Editor's Note: This article is based on the second chapter of the author's book: Azure Wind: Lessons for Ministry from Under Sail.
I am a planner. I have learned to think ahead, to anticipate, to consider various options and possibilities and to make choices that meet a goal. I've planned programs, workshops, meetings, fund-raisers, and construction projects. When I began planning for my sabbatical, I brought those same skills to the table.
For eighteen months I had been working toward a sabbatical that was to include an active adventure--sailing--and a reflective experiences--reading and writing. I wanted to do this with friends and family and I knew that I would have to organize and plan for this moment with great care. I looked up charts and measured miles and averaged boat speeds, based on the reading I was doing.
What to make of Maher Arar? A Syrian-born computer engineer, now a naturalized citizen of Canada, an ordinary man with a wife and family, Arar was detained by American authorities on September 26, 2002, while changing flights at Kennedy Airport. Arar's infraction? He had a co-worker, who had a brother, who had connections to people whom officials suspected of having links to al-Qaeda. Based on this thin thread of suspicion and without being charged with any crime, Arar was taken from his family, put in chains, handed over to the government of Syria, and for ten months subjected to acts of extreme physical and mental torture. We now know that Arar was completely innocent.
How could something like this happen? Why America's resort to torture? Seasoned interrogators have long known that torture is a poor tactic to elicit reliable information. Under torture a person will say whatever his tormentors wish. In fact, a classic military text on interrogation, based on concrete experience gained during World War II, says that the best way to extract useful information is through kindness, not brutality.
©Ruth Haley Barton, June 2005.
Used by permission.
"The soul is like a wild animal--tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, self-sufficient. It knows how to survive in hard places. But it is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush. If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the woods, sit patiently by the base of the tree, and fade into our surroundings, the wild animal we seek might put in an appearance."
-- Parker Palmer
I will never forget my first experience with extended solitude. It was a field trip, of sorts, that was part of a seminary class on spiritual formation; our class gathered at a nearby retreat center to spend the day under the guidance of our beloved professor. The morning was wonderful but, in some ways, very similar to what I had already been experiencing in shorter times of solitude. However, when lunchtime came, we were told that we would eat lunch in silence so as not to interrupt our attention to God by being pulled into social interaction.
"Preach the gospel at all times," urged Francis of Assisi, adding, "if necessary, use words." And we may wonder that the truth he administers -- that actions preach louder, and better, than words -- doesn't paralyze proclamation altogether.
Still, the example of the canonical evangelists should nerve us to keep on. After all, if they knew and observed Francis' rule (and who can believe that they did?), then, by whatever calculus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John judged the necessity to be great. For, of words -- gratias Deo, such marvelous words! -- they used plenty.
We were setting the bar high when we Americans declared, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
That high bar motivates us to pursue honorable purposes in ethical ways. In recent days, as we have paused to remember with tears the horrors of 9/11, our American president has argued that the war on terror exempts us from some particular requirements of the Geneva Conventions. Many of us find such assertions beyond comprehension, beyond justification, beyond ethical defense. We feel embarrassed, ashamed, and angry.
David Ray Griffin, professor emeritus of philosophy and theology at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, continues his series of books in which he argues that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, were "false-flag" operations of individuals within the U.S. government to aid America's imperialistic advances into Afghanistan and Iraq and to spread U.S. power and influence around the world.
Incorporating material from newly-released interviews as well as reviewing information he has previously published i, the first half of this book contains extensively footnoted material formed into a well-crafted argument against the official explanation of the 9/11 attacks given by the 9/11 Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Institute of Standards & Technology, and various independent media groups. Griffin sums up his argument in this portion by concluding that the evidence he cites is a "conclusive case" (p. 82) that the Bush administration willfully and purposefully committed an act of war against the population and territory of the United States in order to accomplish the goals of a number of its "neo-conservative" members: the absolute primacy of the United States as the unchallenged world power and the institution of a worldwide Pax Americana.
Over the years of teaching seminarians and leading them later in continuing education seminars, I have come to realize that we have not prepared clergy to handle criticism.
Nothing seems to demoralize clergy more than personal and professional criticism. It hurts. It throws us off balance. It causes us to question our competence. Long after the initial sting there lingers a smoldering resentment that a parishioner could be so unloving, unjust, and unfair. This resentment grows and deepens in the absence of offsetting affirmation and praise. Often, too, the resentment festers when there is no one to talk to about the injustice except one's life partner who must also endure the insult and pain.
c. 2006 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly
Barbara Brown Taylor has been an Episcopal priest, a teacher, columnist, author and -- according to Baylor University -- one of the best preachers in the English-speaking world.
Her new book, Leaving Church (HarperSanFrancisco), describes her experience of burning out as the priest of a parish she had wanted very much to serve and then leaving not only the pastoral ministry but also many of her former beliefs.
"I wanted to be as close as I could to the Really Real," she said in an interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. "And I'll capitalize both of those R's, because God is a word that means different things to different people, but we might agree it's what is most real."
c. 2006 Religion News Service
When church members describe their ideal pastor, they often prefer "a nice young man with a family," as one denominational official said. Nice young men and women do become pastors, but they are a minority in the pool of American clergy. I concentrate here on the word "young." Whether male or female, young clergy are in short supply.
In one sense, this is no surprise. For at least the past 25 years, an increasing percentage of seminary students have been second-career students; that is, they have worked in at least one other occupation prior to seminary.
The hardest task for a minister is being the former pastor, especially if you were beloved by many.
While pastor of the church, you were invited in for the most intimate and special events in people's lives--baptisms, weddings, illnesses, death. Not only were you honored by being trusted to share in those times, you were needed by individuals and families during those marker happenings in their lives. You formed deep and lasting friendships with people in your congregation.
Leaving the pastorate within that congregation means leaving all those meaningful connections behind. That can be painful, difficult, and lonely. But just as a family doctor does not continue to prescribe or perform surgery on former patients after retiring or moving to another community, so a minister is no longer a pastor to those who used to be his/her parishioners.
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