The Youth Replies, I Can

“These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”  Revelation 7:14

The tradition at my high school was that each graduation speaker had to discuss as his or her theme a famous saying of an American hero.  There was a rotating series of texts, and these were assigned by Mr. Snyder, the venerable senior class advisor, who had been at it since my mother was a student.  Even by 1996, this sort of thing was dreadfully old-fashioned, but no one really complained about it—it was just how it was at Clear Spring High School. 

I wasn’t told until two weeks before graduation which text I would have to discuss.  I wanted Daniel Webster’s words from the Dartmouth College case: “she is a small school, but there are those who love her.”  Whoever got that could write the tear-jerker.

But instead, I was assigned a bit of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
The youth replies, I can.

Keeping the Cradle

“With their seed shall continually remain a good inheritance, and their children are within the covenant.”  Ecclesiasticus 44:11

For the last two weeks, our life at the beautifully renovated Saint Francis rectory has been pretty well hemmed in by cardboard boxes, packing tape and picture hangers.  We’re delighted to be here, but not really settled yet.  Moving is a chore of many agonies, as most of you will know well. 

But it has the advantage of forcing us to take stock, to declutter, to start again with a little less baggage than we were carrying before.  We pulled out some clothes that are too small for Peter, our five-year-old.  We figured out which Tupperware pieces really didn’t have lids and which socks were never to be matched again.

But we kept the cradle.  Even though it gets underfoot in the guest bedroom. Even though we don’t necessarily expect a third. Even though I’m mildly nervous I might come home one day to find our poor dog bundled in blankets inside it.

It was a gift from a kind, shy old man, Bud Miner, a member of Saint Paul’s Church in Sharpsburg, Maryland, the country parish where I first served as a rector.  Bud made it out of walnut in the little shed behind his house, polished it until it shone brightly and carved an M on the outside of the footboard.  It was presented to us at the end of the shower given for us by the good ladies of the ECW a few weeks before Philip was born.  Bud died years ago, not long after we sent him a picture of Peter being rocked in it, as his brother had been before. 

The cradle is beautiful on its own, and it’s beautiful as a sign of the love extended to us by the people at Saint Paul’s.  It may not be practical, and I expect the organizing gurus would tell us to snap a picture on the smartphone and move on.  But we keep it as a reminder of the good things of the past and our hopes for the future.  

Building the Dome, Meeting the Saints

I’m excited that the formal beginning of our ministry together will be joined to our celebration of the feast of All Saints this coming Sunday. As many of you know, All Saints' is one of the principal feasts of the church year, a day adorned with beautiful prayers and hymns.  At its heart, the feast celebrates the transforming power of Christ’s resurrection, revealed in the lives of our brothers and sisters across time and space, “the lights of the world in their generations.” 

It’s notable that a feast so centered on the church’s life began with the consecration of one particular church building, Saint Mary and the Martyrs in Rome, consecrated for Christian worship in 609.  You probably know this particular church much better by its pagan name, the Pantheon.  If you have been to Rome, you may have been inside it to catch a glimpse of its glorious dome, which has served as a model for many more buildings of its kind, including the Jefferson Memorial in our own backyard.

When the Pantheon was completed by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the second century, its dome was twice as big as any that had ever been built before, still the largest masonry dome ever constructed.  It was a monument to the Roman genius for engineering, intended to rival the great pyramids.  The wide expanse echoed the vault of the heavens, appropriate for its dedication to all the gods of Rome.