Caterpillar Saints

My favorite among apocryphal writings – that is, the collection of writings that some people consider to be divinely inspired, but others do not – my favorite among these apocryphal writings, The New Yorker magazine, recently ran a marvelous cartoon that depicts a caterpillar having a conversation with a butterfly.  The butterfly’s wings are unfurled, and even in the black-and-white format of the magazine, you can tell that those wings are drenched with color.  The caterpillar, wrinkled, scrunchy, lumpy, and inelegant in comparison to the lovely butterfly, and flightless, of course, is looking up at the butterfly.  The butterfly is speaking, and says to the caterpillar, in what I can only assume to be a matter-of-fact tone, “The pay is actually about the same.”

Is there disappointment in this conversation?  Hard to say which of the two might be the more disappointed by the realization that the pay is about the same.  Is it the caterpillar, who sees before him his transformed destiny of beauty and flight, only to learn that his wages won’t go up?  Or is it the butterfly who has discovered that in her self-actualization of metamorphosis into something as beautiful as a butterfly, her paycheck had hardly increased?

Now, you send enough butterflies to business school and interesting things could happen.  For one thing, you might see the pay of some butterflies rise high above the pay of others.  CEO butterflies need to be well compensated, after all.  You’ve got to reward your talent.  For another thing, the MBA butterflies might write a report indicating how expensive it is to produce such colorful wings: the pigments are pricey, and the fabric for the wings, too.  And there is a lot of serious engineering that goes into each butterfly.  Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more efficient if caterpillars – most of them anyway – just remained caterpillars.  Metamorphosis is costly, time consuming, and complex – it need not be for everyone!

Plus, you send enough butterflies to business school and soon you are going to have cable TV: Caterpillar Cable.  Cable TV keeps the caterpillars amused at a cost (to the caterpillars) of only about a hundred bucks a month.  But what with all the channels, and now Netflix and Hulu and a reasonably fast WiFi connection too, the caterpillars are pretty distracted by entertainers – butterflies all – for whom the pay is not about the same at all, it is quite elevated, in fact.  (That’s what the market has determined; so who are the caterpillars to wonder about that?  But I digress.)  Soon enough, many of the caterpillars forget that once upon a time all caterpillars were meant to become butterflies.  Content with the content dished out in flat-screen, HD, 24-hour, on-demand entertainment, who’s going to bother with the trouble of becoming a butterfly?

True fact: last year the worldwide monarch butterfly population was down to only about 35 million, from what had once been an estimated population of one billion.[i]  Bad weather and a depleted supply of milkweed are cited as the causes.  But I have to wonder if it isn’t because the caterpillars are all choosing to stay home and watch cable, entertaining themselves out of a promise of beauty, purpose, and direction.  Who knows?

Here we are on All Saints Day.  And if you’ll allow me to put it this way, it’s the day we often think of as an opportunity for us caterpillars to give thanks to God for all the butterflies.  But do I need to say anything else, before I ask you if you see anything wrong with this picture?

I suppose caterpillar churches might be adorned with statues of butterflies.  But then you’d have to ask yourself: don’t they know what they are looking at when they glance up at those statues?

There is this tension in the Christian tradition between the idea that the saints are, on the one hand, those whose lives have been exceptional examples of faith to which we could never aspire, and, on the other hand, that the saints are ordinary people like you and me, and that we are, all of us, called to be saints.  But even this tension is lost if the caterpillars only ever stay home and watch Netflix: if we forget to even dream about becoming butterflies, about becoming saints.

Every schoolchild knows that a caterpillar spins itself a silken cocoon as it begins the process of metamorphosis – the transformation that will result in its emergence from the cocoon as a beautiful, winged butterfly.  You may not know that inside that cocoon, the caterpillar is dissolving its own tissue into a sort of soupy substance, from which its butterfly parts are formed.  And within that soupy substance are to be found “certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs.”  And from these imaginal discs are formed all the individual parts of a butterfly: legs, eyes, antennae, and, of course, its wings.[ii]  Imaginal discs – I think this is a wonderful term!

Every caterpillar is capable of this process - spinning, its silken cocoon and dissolving its old self…  except for the imaginal discs that begin the assembly of the newly transformed self into something the caterpillar may have forgotten she was always meant to become!

And if we have relegated the saints only to the realms of statuary, icon, and relic, then we are in danger of forgetting that every one of us is capable, too, of becoming something we may have forgotten we were always meant to become.  And so, on All Saints Day, aware of the tension that the saints are exemplary and unusual, but that, nevertheless, as the old hymn says, “I mean to be one too,” we gather not only to sing about the butterflies, so to speak, but also to look for our own imaginal discs in the soupy substance of the gathered church.  And the imaginal discs (whatever they are) hold the image of what we might become (like the statues in this place), and they also stir up our imaginations, by the power of the Spirit, to remember what it is we might become!

But have you forgotten, oh caterpillars, that God made you to be saints, to be butterflies?

Have you forgotten that metamorphosis is yours to claim, and that it started when you were baptized?

Have you become content with a wrinkled, scrunchy, lumpy, and inelegant life?  Have you given up hoping to fly, and acquiesced to a flightless life, as if wings are not yours to claim, and the colors are too costly for you to hope for?

Have you lost track of your imaginal discs?

So much of the world has been convinced that it is OK if the butterfly population is decimated; sad, but OK.  Because so much of the world has lost interest in ever becoming a saint, and is busy watching Netflix anyway.

But we hear St. John’s mystical accounting of the divine intention, as the one seated on the throne declares, “See I am making all things new!”

I am making all things new!

Are not we among the things that God makes new?  Has he not given us imaginal discs of untold wonder?

By God’s grace, part of life in the church is a kind of conversation with the saints, who stand before us, wings unfurled in all their glorious color.  And if on All Saints Day we hear them speaking to us, it might be that they are telling is that “the pay is actually about the same.”  But this is commentary more on who we are than on who they have become.  Because they know that our calling to sainthood is already written out in the imaginal discs that God has planted in us all.  They know that what we shall be is yet to be revealed, even when we doubt that there is anything left for us to become. 

The witness of the saints – ordinary and extraordinary, all – is to testify to what we are, all of us, called to become, both in this life and the next.  We are called to a transformed life of hope – metamorphosis - that emerges out of the wrinkled, scrunchy, inelegant lives we sometimes find ourselves living, flightless, day by day.

Or, if The New Yorker is subject to the criticism that its words or its drawings may not amount, per se, to the status of holy writ, then it might be because the cartoon gets this crucial bit wrong: that the pay is actually not about the same.  And if the promise of winged flight or heavenly reward ignites the imaginal discs in us, then so be it!  Oh, for the wings of a butterfly!

Come to think of it, the butterfly who is bringing third-quarter wage reports to an acquaintance caterpillar is probably one of the ones who went to business school, and perhaps we should consider his testimony with skepticism.

Let us, rather, reassure one another, my fellow caterpillars, that God made us to be more than we at first appear to be! 

God made caterpillars – every single one of them – to be changed into butterflies!

God gave us the saints, to show us that we might be saints too!

God made you what you are, not so that you could be wrinkled, scrunchy, inelegant, and flightless; God made you precisely the way you are – complete with imaginal discs – so that you might be transformed into someone more beautiful, more colorful, and less earthbound than you suspect you are.

There are a lot of us caterpillars out here in the world.  Pray, let us not forget what God made us to be, pray that he will

give us the wings of faith

to rise and see the saints,

and ask them whence their victory came,

and follow their incarnate God,

and see how great their joys,

how bright their glories be![iii]

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

All Saints Day 2015

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

[i] Field & Stream (fieldandstream.com), Feb 3, 2014, Phil Bourjaily, “Weather and Milkweed Shortage Lead to Monarch Butterfly Declines”

[ii] Scientific American (scientificamerican.com), Aug 10, 2012, Ferris Jabr, “How Does a Caterpillar Turn Into a Butterfly?”

[iii] Paraphrasing Isaac Watts, “Give us the wings of faith”

Requiem for Phil

There are at least two good reasons to pay attention to the rituals of the burial of the dead.  The first, looking backward, is that in tending to the dead in their burial we have a small, last opportunity to make amends for our failing to pay attention to, care for, or love someone while he was alive.  The second, looking forward, is that from our care for the dead in their burial, we can actually learn something about how we can do better in caring for one another while we are still alive.

In Phil’s case neither is an easy lesson to learn.  He seldom spoke at all, and when he did, it was only to reply in the shortest, most succinct way possible.  To inquiries about his well-being, his happiness, or his needs, he provided no information on which a helpful response could be built.  He declined help, and always claimed to be “OK.”  It was hard to help him: he seemed not to want your help, my help.  Not that any of us really knew what to do to help him, but a lot of us –his family, his friends (such as they are), his church – we would have tried, if he’d let us.

There was one thing Phil allowed us to do: he allowed us to let him in.

We opened the doors of a soup kitchen almost thirteen years ago and he came in.  He came here every Saturday morning, except for the short time last spring he was in the hospital.  He allowed us to let him in.  From that time on, he often slept in the gardens.  Did he want help finding shelter, or another place to stay?  No.  OK.  OK.  But he allowed us to let him in to the gardens, where, I guess, he felt safe.  Every day this church is open for prayer: two Masses most days, sometimes three.  For nearly all these thirteen years Phil has come to every Sunday Mass, and sometimes to every Mass every day.  He would sit quietly throughout Mass.  He would receive Communion.  He allowed us to let him in to church. 

He allowed Jesus to let him in too, as far as I can tell.  He knelt, day by day, at the rail; he stretched out his hands to take the Bread; he guided the Cup to his lips.  If that’s not allowing Jesus to let you in, then what are we doing here?  What am I doing here?

He allowed us to let him in.  And he allowed Jesus to let him in.

Recently a friend who has had a very bad year, with far too much death than is fair, shared an essay with the title that makes the point: “Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason.”[i]  Religious-type people are famous for claiming that everything does happen for a reason and that it must all be part of God’s plan that is just obscure and confusing to us, beyond our wisdom.  I don’t know.  Although I am sure that God’s wisdom is far beyond my knowing, I often agree that Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason.

Something happened to Phil.  His brother told me that Phil loved baseball, and that he’d wanted to become an umpire.  What a great dream!  What a great goal!  But something happened – I don’t know what.  And I can’t say that it happened for a reason.  I only know that whatever happened to Phil, happened.  Probably over a period of some time, when those close to him could not see it or figure it out.  Maybe Phil couldn’t see it happening himself.  So he couldn’t figure it out.  Couldn’t fix it.

In the article, “Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason,” the author writes these concise and thoughtful words: “Some things in life cannot be fixed.  They can only be carried.”

Some things cannot be fixed.  They can only be carried.

Phil did not carry much around with him.  He had a small bag.  I don’t know if he kept things elsewhere; I doubt it.  He didn’t carry much.  I wonder what else he was carrying that I couldn’t see; that couldn’t be fixed?  I don’t know.  I wish that I had known how to fix things for Phil, or that I had known someone who knew.  I think we can do better as a society than we do for people like Phil who have to carry some things with them that the rest of cannot see – but we see the effects of it.  Since we cannot fix things, since we did not, I am glad that we can do this last, small, final act of kindness for Phil and give him what used to be called “a proper burial.” 

Looking backward, we couldn’t give him a proper place in the world while he was living.  To make amends, perhaps, we give him a place in death, as we ask for God’s mercy on him, and on us, and we seek forgiveness all around.

Looking forward, we know that Phil was not unique; he was not alone as someone who had no place of his own to lay his head, to choose the words that Jesus used to describe himself.  Many others tonight and every night have no place to lay their heads in safety, warmth, and comfort.

Tonight, as we dream of heaven, we are dreaming not only for what we hope lies ahead for Phil, but in a way, for all the things he went without in this life (a feast of fat things, and of wine on the lees, for instance, to quote the prophet).  As we give voice to these dreams for the dead, can we convince ourselves to try to do a better job for the living who need our care, our attention, and our love – especially those who have to carry so much invisible baggage?  I don’t know what exactly that might mean, but I think if we tried harder we could do a better job, and sometimes that’s what’s needed.

But, of course, some things in life can’t be fixed.  They can only be carried.

Now all we can do for Phil is carry him, now that he can carry himself no more.  Now we carry his body from this place, which was as close to a home as he had these past thirteen years.  He can’t be fixed.  He can only be carried.  So we will carry him as far as we can.  To the doors of the church.  To the hearse.  To the grave.  And then we will give him to God to carry.

And God picks up all the things that we can no longer carry, and never could fix, and he makes them new, in a world of life far beyond our imagining.

And God beckons Phil to a garden, or to a city, or to gates, beyond which lies the promise of heaven.  And I believe that Phil will allow it; and I am certain that God will let him in.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

at the Requiem for Philip John Schultz

28 October 2015

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

[i] by Tim Lawrence, timjlawrence.com

Listening Up

Listening Up

Mtr. Erika Takacs

Ask an actor what he or she says during a crowd scene in a movie or a play and you’re likely to get a whole host of answers. When I was in plays at my high school, my director always told us to say Peas and carrots, under our breath, peas and carrots, peas and carrots, over and over again. Something about the sibilance of all those s’s made our conversation seem more real, he said. But other actors choose different words, or different vegetables at least. One actor I know said that she was told to always just say potato, potato, potato. Rhubarb is apparently another popular choice for a nonsense crowd word. And one movie extra said that a director had told her to repeat the phrase strawberry pie balls. I don’t know what those are, exactly, but they sound delicious, and I find myself wondering how anyone who’s ever played in a crowd scene ever escapes being completely ravenous when the scene is over.

But real crowds, we know, don’t sound anything like that. Real crowds don’t sound so much like a low, constant murmur as they do random snatches of discussions that get pulled out of the air and knit together into one strange quilt of conversation. You can hear that man on his cell phone, that woman talking to her girlfriend, that gaggle of teenagers all talking at the same time. You can usually pick phrases out of a crowd, but rarely can you weave them together into a story that makes any kind of sense.

I would imagine that this was what Bartimaeus heard as he sat at his normal post outside the city walls of Jericho. Because if that ancient crowd was anything like the crowds we know, not everyone along that road was talking about the same thing. Bartimaeus wasn’t hearing a wash of just Jesus, Jesus, Jesus coming towards him, but bits and pieces of sentences, fragments of conversations about absolutely everything under the sun. That man was lamenting the state of the roads and why the Romans always seemed to be resetting pavestones just when he trying to get his cart to work. That woman was talking about the leading candidate for prefect and how he gets his hair to do that thing on the top of his head. This woman was complaining about the head coach of the local gladiators, suggesting that maybe he really shouldn’t be working with professionals. This man wondering where his son has run off to; that woman wondering if her daughter will ever have a child; that man ruing his lack of good footwear; this woman moaning about the heat. Words upon words, words that faded in and out, snapshots of discussions that continued on long after they passed by Bartimaeus’s well-tuned and attentive ears.

But in the midst of all of this hubbub, Bartimaeus started to hear something else, something that stuck out of the normal noise. He leaned forward and listened up, concentrated hard enough that he started to notice a pattern, a rhythm to the random phrases he heard popping out of the air. Jesus…Jesus, yes him…from Nazareth…heard that he said it’s harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle…but there were twelve baskets left over, twelve…the boy was foaming at the mouth, and then I thought he was dead, but he stood up and…put that child right there in his lap…he healed a blind man…healed a blind man…healed a blind man….

And suddenly, Bartimaeus wasn’t hearing fragments and broken pieces of conversation; suddenly he was hearing a story. He heard in that crowd the ancient story of the One Who Was Coming, the Messiah, the Son of David, anointed to heal hearts and nations, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to make the lame leap and the dumb sing. He heard in all of that hullabaloo a word for him, that the One Who Was Coming was here. And he heard it when Christ showed up, he knew it the moment Jesus was there. He recognized his presence, heard him pass close, and opened his mouth and yelled. He bellowed for all he was worth and would not stop until that Holy One himself stopped and listened. Which, of course, the Holy One did. It’s really no wonder Bartimaeus followed behind Jesus after his sight was restored. He had finally met the one who helped him to see – and not just to see, but to see how all of those little pieces fit together into one, great, improbable, magnificent story, a story for the world, a story for him. And those were words Bartimaeus wanted to hear for the rest of his life.            

There is hubbub in our world. There is hullabaloo and crowd noise and clamor. There is debate and posturing, speeches and excuses and rationalizations. There is so much information out there that it sometimes feels like it makes about as much sense as a crowd of extras saying rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb as if it means something. And then there is noise of our own lives. There are conversations about jobs and futures, about calling and vocation. There are conversations about health and safety, about cure and comfort. There are conversations about how you’re raising the kids, and how you’re being a kid. There are conversations about how you’re caring for your parents, and how you’re caring for yourselves. There are conversations about time and effort and money. There are conversations you want to have, and some that you don’t, conversations on the phone, face to face, screen to screen, mouth to microphone. There are so many conversations with so many words that sometimes it feels like it’s hard to weave them together into something meaningful, into a story that says something to the world and to you.

And so we get out of the noise and come here to this place to worship and to find our place in the crowd of people all called God’s beloved. And we take time to pray, to be silent and discover what God might have to say to us. But Bartimaeus shows us another way to do this, to find the story, to find Christ. And that is by listening up, by leaning in and actually listening to all of that hullabaloo. Because God does not only speak to us in places set apart and worship made holy. God does not only speak to us in stillness and silence. God also speaks to us in the midst of all of those other words. God speaks to us when things are noisy, when conversations are difficult or fractured or incomplete. God speaks to us with the “still, small voice of calm”* when we are otherwise surrounded by things that sound a lot like rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.

God speaks to us – we just have to be willing to pay attention, to notice when something piques our interest, catches our ear. We have to be willing to notice the news story that grabs our attention and won’t let go, the comment made by a friend that lingers long into the evening, that image haunts our dreams. We have to be willing to lean in to that little tug of the gut that says, listen here, pay attention here, this is for you. Christ is here for you, right here, leaning in to hear you, holding a holy stillness right in the middle of your life. Christ is right here, eager to hear what you want – healing, strength, comfort, bravery; a voice, a call, a home; justice, mercy, forgiveness; hands to work, a heart to love, eyes to see.

And this attention, this listening, is faith. It’s faith to believe that God might have a voice great enough to cut through the noise. It’s faith to believe that Christ is present, and that Christ has something to say to you, to all of these people called God’s own beloved, even those people in the crowd you find difficult to love. It’s faith to believe that even though you feel like you’ve been stuck sitting in the same place listening to the same noise for a long, long time, you still might hear Christ calling you to get up and run.

It’s faith to keep listening in a world with so much noise and to trust that you will hear a word spoken for you, to hope that you will pick up a thread of grace that God can knit together into a story of such redemption and love that it will fill your heart with indescribable joy. It’s faith to keep listening – and that faith makes us well. So lean in and listen up. And get up; take heart; Jesus is calling you.     

*from John Greenleaf Whittier

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

25 October 2015

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia