper work. My generation of clergy were dazzled by the pyrotechnics of the church growth gurus who admonished us as we approached the new millennium that we needed more mocha with Messiah and Cappuccino with Christ and less doctrine and dogma. So we built believing they would come. The mega church outfitted with all of its technology and pleasure dome aesthetics was the new Oz. Church architecture became about erecting structures that demolished tradition and embraced entertainment. Sacred spaces were stripped of their symbolism and the dominant concern became where do we put the projector and screen. Worship was severed from its historical roots and hymnody displaced by what one church growth specialist called a “soundtrack” for worship “that is determined by what the worship guests listen to on ITunes.” What should cause all of us to set up and take note is what The Pew Report reveals about “generational change.” Many of the shifts outlined above were seen as being necessary for our churches to attract children, youth, and young adults. I myself am a survivor of the “worship wars” that resulted in countless of our congregations dividing their congregations up and defining them as “traditional” and “contemporary” worshippers. As one growth specialist advised “where a congregation is aging and possibly declining it might be best to create two kinds of service, one of them traditional and the other “culturally relevant.” But it is among the population characterized as requiring “cultural relevance” that the rise of “nones” is taking place - those who are less likely to belong to any Christian (or other religious) body. The failure of our churches to pass on the faith to the next generation has to be at the heart of this trend. Worship life and teaching spaces within our faith communities cannot bypass the substance of Christ’s teachings and be driven by the values that define popular entertainment. The exhaustion and burnout seen in many of our clergy and worship leaders is directly tied to their continual quest to remain “culturally relevant.” Spiritual formation takes a back seat to insuring that the image of our churches is “relevant.” Could it be that the decline of the church might be due to our younger generations seeking something beyond what they find at the Apple Store? In our branding of the Church as a commodity that must compete with Silicon Valley, the young who are trying to find the meaning of why we are all here might well be looking for what makes the church different from their I Phone. In the techno driven world they are inheriting might they be craving authentic community versus simulated reality? Jesus chose a real body (the church) here, imperfect and human to carry his message and he assured us that with the Holy Spirit we had everything we needed to do just that. The truth of the Gospel will never rise or fall because of institutional growth or decline. It will live and breathe in and through us or in spite of us and it will never power down. Tweet that.

Pierced Darkness

PIERCED DARKNESS “He thrown everything off balance. If he did what he say he did, there’s nothing for you to do but to throw away everything and follow him. If he did’t, then enjoy the minutes you have left the best you can.” From A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND, Flannery O’Connor William Styron the novelist and author of Sophie’s Choice suffered a crippling depression that he thoughtfully chronicles in his memoir Darkness Visible. On the eve of a contemplated suicide attempt he finds himself sitting in his home in the darkness of what seems an interminable night when the music of Brahms pierces the darkness: “this sound which like all music-indeed all pleasure- I had been numbly unresponsive to for many months, pierced my heart like a dagger, and in a flood of swift recollection I thought of all the joys this house had known …All this I realized was more than I could inflict on these memories, and upon those, so close to me with whom those memories were bound. And just as powerfully I realized I could not commit this desecration on myself….” Styron had dared to face the darkness and lived on because he did. The Gospel of John records the story of a depressed Mary Magdalene going to the tomb of Jesus early on the first day of the week, and then John tellingly says, ”While it was still dark…” Mary the dedicated follower had not abandoned him. But putting one foot in front of the other she forced herself to face the darkness. She had witnessed his miracles and heard the cruel words of his enemies. She had seen love lavished upon him when he entered Jerusalem as well as the lashes unleashed on his burdened back. She had stood in the shadow of his cross and heard his final words. And now she came to honor him with a proper burial….”while it was still dark.” As the poet Milton put it , “no light but darkness visible.” Mary in facing the darkness was actually profoundly living into her faith in a way that my friend and truth teller Barbara Brown Taylor speaks to in her latest book Learning to Walk in the Dark. She dares to ask, “When we run from darkness, how much do we really know about what we are running from? If we turn away from darkness on principle, doing everything we can to avoid it….isn’t there a chance we are running from God?” What will happen next? Mary had to be thinking. Or is there a next? And then reaching the tomb she finds it empty. In the darkness , isn’t it enough to face her loss and now to know that His body is absent?! Is it not enough that he suffered the most degrading of deaths, now his grave has been robbed? She had heard of others who had claimed to be messiah. They too were no more. Like the stone cold memorials of the Roman gods, his tomb was silent and empty. She turns and runs in the darkness to the disciples so they might share in her sadness. Running to the tomb as the light gradually illuminates the scene , John and Peter see what Mary had been unable to see in the darkness. And to her surprise they rejoice. Mary still weeping finally through the blurred vision of her tears and the light of the new day sees Jesus’ garments and two angels sitting where he had been laid in the darkness. That darkness had been pierced by God working even when Mary could not see and could not know. God had thrown death off balance in the shadows. She turns with the angels’ words “He is not here He is risen” lifting her feet from ground only to meet Jesus face to face. The darkness in Mary’s heart has been pierced and her life transformed as Jesus appoints her to preach the good news to his followers: Death is no more… don’t be afraid of the dark! Easter you see means throwing it all away….all our fears….and following him, even in the darkness.