Youth Minister [Daniel Strandlund] Plans Move to Uganda, Says “Ironically, I Find a Lot of Guidance in Old British Poetry” Part II: Jesus is Better.

“‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ –that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

--John Keats, from “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

 

“Here on this altar we are grown out of time…Christ forces himself upon us, ripping from the ripe center of our being the bright petals of our true selves until we are entirely open, entirely drinking the sunlight…we live so that we may die for beauty, that we may live in truth.  These are the only things; indeed, this is the only thing: to be with Christ, who alone is beautiful and true.  Amen.”

-- Excerpt from my journal, June 14, 2008.

 

“The call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human.”

--Barbara Brown Taylor 

      When I was twelve years old I discovered that the things we say in church actually mean something very real and personal.  I was in seventh grade, and early in the fall of that year I met a girl named Amy from my science class.  We talked a few times in the hallway, and in a few days’ time (it was October 4^th, to be exact) her friend Leanna handed me a note asking if I would be Amy’s boyfriend.  Not really knowing what that meant, I said yes.  (To this day, I claim to have no expertise or practical advice to give on the subject of being someone’s boyfriend.)  Leanna squealed and ran off to tell Amy whom I didn’t actually see again until the following day when I met her at her locker, the ritual of which I had gleaned from middle school social etiquette was simply what one did if he had a girlfriend.  We held hands a few times, but through the duration of our relationship, the only tangible evidence of our being “together” was the fact that I met her at her locker in between classes, at breaks, and sometimes after school.  We never talked much about anything, hung out outside of school, or called each other on the phone.  So it went for maybe three months.

      One day, after realizing (or I like to remember it as my having realized) that you have to actually know or at the very least want to get to know someone to be her boyfriend, I decided to break up with Amy.  I was at home, and I wasn’t sure what to expect from Amy when we broke up (probably because we never spoke or had any kind of meaningful interaction at all).  I did know, however, that “break ups” were bad and made people sad and angry, and in my mind the best way to avoid that was to avoid Amy entirely.  In my adolescent mind, that would make the emotional repercussions close to non-existent.  Thus, my first adolescent relationship ended the way it began: through Leanna.  I called Leanna and told her I wanted to break up with Amy, and then asked if she would do it for me.  She did, and I called Leanna again later on “to see how it went.”  (Not well, by the way.)  I thanked her and hung up the phone.

      A few days later my parents asked about Amy, and I said that we’d broken up.  Not understanding that there was something wrong with my handling of the situation, I told them that I’d gotten Leanna to do it for me.  We sat and continued doing whatever it was we were doing for a few minutes, and then my dad got up and went into the living room.  This was a bad sign.  The living room was not a nice place like the den downstairs.  The den had a TV, old couches, a fridge, and was generally a place where everyone liked to be.  The living room, on the other hand, had a baby grand piano, a grandfather clock, a glass coffee table with matching glass chess set, and enormous book shelves full of the books you didn’t normally read, like encyclopedias and bibles.  The whole living room area had the look of “not for touching.”  Dad called me in after him.

      He was standing with his old prayer book open on top of the lowest cabinet section of the bookshelves.  He had his finger pointing to something.

      “Do you know what this is?” he said.

      “Um, yes sir.  It’s the baptismal covenant.”  I would not have known this had it not been printed largely and clearly on the left-hand page.

      “That’s right.  These are promises you and your family have made to God and to each other.  Read this one out loud.”

      His thick index finger pressed the pages into each other until the worn leather cover splayed flat against the counter.  I read the line he pointed to.  “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

      “Read that last part again.  You will…”

      “…respect the dignity of every human being?”  I said.  My throat began to knot.

      “That one,” he said, “you and I have both promised God a ‘yes’ to that question.  Do you think getting Leanna to break up with Amy for you instead of doing it yourself was respecting Amy’s dignity?”

      Enter the fear of fire and lightening, the terrible beauty of thunder in the mountains, the frustration on my priest’s face the time I almost dropped the gospel book.  I suddenly knew that my very soul, my ability to see my reflection in the mirror and for my presence to cause automatic grocery store doors to open depended upon my answer to that question.  “No, sir.”

      “Good.  Next time you have something that important to tell someone, you tell them in person, understand?”

      “Yes, sir.”  He closed the worn, red book and walked back into the kitchen.  I don’t remember walking to my room.  Only sitting on my bed, and thinking honestly for the first time about what it means to be human: to be good, to be fallen, and most of all, to be responsible.  I couldn’t have told you then, but that conversation with my dad was the first time the curtain in my life started to rip in two[1], and I began to realize what Emmanuel means, or more nearly, Who Emmanuel is.  It’s an important distinction.

      From adolescence onward, I think at the heart of everything real I’ve ever tried to do has been the pursuit of that question, “What does it mean to be human?”  God has made us in God’s image, and somehow, being human, in all of its pain and beauty, is realizing that each of us is but a shadow of our truest self, the Self we receive during communion.  It’s as if we live at the bottom of an ancient pool, staring up at the One who in the beginning is God and is with God, Who sits with His friends around a charcoal fire on the beach, Who commands the elements from a boat.[2]  Being fully human is the deep yearn to be with Him who made us; it is the secret, painful knowledge that we are incomplete; that we must ever pursue and be pursued by Christ; and that we will never catch more than the hem of His garment.  It is enough with us, and almost too much.[3]  This is as close to a “why” as I can come when thinking about “why” I’m going to Uganda.

      For the most part, my illusions of grandeur about my upcoming work in Uganda have subsided.  Out of the billions of children in the world, I’ll be living, teaching, and learning in communion with twenty-six of them for less than four months.  That’s it.  I won’t change any statistics about poverty or literacy or the spread of HIV/AIDS, and I doubt I’ll be the leader of some non-violent revolution to settle the myriad cultural and political woes of sub-Saharan Africa.  All I know is that in the deepest places of my being is a yearning to be with Christ, the infinitely deep yearn of the Trinity for itself, the communal God who murmurs and sings love songs inside of us.  Whatever outward and visible shapes our lives take, to be fully human is to be a part of that inward and spiritual communion. 

      For me, of all the doors God has opened, I’ve chosen the one that leads to Uganda for a time.  I’m doing my best to walk through it, and even as we speak, another door or series of doors is opening, and soon I will choose to walk through one of those, as well.  Whatever dark rooms or lighted hallways lie behind them are not the important thing, for at the center of every house is Christ, and if we are patient and humble, and if we listen, all doors lead to Him.  Christ calls us into and out of the world, and it is ours to choose how we will belong to Him.  It is all that is demanded of us as human beings: that we belong to God, who alone is life and light, who is true and beautiful.  I am trying only to belong to Christ, and I will, with God’s help.

      I don’t know if I’ll have the time or energy to write another article for our newsletter before departing for Uganda, so if I don’t, know that our time together here at St. Luke’s has been a blessing, and that the Spirit moves gently and urgently in this place.  You can feel It if you sit through a Sunday morning service in summer with your bare feet against the cold stone of the nave and sanctuary.  (I usually put my shoes back on for communion so no one has to see the soles of my bared sandal-stained feet, but Floy Proctor says I should just leave them off.) 

      Thank you all for all that you are and will be, and may your life here and beyond be an Alleluia to the One who creates us, Amen.

Originally penned for “Dialogue” Newsletter, Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Daniel P. Strandlund, June 18, 2008