IrvingD

Every now and then you come across some words that stick with you through the years. Words that you can't shake. Words that say it better than any other words could. Well, every Christmas I am reminded of these words of a Christian pastor from long ago. Leo was the Bishop of Rome who wrote these words in the year 449. He was writing to the Bishop of Constantinople in order to help clarify the Christian understanding of who Christ is. The letter of Leo has become a classic statement of orthodox Christian teaching on the subject, and this sentence from it captures not only the essence of that teaching but for me the very heart of what Christmas is all about. I first read these words as part of a seminary class, but they continue to echo in my being with new reverberations of meaning and deeper wonder. And so, I allow Leo the Great-as he has come to be called-speak for himself and for me: "Lowliness was taken up by majesty, weakness by strength, mortality by eternity. To pay off ...

Trinity Church has occupied Wall Street for 315 years. A witness to old New York and a not too small contributor to the life and growth of the city and nation, this church received its charter from the British Crown and became a cornerstone of American independence. It has coexisted, colluded, and collided with the financial powers on Wall Street and lower Broadway. It preceded those institutions and, I suspect, it will outlast them. Not because of its history, which is understandably prestigious. And not at all because of Trinity's own financial and real estate holdings. But because of its spiritual legacy and vitality. I am not a member of Trinity, nor can I remember when I last attended a service there; but I did drop in on Veteran's Day after visiting the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park. On that crisp Fall day off from work, I decided to see for myself what was going on. A couple weeks earlier, my wife went and had some engaging conversations with people ther...

Yesterday I had to bring a stool sample of our pet cat to her vet's office. For fifty dollars, I dropped off the specimen while a vet technician delivered an Italian greyhound to its owner. The dog howled in pain as the owner and tech tried to lower her into the carrier. It had just gotten spayed and the wound was still fresh with sutures and the tenderness of post-op. Looking sympathetically at the pooch that couldn't sit down, much less crouch, in the pet carrier, I instinctively asked the owner if she drove a car to the vet. The owner, a young woman, said that she planned to take the dog home by subway. Pointing to my parked car out in front of the Animal Clinic of Long Island City, I offered to drive her and Stella, her pup, home. Immediately conscious of the awkwardness of the offer, I said something about my daughter being proud of my offer. The young woman paid her account and carried Stella to my car. Her home was only about six blocks away, but she and the dog-no doubt...

The cloying perfume of incense had barely left my clothing, when the sharp smell of sauerkraut and steamed sausages suddenly invaded my nostrils with a command jolting me out of heaven and back to earth. My friend, Evan, and I attended the 5:30 P.M. Vespers service at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection on 2nd Street in the Lower East Side. Once an enclave of Eastern European immigrants, this area still boasts of a number of Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, and Carpathian communities represented by the various churches bearing those names. Holy Virgin Protection Cathedral actually belongs to the Orthodox Church in America, the most assimilated of these communities, formerly known as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in North America. Most all of the 105-minute long service was conducted in English, with just a few dollops of Old Church Slavonic thrown in as perhaps a reminder of the community's heritage. Every word was sung--chanted actually--includin...

Seemingly endless hours of diagramming sentences on the blackboard may be the reason why I love to teach English grammar and usage. I wouldn't have thought so at the time. I remember fighting afternoon grogginess as I tried to follow a tangle of words and lines sprawled across the board in my fifth grade class. I remember the teacher explaining the differences between a predicate nominative and a predicate adjective, a coordinating conjunction and the proper use of the semicolon. My thoughts at the time must surely have been anywhere but on the fine distinctions of prescriptive English grammar. But something stuck. Maybe it was the delicate balance of words separated and connected by lines, large and small, dashed and dotted. Maybe it was the beauty of the language displayed under the blinding light of analysis. Just maybe the dissection of sentences did for me what the dissection of frogs did for future medical students. I ended up an English teacher, but not just any English te...

Today I led worship and preached to the congregation of the Steinway Reformed Church in Astoria, New York. All seven of them. We did not even have enough men to form a minyan  for a prayer service in a Jewish synagogue. Three men, four women, and myself. We did a full Service of Worship according the liturgy of the Reformed Church in America. We approached God in prayer and praise, confession of sin, assurance of pardon, the reading of the Law, and a responsively read psalm. Following my role as minister, I read the Scripture lessons and preached a full sermon based on the texts of the day. The third, and last, part of the Service included the receiving of an offering, the prayers, and the benediction. Each of these three parts contained a full hymn sung to the accompaniment of a piano. The entire Service lasted about 45-50 minutes before we retired to the church hall downstairs for coffee. I could have said the experience was depressing. I could have lingered on the sad shape ...

Every year at this time, one hears the old saw that Easter is about springtime, the renewal of nature, and the promise of the summer to come. Well, I bore of that. The only affirmation at Easter that moves me is the bone-jarring, intellect-offending, and mind-blowing assertion that a dead man arose from his grave as he said he would in the days before his death. That's the only kind of Easter worth singing about; it's the only kind of Easter that would inspire me to go to worship. Anything less than that is lame. Or to put it in Flannery O'Connor's words taken from a slightly different religious context, "If it's just a symbol, then the hell with it!" Easter is at the very least about the physical rising of Jesus Christ from death, but certainly nothing less than that. Happy Easter! John Updike's (yes, that John Updike!) poem , "Seven Stanzas at Easter," says it all. Make no mistake: if He rose at all It was as His body; If the cell’s di...