MESSENGER Karen Fields, editor May 29, 2012

***This month, in lieu of a pastoral reflection I am deferring my words (and your precious reading time) to our music director Glenn Klipp, who has served our congregation for eight years. Read as carefully as Glenn has written, thinking along the way what this means not only for Glenn, but for YOU, this church, and the world.

In the meantime, you can find on www.universitychurchchicago.org (“Pastor’s Corner”) a piece I contributed for a blog’s discussion on same-sex marriage. We can discuss what you’ve read – not only from me, but also from other contributors, great diversity – using our site’s comments section (underneath the post). We’ll talk soon. Love. –Pastor Julian***

A LETTER FROM GLENN

My dear University Church community and friends,

Some weeks ago, I shared with you that, as of the end of August, I will be leaving University Church where I have enjoyed ministry and friendship with you for the past eight years. The reason, as I shared with you at that time, is that I am becoming a monk. Pastor Julian graciously extended to me the opportunity to provide you further explanation in this newsletter.

I have always wanted to be a monk. Before starting school, my older sister Dianne and I would play priest and make our own “play” worship and communion services. We had a little white child-sized table that we would cover very carefully and decorate with flowers and a cross. Mom would give us crackers or bread and some juice that we could use. Years later, June, 1961, when Dianne and I graduated, she from high school and I from grammar school, she entered the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Rochester, New York, our home town, and I entered the seminary of the Priests of the Sacred Heart in Lenox, Massachusetts. It was a very hard parting for both my family and me. I was terribly homesick for three months. At the same time, I was so thrilled! I studied hard and prayed hard my four years of seminary high school. The climax of my experience was the 15 months that followed my high school graduation, “novitiate,” in a little town of Ste. Marie Illinois. If you look it up, you’ll see it is a community of 261 people in a 1.1 square mile area considered a “thriving” community in an otherwise barren region. I loved the peace and quiet. We lived a monastic life of silence except for one hour in the evening. My main job was shoveling out the pig barn. I loved the peace and quiet, and the pig barn assignment gave me even more “time to myself”.

Ultimately seminary didn’t work out for me and, three years past novitiate and through college, I was asked to leave – no reason given. To this day, I don’t have a clue why. But a couple of years ago a friend told me “You were probably too much of a rebel.” Probably so. I was a Pope John XXIII, Vatican II enthusiast! I grieved the seminary greatly. But 9 months later I met Mary Groholski and nine months after that we married and nine months after that we had a beautiful daughter, Amy. Over the next eight years three sons were born, Joshua, Luke and Joe. I was a very happy father, but still harbored a hankering for monastic life. It influenced me to enter a career in Catholic schools. Over the next 28 years, I was a high school band, math and English teacher, an elementary school teacher, an elementary school principal, superintendent of the Superior Diocese and then the Archdiocese of Detroit Catholic schools, and finally the Battle Creek Area Catholic Schools. The spiritual nature of this work was satisfying, but insufficient.

After this I did a couple stints in teacher education at Wayne State in Detroit and at the University of Michigan where I was also awarded a doctorate in education. However, I still had a major piece of life work that I had avoided – albeit at great pain. I was gay. I wanted to shed it. I had made a pledge to God that I would stay faithfully married for 25 years if God would take this aspect of my life away from me. He didn’t. In my days at the U of M, I finally came out. This was a pain far beyond anything I had ever experienced. Hurting and seeing the hurt in those I loved was excruciating. I was a persona non grata in Catholic circles and I was certain that the monastic life was no longer an option.

In 2004 I got this wonderful job as music director in Chicago, met my partner, Ernie, and was living a happy life. My spiritual and relational needs were wonderfully met in a community and ministry I loved and a partner who never ceased to be caring and a friend of the highest caliber.

Then, one day in 2009, my son, Joe, called from Japan where he works as a teacher. “Dad!” he said excitedly, “Have you read the Bhagavad Gita?!” “I tried a couple of times,” I replied, “But I would always get to a point where I needed some help.” Over the next many months, Joe and I spoke together daily, usually for the better part of an hour, sometimes considerably more than an hour, connecting his late evenings to my early mornings. At some time I learned that an organization called the “International Society for Krsna Consciousness”, ISKCON, was famous for promoting and living this ancient spiritual classic. Becoming increasingly enthused about this piercing and rather scientific approach to spirituality, my interest grew, till one morning I mused, “Joe, I wonder if there is any temple here that practices this spirituality?” I typed in “ISKCON Chicago” and there it was – 1716 W Lunt Avenue, just 3 ½ miles from where Ernie and I lived. Sunday, March 14, 2010 I went to visit. A sign indicated it was closed from 1-4 p.m. It was 2 p.m. when I arrived, but I was curious and decided I’d wait the two hours. From the time the doors opened to the time I left, my spiritual senses were assailed with joy. People were happy and welcoming. The serene became quite boisterous as more and more people arrived. Services began. Meditative singing became increasingly robust. The mood of worship swelled into dancing and a subtle playfulness as people joined in familiar ways of moving and singing interspersed with what seemed to be variations and perhaps new inventions in which others would join.

By 7 p.m. we were upstairs in a large hall where a supper, “prasadam”, was being served to a jovial and gracious crowd. Some devotees dressed in sacred garb sat on the floor chatting with other devotee friends as they ate while other devotees conversed with temple members and guests sometimes earnestly, often with conversations punctuated with laughter. Families - babies to grandparents - and friends gathered together, most on the floor and a few, usually older members sitting at tables around the sides of the hall. I was back by 6:30 a.m. the next morning. Soon I was there nearly daily when the doors open at 4:00 p.m. Three hours a morning turned into half days, then full days, then occasional overnighters.

I now live in the temple. 1716 W Lunt Ave. is my permanent address. This monastic life has both arduous rigor and a great deal of independence. It centers around learning, praying, serving and associating. While the day has an organizational structure in term of rising, bathing, morning assembly and evening assembly in the temple to pray, sing, chant, and receive instruction each monk or devotee is accountable for how he spends his day, when he rises and sleeps, the activities he will engage in both in and out of the temple, which devotees he will associate with and how they will associate, and the selection of a Guru or Spiritual Master and how he will relate and seek his Guru’s guidance.

My joy and peace are increasing daily. Yes, this life is hard work and demanding spiritually as well as physically and relationally. All spiritual life requires giving up, and this requires my giving up much I hold dear. Much like my homesickness when I entered the seminary high school in Massachusetts, I now experience pangs of loss, too. It takes some courage, but I know that I will be okay and everyone I know will be okay. Nothing in this material life, especially those things we love, ever last long enough. Times of joy, relationships of love fly by. These eight years with you, my dear University Church family? Wonn-derful! Thank you! I will miss you much. But I know the same God watching lovingly over me is watching lovingly over you as well. My joy and peace increase daily. The dream of my life is becoming reality. I am home!

MOVIE REVIEW

Bedazzled (1967); 103 minutes; Director ; screenplay writers and ; Starring Peter Cook (George Spiggot AKA The Devil), Dudley Moore (Stanley Moon), Eleanor Bron (Margaret), and Racquel Welch (Lillian Lust)

Bedazzled (2000); 93 minutes; Director Harold Ramis; screenplay writers Larry Gelbert, Harold Ramis, and Peter Nolan; Starring Brendan Fraser (Elliot Richards); Elizabeth Hurley (The Devil); Frances O'Connor (Alison Gardner); Orlando Jones (Daniel)

If you haven't already done so, I recommend seeing both movies. In both movies, the devil gives seven wishes to an everyman who wants the woman that he cannot get in exchange for his immortal soul. During the vignette that represents each wish, the protagonist never bothers to ask the Devil for the fine print which is, of course, the insurmountable obstacle that prevents the sealing of the deal with the love interest. For example, in the original Bedazzled, Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore's character) attempts to get his wish by wishing that Margaret (Eleanor Bron's character) love him. This comes after several wishes wherein he forgot to include this request. Of course, the following vignette is a setting during which The Devil/George Spiggot (Peter Cook) is married to the love interest and every time that he turns his back Stanley and Margaret can't keep their hands off each other. This, of course, leads to them being distracted while driving in a car on a country road and the car driving off a cliff. In the remake, after Elliot Richards, a computer programmer (Brendon Fraser's character), wishes to be an intellectual and for Alison Gardner to be in love with him, he finds himself in a party at a Manhattan apartment celebrating his Pulitzer where he and Alison are drawn to each other after love at first sight. Despite their obvious affinity for each other, she follows him to his loft where his male lover is waiting for him and calls him a bitch for ignoring him and pretending to be straight and the scene ends with male and female shaking hands.

Each vignette is wonderfully funny and culturally appropriate and reflect an understanding of the era of the audience, they are too numerous to mention in my first review. I selected these movies because, although Faustian in theme, each movie has an epiphany at the end that reflects a different philosophy of soul ownership in our lives. In the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore original, Lucifer collected souls with the objective of obtaining a million to use as leverage to offer God in exchange for reclaiming his position as the favorite Angel. This, of course, comes after a scene wherein the Devil sits a top a car and asks Stanley to dance around the car complimenting him with multisyllabic adjectives to the point of fatigue and boredom; when Stanley asks "George .... may we switch places?" the Devil explains that's how he felt and that is why he was cast out. The Devil's understanding of God's fine print comes after the act of contrition of returning Stanley's soul because he liked Stanley and felt sorry for him. Upon entering God's arboretum after waiting outside without an appointment, George explains that he has a million souls and he is ready to be included with the Lord. After a moment of silence, God laughs to the point where the viewer might wonder is God created sadism. The deal is permanent; total exclusion Belzebub my man -- sorry old boy. Of course, when the movie comes full circle and George approaches Stanley in a scene that is exactly like the first one where Stanley Moon, the short order cook, at a Wimpy Burger location is oogling Margaret. Fool me once old boy, not twice; I may be human but I ain't the dumbest of creatures. The movie ends with the Devil walking across square with God laughing his butt off. Diane Herrmann reminded me that this is the last movie at Doc films every year. Did I sneak into the second floor balcony without paying to see the movie in the early 1980s?

In the remake, the Devil as a beat cop puts Elliot's character in lock up for a night because he refuses to make the last wish with the expectation that he can either outlast or outsmart Lucifer; delay the inevitable conclusion of the deal -- the conversion of his soul. In lock up, he meets a black youth who says "your soul doesn't belong to you brother ... it belongs to God." The Devil was tricking him all along about the scope and jurisdiction of her domain. The next day, upon the Devil's demand that he make the last wish, the human protagonist makes an act of contrition. He wishes that the object of his obsession live a happy life even if it is without him in the picture. Upon that act, the Devil releases him from his obligation and returns to her more loyal clients -- attorneys.

Each of these two movies reflects very different philosophies regarding ownership of the soul. The original movie's philosophy on this subject matter is that the heart and soul are intertwined and that ownership of one is of the other as well and is personal to the individual human being. The individual has responsibility for their actions and consequences regardless of whether the purpose is moral or immoral. The physical and intangible are inseparable and we can use these inseparable concepts as a personal bargaining chip with the Devil and the release of our ethical responsibility of our actions while on earth. The remake, however, reflects a more Kierkegaardian view of humans being born to God. Even though the physical behavior and responsibility therefor are born of the physical heart, the soul is a separate spiritual repository that we have no ownership over but which all of our lives fit into. Which of these two philosophies are more accurate? Ask Julian and McKinna. Which is more palatable -- ask the mirror. Nevertheless, the movies are hilarious, worth seeing, and have issues that, in my view, pertain to our fellowship. —Frank M. Adams

NEWS AND NOTES

 Our prayers are with Don and Isabel Stewart and their family. Don’s mother, Ann Stewart, died on March 25, 2012 at the age of 95.

 Joining our faith community on April 15, 2012 were: Aaron Heyward, D’Andre Ball, and Jessica Fudge. We welcome them and look forward becoming better acquainted. The next New Member Sunday is scheduled for July 15, 2012. Please speak to Julian if you are interested in joining University Church.

The spring Rummage Sale is now history. Thanks to all who worked, donated, shopped, and in any way, supported this important community activity. A special “Thanks” to Myra Iwagami, who, once again, put an ad in the Herald letting locals know of the upcoming sale. The church made $1,100 at this sale.

Thanks to Dan and Sharon Hunter-Smith the University Avenue entrance walkway now has a beautiful, low, stone edging around the plants between the sidewalk and the curb. This will help to protect the plants there from foot and bicycle traffic that has annually been problematic.

HAPPY JUNE BIRTHDAY

June 1 - Rich Reed 17 - John Fish Stephanie Weaver 18 - Donald Coleman Pat Wilcoxen 21 - Rod Yarling 22 - Johnathon Fields 26 - Charlie Havens 27 - Elaine Yarling 28 - Sarah Oaks