St. Michael's Church, Litchfield, CT

by Mallory McDuff 05-06-2013

Making an ultimatum about church attendance to a sleep-deprived teenager may be my own version of hell on earth.

“We are leaving for church in 10 minutes,” I said, summoning my most authoritative voice before the lifeless lump under the covers.

My seven-year old Annie Sky watched the tense exchange between me and my 14-year old daughter Maya, who made periodic moans from the top bunk. With furrowed brow, my first grader sat on the couch, as if observing a tiebreaker at Wimbledon with no clear victor in sight.
For a moment, I wondered why I had drawn the line in the Sabbath sand, announcing earlier in the week that Maya would have to go to church that Sunday morning after an all-day trip to Dollywood with the middle school band.

Somehow I didn’t want Dolly Parton’s amusement park to sabotage our family time in church. (The logic seemed rational at the time).

When Maya lifted the covers, I glimpsed the circles under her eyes and sunburn on her skin. But I repeated my command, with an undertone of panic, since I wasn’t sure if I could uphold the ultimatum.

When she finally got into the car, I breathed deeply and turned to our family balm, the tonic of 104.3 FM with its top 40 songs that we sing in unison. As the drama settled, I realized one reason why I made my teenager go to church: I want my daughters to know that we can recover from yelling at each other (which we had) and disagreeing. We can move on, and a quiet, sacred space is a good place to start.

In the pew at All Souls Episcopal Church, Maya leaned her head onto my shoulder, either in penitence or fatigue. “You can close your eyes in church,” I whispered. “It looks like you’re praying.”

I made her come to church because I want my daughter to know that sometimes you have to show up, even when you are exhausted.

When I opened the bulletin, I realized that Sunday was the “Senior High Service,” that day when a high school senior from the church gives the sermon. With her long brown hair and sincere gaze, Miranda Nolin walked to the pulpit after the Gospel reading and told us that when she reads the Nicene Creed, our profession of faith, she often doesn’t believe any of the words she says. (Well, she got our attention).

But she repeats the Nicene Creed each week: “Because they are an act of community, a binding tradition, they have value.”

From the pulpit, Miranda assured us that traditions “allow us to have faith, to show up, to be present when we don’t know what to believe. I might be able to write a creed that said, exactly the right words, what I believed in that moment, but it would probably be outdated by the next week. Instead I come to church.”

Baptized and confirmed last year, Miranda shared that she comes to church with her family because she is welcomed as a questioner in a community where no one hesitates to reveal their doubts. She comes because of the community, the Holy Spirit. “Most of you are here, I’d guess, because you believe this component of the human experience is important and because it is something that is hard to access alone,” she said.

By this point in the sermon, I felt tears welling up in my eyes and spilling down my cheeks. I looked across the church and saw other adults wiping tears from their faces. I made Maya come to church because I want her to know that she can question and feel vulnerable and cry – and she doesn’t always have to do that all alone.

In her essay, “Why I make Sam go to church,” Anne Lamott writes: “The main reason is that I want to give him what I found in the world, which is to say a path and a little light to see by.” I want Maya to know that those people working to confront poverty, inequality, and environmental injustice in our church are vulnerable souls, but they are acting for the greater good in spite of their questions. I want her to know that church is not a social club, but she has to take actions to ensure it is a foundation of justice for all.

In this age when the “spiritual but not religious” seem to have more relevance than churchgoers, it’s easy to wonder why church attendance matters at all. But I believe that we need common spaces, more grounded than the corner Starbucks, to discern right actions in a world faced with crises like climate change and stark economic disparities.
Our teenagers and our children must shape these sacred spaces where we can grapple with our questions but act in faith through practices of forgiveness, feeding, hospitality, and care of creation.

As Diana Butler Bass notes, “Right now, the church does not need to convert the world. The world needs to convert the church.”

To that end, after making Maya go to church, I took my daughters to an interfaith creation care vigil that night in downtown Asheville, N.C. (By that point, I had nothing to lose). When we arrived, one of the volunteers gave Maya a basket of candles, which she helped to distribute to the 250 people gathered for the vigil.

That evening, a film crew was documenting the vigil for a Showtime movie, produced by legendary filmmaker James Cameron. As she passed out candles at dusk, the videographers followed Maya with their cameras and asked her, “Do you know why you are here?”

“I’m not really sure,” she said, laughing. “I’m just the candle person.”

I made Maya go to church because we may not know why we are here, but we can pass along a little light to others on the journey. And maybe that’s what we need to create a little heaven on earth.

Mallory McDuff, Ph.D., teaches environmental education at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She is the author of Sacred Acts: How Churches are Working to Protect Earth’s Climate and Natural Saints.

“And some begin to believe the fundamental service God asks of them is to become greeters, lectors or extraordinary ministers of holy communion at Church. Rather, the call is to live and spread the faith in their families, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods and beyond.” ~Pope Francis

Regarded today as the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224 – 1274) was viewed with skepticism in his own day. Born of nobility in a castle situated south of Rome, he was educated at a local Benedictine school from age five. At sixteen he entered the University of Naples, planning to become a Dominican monk. Horrified, his family kidnapped him, tempted him with a prostitute, and called on the archbishop of Naples for support. But after more than a year of captivity, they realized that their efforts failed. His mother intervened and helped her strong-willed son to escape. Still a teenager, he joined the Dominicans.

His brilliant mind impressed his superiors, who arranged to have him study in Cologne with Albertus Magnus, the greatest Dominican scholar of the day. During this time the hulking youth acquired the nickname, “Dumb Ox,” but Albertus defended him, reportedly saying: “You call him ‘a dumb ox,’ but I declare before you that he will yet bellow so loud in doctrine that his voice will resound through the whole world.” His influence on Aquinas was profound, and when Albertus transferred to Paris, Aquinas accompanied him. After completing his studies in Paris, Aquinas returned to Cologne to teach and write.

After teaching at Cologne, Aquinas relocated to the University of Paris, where he continued to pursue his education and teaching. Beginning in 1260 and until his death in 1274, he traveled throughout Europe, preaching and teaching and consulting. He performed service for the pope and for the Dominican Order. Amid his other duties, he wrote obsessively, his works eventually filling some twenty large volumes. His magnum opus was Summa Theologica, the most comprehensive treatise on theology ever written, acclaimed more for its sheer volume and breadth than for its originality. Not venturing into uncharted terrain, Aquinas cited authorities and sought to harmonize contrasting views.

Christian scholars would later come to cite Thomas Aquinas as “the theologian” as easily as Aquinas cited Aristotle as “the philosopher.” More than presenting merely an objective encyclopedia of theological positions, Aquinas took a solid stance, and his work serves as a standard for correct doctrine. Because of his heavy dependence on Aristotle, Aquinas was strongly criticized after his death by other theologians, including William of Ockham and Duns Scotus, who recognized the inherent contradictions in revelation and reason.

The range of topics that Aquinas addresses in his thousands of pages of writing is astounding. In fact, according to the testimony of one of his closest associates, he would sometimes dictate to three or four secretaries at a time on different subjects, from memory rather than from notes or manuscripts. When stumped on a particular theological conundrum, he would pause to go into deep meditation and prayer and then return to the topic with clarity.

Aquinas, who proved the existence of God with “Five Ways,” found God most real in a vision. He had experienced visions earlier in life, but a vision near the end of his life affected him so profoundly that he set aside his writing. His closest aide pleaded with him to take up his pen again. “I cannot,” he confided. “Such things have been revealed to me that what I have written seems but straw.” The vision has physical consequences as well, causing some to speculate that he may have had a stroke or a mental breakdown. Some time later he was injured while riding a donkey and died soon after.

Recognized as a great scholar during his lifetime, Aquinas continued to be revered after his death. In 1323 he was canonized a saint by Pope John XXII. Then in 1879 Pope Leo XIII declared that his writings represent official Catholic teaching, though not so authoritative as to be above challenge.
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If you enjoyed the above article, please take a minute to read about the book that it was adapted from:

Parade of Faith: A Biographical History of the Christian Church
by Ruth A. Tucker

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club’s decoration, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown!

This parable originally appeared in an article by Theodore 0. Wedel, “Evangelism-the Mission of the Church to Those Outside Her Life,” The Ecumenical Review, October, 1953, p. 24.

The above is a paraphrase of the original, by Richard Wheatcroft. It appeared in Letters to Laymen, May-June, 1962, p. 1.