Pancakes and Ashes

Oh, I know this was supposed to be Part Two of the "Ten Most Influential" post, but a guy can't always do what a guy's supposed to do. And besides, it's the beginning of Lent -- Ash Wednesday and all that -- a time of year when I'm especially grateful to be retired from parish ministry. I thought I'd spend a few minutes ruminating, maybe even whining, about this season in the Church's life and mine.

Even bringing up the subject gives me cold chills, and I can literally feel my insides tightening up as I think about Lent, for whereas I was usually juggling three or four balls during the rest of the year, in Lent it went up to six or eight and some of them were on fire! I dreaded it. Lent was, bottom line, a dreary and hectic time: in the last gray days of winter we had at least one and sometimes two or three extra classes and worship services each week, a mid-week dinner with program, and since the bishop always made his annual visitation to the parish on Palm Sunday there were Confirmation Classes and meetings with potential confirmands. All that, of course, was only a prelude to Holy Week and Easter.

It all begins with Shrove Tuesday/Carnival/Mardi gras/Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent starts when it is customary in the Episcopal Church not to have a big whoop-ti-do like our Catholic friends but to have a parish family pancake supper. By tradition, Shrove Tuesday had something to do with getting the excess grease out of the kitchen before the Lenten fast began, but all that's pretty fuzzy. It's just one of those things we do because, well, because we've always done them. Rather like having our sins shriven.

My fondest memory of pancake suppers is of my first one in the small West Virginia congregation I served. I had been working in the tiny kitchen for several hours, the place was hot and reeked of burnt pancakes and sausage, tempers were growing short, and we were trying to keep up with the demand when a boy of five or six kept tugging at my apron saying, "I don't like pancakes; can I have a waffle?" He was nearly excommunicated, or worse, on the spot.

Another time we had the first in what was to become the annual debate about applesauce. Folks who developed a sense of ownership of the pancake supper had a strong idea about what the menu should (or should not) be, and that fruity delicacy became the focus of some pretty heated conversation. Finally, as good Anglicans, we developed a middle ground: a bowl of applesauce went on every table. And so the Church moves on towards glory.

Then the first thing next morning, the delicate fragrance of old pancakes lingering like incense, the faithful gather for Ash Wednesday's solemn beginning of Lent. Episcopalians seem to hold to the peculiar belief that God is uniquely accessible early in the morning, so there were always a lot of folks there at 7:00, but for the sluggards whose devotion was obviously deficient, we also offered identical services at noon and after dinner. The marking of the forehead with black ashes was something that back then only our show-off Catholic friends did; we were content to follow our Lord's more modest advice to keep our devotion hidden.

Then we were off and running, and for the next forty days (well, not literally forty, because we never included Sundays in our computation, and even then it was only a symbolic number) we tried, individually and as a parish, to observe a Holy Lent. The operative word here is "tried", for as Christians our task is to strive toward holiness, not perfection; we are always a Work In Progress, perhaps most especially during Lent.

The memories of Lent are clear and, on balance, pretty good ones, even though my stomach still tightens up when I hear the organ play the first few measures of "Forty Days and Forty Nights". It was rather like hearing "My Old Kentucky Home" just before the Derby, even if your horse finished last.

Ten Most Influential

Several months ago The Atlantic magazine had an article identifying those who were, in their opinion, the 100 most influential Americans in our history. As you can imagine, this has resulted in a ton of letters to the editor commenting on the list and offering other nominees, and while I've no energy for getting into that debate, it did get me to thinking: who are the people who've been most influential in my own life?

Trying to muster a hundred names is a bit daunting, so I narrowed it down to ten, ten people who have, in one way or another, shaped and directed my life. These are the ones who have opened new doors for me, or at least shown me where the keys and the welcome mat are, and who have left a mark on my life that's endured.

I decided to not include the most obvious people, the members of my family: a mother who loved books and valued beauty, a father who never met a stranger and always wondered what was on the other side of the next hill, children whose energy, wisdom and optimism have in turn energized me, and, above all, a wife who has shown me that "love" is both a noun and a verb and who has, quite literally, saved my life. To describe them as "influential" would be completely inadequate.

So, in no particular order, here are those who would be on my Ten Most Influential list, five this week and five the next.

Miss Lucy Jackson -- our high school choir and glee club director, music teacher, and dispenser of what she called "practical philosophy" (e.g., "you can't sing while you're chewing gum"). Stern in demeanor, gray hair straggling back into a Pentecostal bun, she was at her happiest when we were singing something other than Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley songs, and that enthusiasm rubbed off on us all, including this young-for-his-class chorister who sang the boy soprano solo in "O Holy Night" and who years later still enjoys belting out the familiar hymns.

Coach Bill Weber -- The other high school influence which has remained over these 57 years. He was our baseball coach and (as I recall) history teacher, and he introduced this undersized shortstop to the wonderful game of baseball. I was not, truth be told, all that great a player, but like Miss Jackson it was Coach Weber's enthusiasm for the game and his organized discipline that motivates me still. He was a stern but fair taskmaster, and we all worshipped the ground near which he walked.

Louis Haskell -- The gentle spoken and strong minded rector of the parish of my younger days, St. John's Church in Charleston, WV, Mr. Haskell (God forbid "Father" or "Louis") gave me encouragement to go back to college and to pursue ordination. At a low point in my life, discouraged and confused, his support and guidance was the rock I needed to build upon, and which I leaned on for many years. Mr. Haskell became for me the model of what a parish priest should be and what I hoped to become.

Bishop Wilburn C. Campbell -- Another Episcopal cleric, the Bishop of West Virginia, was frequently wrong but never in doubt. His benevolent autocratic style led me into a love/hate relationship with him, but if he had told me to swim across the Kanawha River I would have jumped in immediately. He loved the Church, not just the institution but even more the people, and adjured me never to think of "my parish" or "my people". And he turned down a professional baseball contact to go to seminary! What a guy!

Jack Kennedy -- My first, and to date only, political hero. He hit West Virginia at about the same time that I was beginning my career, and he embodied, at least for me, an inspiring combination of intelligence, urbanity, wit, dedication, and energy. Obviously I was to later on learn more that was not quite as inspiring, but at the time I enthusiastically bought into the Camelot culture. I never wore a hat and today rarely wear a hat just because JFK went bareheaded! I can still, with haunting clarity, recall exactly where I was (on the highway between Keyser and Moorefield, WV) when the news of his death came over the radio, and it provoked one of the defining and influential moments in my ministry.

To Be Continued...

Opening Day!

It's winter here this first week in February, just like everywhere else, of course. The yard is a dingy gray/brown, except for the few iris that were seduced by the brief January warm spell. "Cold enough for you?" opens every conversation. We're still singing Epiphany hymns, and Easter seems a long way off. No neighbors are out walking. We seem to be surrounded by winter, except for one place, one oasis: the green yard of Brooks Field, home of the UNC-W Seahawks baseball team, where it's always springtime.

Baseball is back, and life is good. Today we play our first game of the season, taking on Western Kentucky, followed by Oklahoma and South Carolina to round out the weekend. It's not professional baseball with its mega-million dollar athletes and stadiums (stadia?) where you sit in a different Area Code from the field and pay $10.00 for a lukewarm dog. It's college ball, where you chat with the players before the game and the coach sits three pews in front of you in church and the hotdogs are two for a buck on Fridays.

I'm not sure just where I picked up my affection for the game. My father, to some extent, who never talked to me about sex or politics or other things fathers are supposed to pass on to sons. He just took me to ball games, and to one I'll always remember in Yankee Stadium. Years later Ann and I went back to Yankee Stadium for their annual Old Timers Game where we saw DiMaggio and Rizutto and Ford and all those heroes who made me misty-eyed.

Another time I got misty-eyed from baseball was on a trip we were taking through the mid-west. As we traveled the gently rolling hills of eastern Iowa, seeing nothing but corn fields and telephone poles and telephone poles and cornfields, we suddenly crested one of those hills and right in front of us was the extravagantly beautiful Field of Dreams, the original site of the movie. It was a Sunday afternoon, Fathers' Day, and the field was filled with dads and kids, playing ball. No admission fee, no billboards, no hucksters, just baseball.

It's so simple, baseball is, and yet so complex. The trinity of strikes and outs, three times three innings and players, and though baseball puts a premium on speed of throw and foot, it's unhurried and unlimited by time. Baseball is not dangerous, like football or boxing, but if you've ever stood in the batter's box and watched a fast ball head toward you, you know fear. The field itself is laid out in a deliberately defined algorithm of 90 feet between bases, 60 feet 6 inches from home plate to the pitcher's rubber which is always 24 inches by 6 inches set on a 15 inch mound within an 18 foot circle.

Then there's the box score, what Bart Giamatti called the diamond in the mind, an artifice no other sport has been able to conjure up. What a work of art it is! To compress all that action in a few words and numbers gives baseball fans a daily treasure to explore with all the devotion of priests studying their scriptures. We don't "glance" at our team's box scores, we recreate the game with it.

Sometimes I hear the comment that baseball's "boring", an observation that could only be made by the Immediately Generation, those for whom instant gratification is too slow. To watch the strategy of the pitch selection and see how the defense responds, to see how playing for one run is far more challenging than a grand slam, to know that getting 26 outs is never enough...boring? Sure, just like "King Lear" is boring and Yorkshire Pudding is boring and the sunrise is boring.

So this afternoon in early February, scorecard in hand and a pocket full of peanuts, I'll head for the ball park. And life will be good again.