Rites and Right Thinking

I have just finished watching a series on Netflix called Unorthodox. The story centers around Estey, short for Esther, a young Jewish woman in a community of orthodox Jews and who at age 18 finds herself in an arranged and largely loveless marriage. After a year of failing to get pregnant and a growing discontent with her life as a piece of property, she escapes to Berlin where she falls in with a group of young musicians and is happy. Her husband back in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) and his cousin Moishe set out to bring her back. I leave it for you to watch the program to find out how that goes.

First, I want to say that as far as I’m concerned, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with practicing orthodox Judaism if you can afford the clothes. If everyone in that community agrees to its stringent rules that govern literally every facet of life and are happy living within those strictures, who am I to cast the first stone? But what became apparent in Unorthodox was that rites and rituals and rules and traditions and judgments superseded everything else including, perhaps especially, human happiness. There is something amiss with a religion that professes to worship a loving God and then does not extend the joy of that love to God’s children.

We Episcopalians rather like our rituals too. This year we painfully have had to suspend performing some of the ones that are dearest to us in Holy Week. No Palm Sunday parade, no Tenebrae on Wednesday, no Maundy Thursday Eucharist, no Good Friday veneration of the cross, and no Easter Day celebration of the Resurrection. We have not been able to meet together on Sundays for three weeks and have had to forego yet another of our precious rituals, brunch after church.

In a way, this stay-at-home order has been good for us. For some it has deepened our sense of community and how much we had taken for granted the simple act of seeing each other. We have had to pare down our lives to bare necessity including how we keep in touch. For those who have disparaged the Internet, you might by now have revised your thinking. It has substituted for hugs, handshakes, and across-the-table smiles and while those expressions of our regard for our friends can’t be replaced by FaceTime, we have learned how much we need each other and long to maintain our community. All without any ritual, or very little—we are still having Morning Prayer on Sunday via the Internet.

Like Estey’s husband in Unorthodox we have had to reexamine who we are as people with a tradition, with rites that help identify us, and with observances that provide us with our sense of belonging to our church. Perhaps what we’re learning is that in our yearning for those rites and rituals, there is also our need to preserve community. When we can once again participate in our traditions and they enhance and beautify our faith, they must never become our faith and must never take precedence over our recognition that God loves us unconditionally and that we are called, rites or no rites, to extend that love to others.

Robert Heylmun
8 April 2020

Essay: In Praise of Form and Order

Robert Heylmun just returned after a month in Italy and shares this reflection on how he missed our St Paul's "form and order" in worship

Oct 29, 2019
 I’ve just listened to Andrew Green’s sermon on the importance of being mindful of what words we use. Very good advice. But the distinction between using hateful words inadvertently, or on purpose for that matter, and using words that want to express constructive criticism takes some careful navigation, particularly when the topic has to do with a particular church’s liturgical practice. I’m about to embark on that voyage and I hope to navigate it carefully.

I took a seat ten minutes ahead of the service. Things began with acolyte lighting the altar candles with a series of book matches. It took her four matches as each burned toward her fingers and before she could get all of the candles lit. Then came the helter-skelter running around to grab the processional cross and lights for the procession. The same acolyte was also the crucifer and just so she wouldn’t miss things on the way up the aisle, she carried a bulletin too.

The processional hymn, “How firm a foundation” (Lyons) has five verses and the organist announced it by playing the first line in what you’d expect from a standard organ registration for a hymn. We sang the first two stanzas by which time the chancel party had reached their places and the choir assembled itself so as to display what turned out to be its star soloist who was bang up front and facing us. At verse 3, the organ suddenly went to accompaniment mode so that the soloist could dominate the hymn. We, meanwhile, we were at sea about whether to sing along or not. Verse 4 got louder but not by much, apparently with the hope of having us hear the rest of the choir now singing parts. Verse 5 found us back at the original registration and we timidly joined in to finish the hymn.

Now there’s something wrong with that. Hymns aren’t meant to feature soloists for one thing but instead are meant to engage the congregation in participating in the service and singing praise to God. Clearly this idea was lost on the organist.

The Gloria, written by the organist with English words, suddenly got sung in Italian (words on the facing page) which would have been fine except that the directions said “All remain standing and sing in English.” Who knows who decided that change at the last minute? Time for the readings. The lector sits well back in the congregation and after the Collect of the Day (this in English) proceeds all the way up the center aisle toward the lectern to read and then regains his seat all the way down the central aisle. Psalm chanted in English came next, and then the second lesson read by the match lighter/acolyte/crucifer who got a poke in the ribs to get her to the lectern.

To the front of the chancel came the Gospel party, match lighter/acolyte/crucifer carrying the cross and her bulletin, just in case (of what?).

The Prayers of the People were prayed in two languages by two men who were confused about where to be to do this. “You need to be over here!” and finally they got it all going at the lectern.

I could go on with this but at the risk of bringing down the wrath of Fr. Green, suffice it to say that the entire service was flying by the seat of its pants and like the chaos before creation, “was without form, and void.” I tried very hard not to compare what was going on, or not going on, with the order of service that I’m used to. I tried equally hard to give this seemingly unplanned service the benefit of the doubt: they have to deal with a largely transient and tourist congregation (not necessarily true); they have to include two languages; and I’m not sure what else might justify what went on.

All I know is that when the Episcopal service is orderly, it serves to promote communal worship. When things run smoothly, we don’t have to worry about the sort of “Who’s on first?”, “Your turn. No, it’s your turn!” bumps and jars that were the mode of the service I just described. As a parishioner there that day, you were so busy wondering what blunder would make you giggle that the sense of worship disintegrated to be replaced not by Holy Mysteries but by the suspense of what would go wrong next.

Thus, my paean to form and order. Nine hours later, the Holy Eucharist from St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Diego arrived on my laptop here in Rome, “cleansing the thoughts of our hearts and minds” of silliness and sloppiness in liturgical practice elsewhere and restoring the dignity and beauty of Episcopal worship. I hope not to have violated the advice of using hurtful words; if I have, I will join the tax collector in praying that God be merciful to me, a sinner.

Robert Heylmun

Home Alone

It was a hilarious film in 1990 as Macauley Culken plays an eight-year-old kid who is home alone and whose ingenuity fends off two would-be burglars (bunglers?).

Home alone isn’t always that funny. Yesterday in the check out line at COSTO, the checker had to look up a price for something I was buying. I turned to the woman waiting behind me. “I hate holding up lines in stores,” I said with an apologetic look.

“Doesn’t bother me,” she replied. “It’s nice to talk to somebody. I live alone, you know.”

Well, of course I didn’t know and during our wait, she told me in what part of the city she lived. She was buying a single item (rare at COSTCO), a large package of frozen beef stew. The checker was ready for me and that concluded our chat. I didn’t get her name. On my way home, I thought about her and of many of us who are home alone. You hear a lot about single older people not living as long as those who are coupled up, and you hear about the greater chance of depression and suicide among loners. Many of us prefer living alone, perhaps flirting naïvely with these hidden dangers to our health and well-being. And of course there is the very real danger of a medical emergency with no one around to help. We live alone anyway, a sort of ‘living on the edge’ I suppose.

There is certainly a difference between ‘aloneness’ and ‘loneliness’ and I would guess that the lady in COSTCO suffers a bit from the latter. While she didn’t take the opportunity with me to rattle on, it was clear that she was happy to engage in any kind of human interaction, however brief it may be. She didn’t seem be to hinting at our having coffee later (or a hotdog, if you’re at COSTCO), and she went on her way with only a slight wave goodbye.

And I went on about my own busy day, arriving home with a couple of things on my schedule. Reading EfM materials for one, continuing to slog through a Vivaldi cello concerto part for another, dealing with a current HOA issue, meeting with the Amazon people who want to install a better delivery system in the building, more reading, and another hour of cello practice. Alone but not lonely—at least not today.

It’s in the evenings that I sometimes feel lonely. Unless I invite people to dinner, I don’t see much of them otherwise. I don’t invite people on a quid pro quo basis but I can’t help wondering where they are when they aren’t here and what they’re doing. It’s rarer each year to be automatically included in dinner plans by fewer and fewer friends and acquaintances. I know this sounds like a lament, and I only bring it up because this lack of being included is possibly one of those ingredients for depression that people living alone suffer from. Fortunately for me, this condition heads its ugly rear only spasmodically, but for many like the lady at COSTCO, its appearance is likely more usual than occasional.

Ah, now for the EfM reading. Community is the key word throughout and the emphasis on Christian maturity is the main theme for this coming year. Directly out of the chute comes a discussion of how to listen to other people, to really listen. All we need now is someone to listen to and for someone to listen to us. But to do either, we have to get together.

I have gained a small reputation as a good cook and this has become something of a curse. People excuse themselves from having me to dinner because they say, “Oh Robert, I couldn’t cook for you!” as if I were Julia Child or something. Ridiculous, but I hope that’s their real reason. I already mentioned COSTCO hotdogs, didn’t I? Well, I’m happy to have one of theirs or one of yours or anything else you’re putting on the table. The point of eating together is the ‘together’ part and not what the kitchen produces. Together = Community.

Maybe there are other reasons and perhaps EfM’s efforts to show me the way toward a greater Christian maturity will render me a more desirable dinner guest. And who knows? Maybe the lady at COSTCO has poisoned the neighborhood wells of hospitality and that’s why she’s eating frozen beef stew alone. All we can do is try harder to see each other in whatever context exists for us, be thoughtful about our need and desire for community, and move with more conviction toward the knowledge of “Who is my neighbor?”

“In peace, we pray to you, Lord God.
For all people in their daily life and work;
For our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are alone.”
                           BCP, Prayers of the People, Form VI

Robert Heylmun
20 September 2019

A sort of Eulogy

Robert Heylmun reflects on loss.

We never get used to it. The news of a friend’s death, I mean. As someone in his 70s, I’d think that some amount of immunity from the profound feeling of loss would have accrued, would have allowed me to take in the news with a dignified equanimity.

Pauline’s death came after years of her dealing with Alzheimer’s disease and then finally with its dealing with her. So her death was not a surprise as if she’d been struck by a car and killed, but it was a shock despite all of the preparations on my part for its imminence.

The clichés come out: She’s out of her suffering now, Robert. She’s in a better place. She would have wanted to leave this way. Cliché’s are born out of human experience of course, and they are all true in their way. They are a kind of band-aid applied to the wound of grief, meant to stanch the flow of sadness but not adequate to mitigate it very much.

Memories do more in that cause, memories of the days when Pauline, her husband Sid, and I found the kind of friendship that everyone wants. Filled with humor, good times, dinners, and shared events—thirty years’ worth. Some bad times too, but we were there for each other. When Sid died in 2007, Pauline and I stood at his grave while the Kaddish was chanted by the cantor. We were in many aspects a kind of family.

Just before Pauline re-met Jack, she and I booked a cruise down the Mexican Riviera, scandalizing some of our friends when we announced we would share a stateroom. At one afternoon party, we were telling people about the trip when an acquaintance of Pauline’s whom I didn’t know, stage whispered what she thought would be a juicy piece of gossip, that we’d be sleeping in the same room. Without missing a beat, Pauline turned to her and said, “Don’t worry, Robert bought pajamas.”

But the signs of Pauline’s illness became visible on that trip. I entrusted her with our tickets for several shore tours and when the time came to go, they were nowhere to be found. I took her out to the bar and sat her down for a drink, and then went to search our stateroom. Carefully hidden three drawers down under her underwear.

Jack Burke had been Pauline’s high school boyfriend and finally fiancé until their lives took different turns at college. Both had married, had children, and had moved away from Michigan. Now decades later at a high school reunion, they met again. Jack came to California and what Pauline would have done without him these last years is anyone’s guess. He has been absolutely devoted to her, but then, Pauline was the sort of person whom everyone wanted to be close to.

Do you feel better now? I do, just relating this, just reliving some memories (there are many, many more), and finding that the empty place in my heart is filling with those times, those moments in which Pauline provided sunshine and warmth. I think what’s left to fill is the hollow place that echoes how I will miss her, and here’s where a cliché does become useful. The last time I saw her, she was nearly comatose, unable to say a complete sentence, and was staring most of the time into middle distance. She is indeed in a better place than that one, and she goes with part of my heart.

The Tuft of Flowers Revisited: Navarro River Strings Camp

You may know Robert Frost’s poem The Tuft of Flowers, but if you don’t, I commend it to you. The scene is a hay field in the late morning when the speaker has gone to turn the newly mown hay. The mower, having been there at dawn to complete his work, has gone his way. The speaker finds, thanks to a determined butterfly, that in the middle of the field of cut grass, the mower did his job well, leveling all of the hay, but on purpose left standing a single tuft of flowers.

“The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him,
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.”

On Thursday evening, I came upon a tuft of flowers. Not real flowers, metaphorical ones, notes on a page, the cello line of the third Brandenburg Concerto. J.S. Bach was the early morning worker who left us the splendor of that concerto, not with any thought of ‘ours to him,’ but with the same motives that the mower had, simple beauty.

The cello and I are fairly recent friends. It’s true that I played the cello in my 20s, but frankly, I remember next to nothing about how I played in those days, perhaps one benefit of a poor memory. When I began (again) last July, I brought the ability to read music, and I knew the names of the strings. So within twelve months to be sat down in front of a composition by Bach didn’t fill me with confidence.

“Come on, Robert, here’s the cello score. We’re going to sight read it so get your cello and join us.” That was from another cellist named Shirley from California’s gold country. Okay, I thought. It’s been a friendly and supportive group and no one at camp rose to be critical of the musical efforts of others. So I sat down and shared the score with her and about ten or fifteen others of us, forming a small chamber orchestra.

There is no easy Bach. Anyone who has ever attempted playing his music knows that, and I was sure that I couldn’t read the score, much less keep up with the group. Fine, I would play what I could and stop when I couldn’t. I’d listen to the ensemble. That would at least be instructive. But we started slowly, counting two measures of 4/4 time, and we read through the first movement. Then we read through it again, this time up to tempo.

I was keeping up! I was reading the score, and I was keeping up! The third time through, I was playing the music, not merely sawing out the notes on the cello. By the time we got to the final chord, I understood what Bach saw when he wrote this work. The beauty of sharing it with this small impromptu chamber group, and with Bach, filled me with inexpressible joy.

“But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
. . .
And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.”

I sat there beaming, perfectly ecstatic, reveling in the epiphany of the moment. The woman who had organized our playing looked over to see me grinning like an idiot. “I think Robert would like to play it again,” she said. And she was right. And so we did.

I suppose this all sounds a bit syrupy and gushy, but some of our dearest, deepest emotions, when we own up to them, often do sound that way when we try to tell them out loud or write them down. I can only say that I cannot remember any musical experience before in my life that produced the level of elation I experienced that evening, of being able to play the music of perhaps our greatest composer, coupled with genuine gratitude for Bach’s genius, for the music that reaches across nearly three hundred years, and for his bequeathing us his gift of a tuft of flowers.

Robert Heylmun

Lenten Dilemma

The death of Antonin Scalia last Saturday almost immediately spawned a political argument about his replacement. The clichéd phrase of his not being cold before the vultures arrived is, like many clichés, exactly apt. During their debate the Republican candidates universally agreed that President Obama ought to forego putting a name before ‘their’ Senate for consideration, that doing so would mean a long delay until after the November election at least.

But Scalia’s death also instigated debates between the views that he was after all a human being, worthy of respect and dignity, the “Love your enemy” faction, against the “By their fruits, you shall know them” group who outlined Scalia’s rather nasty history of arguing against civil rights for gay people. Facebook filled with opinions on Scalia’s legacy, and whichever side you join, his life and death present something of a dilemma for Christians entering the season of Lent.

Every service from Ash Wednesday forward points us toward introspection, self-evaluation, repentance for what we have done and left undone, and a determination to lead a more godly life. Left in the spiritual realm and the sacred spaces of church, all of those activities move relatively smoothly, leaving us with an air of sanctity, of having communed not only with our own souls, but with God whose direction we prayed for all the while.

It’s outside the church walls that things sometimes unravel, and we’ve been through this before with bishops (not the current one) of this diocese whose legacy, like Scalia’s, is apt to lead us toward a deep-seated hatred for all they did to us or failed to do for us. Such feelings move us away from what’s called a Holy Lent, identified by the search for righteousness and forgiveness. Those emotions bring up the question of how much we are to forgive (Jesus had a lot to say about this amount), and how much we can forget about the hurtful slings and deadly arrows aimed at us.

No, we cannot ever forget. Doing so ushers in the possibility of the return of those days of repression and marginalization. To not remember past abuse is to allow its repetition. Forgetting breeds complacency and the smug notion that nothing like the past could ever happen again. “Tis a bright day that brings forth the adder, and that craves wary walking,” Shakespeare tells us. Vigilance depends on memory, of a vivid recollection of the past and a resolve never to let bigotry rise to destroy the rights we have wrested from the benighted beliefs held by the likes of Antonin Scalia.

Forgiveness is nevertheless more than possible; it’s required. In the quid pro quo of asking and receiving forgiveness, we have no choice if we profess to be Christians. It’s a hard thing to do sometimes, forgiving people like Scalia who could have championed gay rights in his long career. But doing so makes us emerge much stronger in faith from the refiner’s fire, better tempered like fine steel for the next time we must forgive until forgiveness becomes automatic, and doesn’t require us to decide whether the other person is worthy of our forgiveness. Forgiving humbles us and ennobles us at the same time. It is the essence of love that endures all things and forgives all things.

So we may send Justice Scalia to God with our forgiveness with the sure and certain knowledge of God’s mercy. For us to do less within the covenant of our baptism would be a betrayal and most certainly would interfere with our symbolic journey toward Jerusalem this Lenten season.

Robert Heylmun
February 15, 2016