Diary of a Theologian

Hickory Lane

Runners have it easy when they visit another city. The only special equipment they have to pack is their shoes. Then in the morning before the day begins, they head out to see the place they’re visiting.

Nowadays, they can carry a palm-sized computer that communicates with satellites and, with it, track their path and progress. But they also can go without (as in the ancient days of, say, the year 2000) and trust their own wits to find their way back home.
 One priest, staying at the old College of Preachers in Our Nation’s Capital, went out for a run and got lost. The streets were winding and hilly, the sun had not yet risen, and he just had to keep going. He returned after an hour an a half—the sun was up and he was wiped out by this, for him, really long run. I think it was a sighting of the National Cathedral that brought him back. He had a sense of having being caught without alternatives; not unsafe, but without cash or ID, just a key (or maybe it was just the mental knowledge of the entrance code). All he could do was keep running, think, hope, and pray.
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 Running as a visitor recently, I noticed that the residential street I had come upon was called Hickory Lane. Lots of streets in that part of the world are named for trees and are almost never called “streets.” Then a tune came into my mind.
 I was back in grade school, in a world that really was a long time ago. We’re in the auditorium where we had music class a couple of days a week, and we’re singing a song that, even then, was old fashioned. “School days, school days, dear old golden rule days: Reading and writing and arithmetic; Taught to the tune of a hickory stick.”
 I’m on Hickory Lane and my mind dredges up something half a century ago about hickory sticks. Corporal punishment was just an accepted thing then, but to speak of a spanking with the stick as a “tune” was even then a poetic transformation. The good and the bad are alike transformed and remembered with an equal gaze. Education, discipline, and love come together.
 The song, of course, goes on with words we boys squirmed to sing: “You were my queen in calico, I was your bashful, barefoot beau As you wrote on my slate, ‘I love you, Joe,’ When we were a couple of kids.”
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 We’re all runners, of course. We’re all visitors, wherever we are. We carry memories that are themselves memories that bathe all they consider with love. And although we can get ourselves lost, that cathedral spire is there and might indicate the way home.
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 Out & About. This Sunday, November 11, I’ll lead a seminar discussion on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go. I hope you read the book and, if you can, join us at Incarnation, 3966 McKinney Ave., Dallas, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in room 205 of the education building.

It is Hard for the Rich

It Is Hard for the Rich --or so Jesus says, to enter the kingdom of God. But why is it hard? Methinks it is because wealth—and here “wealth” means basically what we call middle-class life—protects us from many unexpected disasters. If I get ill, I have access to doctors and insurance to cover much of the cost. If I lose my job, I have savings to live on, at least for awhile. No authority, or thug, can come to my front door and order me to move out into the street. If I get arrested, I can get a lawyer, and so on. We have the rule of law, we have assets, we have social supports. That’s what it means to be rich.

Many people today don’t have it this way, and most people through most of history didn’t. They weren’t rich. Why is entering the kingdom of God easier if you aren’t able to cushion life’s random blows, hard knocks, and catastrophes?

It’s because you know: at any time, I could lose everything.

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Of course it’s an illusion, this sense that we rich middle-class folk have the means to fend off the random blows of life. In one of the recent heavy rains, I was driving home from talking with a church group in Lewisville about (ironically?) Losing Susan, my reflections on brain disease and “the God who gives and takes away.” I was not far from home on the interstate, going about 40 (most everyone was going about 40) when, at a curve and gentle dip in the road, a pickup passed me on the left at a much higher speed. As he did so, he covered my car with so much water that I could not see anything. I didn’t dare brake or try anything else, and in a couple of seconds, I guess, it cleared enough for me to see. But for a brief bit I was literally running blind, a ton or two of steel moving at 40 miles per hour (60 feet per second).

What I felt then is the truth that the poor feel regularly. We’re running through life exposed to such dangers as could abruptly change everything. And we have no defenses against them.

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To enter the kingdom of God is, in part, to let go of everything that is not God, which is to say, to recognize that God is the one who holds us in being. We have to give up everything else to follow him. To a few select people, that means selling everything now. For everyone, it means letting go at the moment of death. For most of us, it’s something we think about from time to time.

I’m grateful for that reminder in the rain on the interstate. I’m also grateful to be here to tell you about it.

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Out & About. Sunday, October 28, I will deliver my fall theology lecture. The topic is moral rules, particularly how do we know when, if ever, to make personal exceptions to rules. I will be looking particularly at assisted suicide (or aid-in-dying) as a case that’s not only interesting but something, I believe, we need to be thinking about Christianly. Free, open to the public, with a reception following: Church of the Incarnation, 3966 McKinney, Dallas, at 6:15 p.m. (You can come early at 5 p.m. for Evensong.)

Sunday, November 4, as we all are celebrating the return of Standard Time (the best kind of time is Standard Time!), I will be preaching at All Souls’ Church, Penna. Ave. and 63^rd St., Oklahoma City, at 8 and 10 a.m. The week following I’ll be teaching two classes there. On Mon., Tues., and Wed. (Nov. 5-7) from noon to 1 p.m., a class on the book of Esther. And on the same days from 6 to 7 p.m., on Christian bioethics. No registration; all open to the public.