The Less You Understand

I’m taken back to New York.
New York City.

I lived there from 1979, when I was ordained
at Saint Peters Lutheran
http://www.saintpeters.org/
as their Associate Pastor,
until 1983, when I received a call to be the Campus
and Parish pastor at University Lutheran at U Penn
http://www.uniluphila.org/Congregation/History.dsp
in West Philadelphia. I moved there from New York
the day before my big sister Judy’s
tragic, untimely death at 41.
Interesting, troubling, cataclysmic times.

One of my mentors died this weekend.
Not Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest
on whose gifts to me I’ve been meditating
since seeing him depicted in a film New Years eve,
who spoke so convincingly about God’s
deep love for people, in their brokenness,
in their weakness, in their utter humanness.

It was Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor to the poor
in Brooklyn, and then an author, and founder
and editor of the journal, First Things.
A lot of politics, church politics, national politics,
heady stuff, he was a leading neoconservative,
an advisor to presidents, including Mr. Bush.
And he was a friend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/us/09neuhaus.html?_r=1&hp
He was smart, decisive, brilliant, and in print
and in lectures, he publicly abhorred abortion,
and homosexuality. He owned a four-story walk up
on East 19th close to the East Village.
AND, he hit on me, the cad.
Unsuccessfully, I am quick to add,
And slept with a gay friend of mine
from Yale Divinity School who was staying
at my place while working at my church,
which totally freaked me out. Back then,
Murder would have surprised me less.
What arrogance. I thought him an incredible hypocrite.

That he got away with this:
loathing something publicly,
which he was, and knew he was,
and still dabbling in that thing privately,
convinced me that I was touching on a world
way beyond my ken. Like the Mafia or something.
I was in over my head.

He was never outed,
as far as Google is concerned.
The brotherhood of gay clerics...
Sad that our culture encourages,
requires this.

Everyone who lived at his four story walk-up
prayed together, morning prayer, evening prayer.
I liked it, even if it was partly so Richard could
write it off his taxes as a Christian community.
After EP there was time to relax
while Larry, who lived upstairs, made supper.
Richard loved scotch, he smoked Winstons, and back then
I shared many a glass with the assembled brethren,
not to mention smokes, and occasionally, dinners.

Mercilessly, gleefully he demolished my every argument
for anything liberal. I was out of his league.

From Garrison Keillor, another writer
who’s out of my league, on New York Christmas:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/12/24/christmas/
“...slipping into St. Patrick's for Mass in Spanish is pretty wonderful. It's like a big family reunion at which I know nobody and so nobody is mad at me. Nothing said in Spanish offends me doctrinally or any other way. I squeeze into the crowd, under the placid stone faces of saints, the sweet smell of burning wax and a hundred varieties of cologne, and feel the religious fervor, and tears come to my eyes, and I light a candle, say a wordless prayer, and out into the cold I go.

“It brought back memories of Christmas Eve in Copenhagen 20 years ago and how beautiful the sermons were before I started learning Danish.

“A man gets a keener sense of the divine in a church that is not your own. Maybe Luther and Calvin and Jan Hus and all them were dead wrong and literacy is not the key nor an understanding of Scripture, and maybe the essence of Christmas is dumb childlike wonder and the more you think about it, the less you understand. Which makes me glad I am no smarter than I am.”

The more you think about it, the less you understand.
Maybe Richard’s key to the good life: a public persona
with gritty, counter-cultural screeds,
but in the everyday: sharing evening prayer,
a scotch on the rocks, a smoke, illicit love when it comes your way,
all thanks to a gracious God.
Glad I'm no smarter than I am.
Rest in peace, friend.