Sermon for the Funeral of Br. Will Brown, OHC

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Funeral of Br. Will Brown, OHC - Tuesday, February 28, 2023

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

 

 

The Psalmist tells us, in a not entirely complimentary passage, that the human heart and mind are a mystery (Ps 64:7). The inner workings of the mind and heart and soul of another person, no matter how familiar or intimate we might be with them, always retain a hidden dimension, one that is never totally transparent to others. In fact, the same may be said of ourselves: at some level most of the time, perhaps all the time, we remain somewhat opaque even to ourselves. Our actions and intentions and motivations, our sorrows and joys, are seldom, if ever, completely available to our own examination or consciousness. Indeed, the great monastic tradition beginning with the Desert Fathers and Mothers draws our attention to this, encouraging us to cultivate the practice of nepsis, of awareness so that we might see a little more clearly where we are coming from and perhaps get where we want to be.

I've lived in this monastic community for almost 35 years and have, from time to time, thought that I really knew my brothers. And in a sense, I did. But there was always more to know, more to discover, more to appreciate and to treasure than I ever realized at first. As well as much that was hidden, sometimes in plain sight. This became more obvious to me as I accompanied brother after brother through sickness, dying and death. What happened, almost inevitably, was an outpouring of appreciation from those who knew this brother in ways I never quite imagined. People spoke of how this one had saved their life or how that one had given them hope in a season of despair or helped them turn from addiction to recovery or spoke a healing word or helped them find or renew faith in a living and loving God. I hope such things will be said of me and of you.  And they have certainly been said of our Brother William Johnstone Brown.

Brother Will was a man of many stories and anecdotes and of consistent and sometimes quite stubborn patterns of behavior.  Anyone who ever stayed at Mount Calvary Retreat House in Santa Barbara when Will was resident there will remember him plodding down the Galleria with a tray of cups at 5:00 o'clock in the morning, making countless pots of coffee, and placing each cup in its exact location for, as he always said: “That cup lives there.”  Michel Choban, a friend and frequent visitor wrote: “He [Br. Will] was part of every retreat, giving the introductory talk at most of the last 20 or 30 of them which spelled out the house rules, what they wanted from us, what we could expect from them.  My favorite caution, mentioned once each year at the first Mount Calvary, up in the hills:  Don't leave the doors open or the rattlesnakes will get in.”  Good practical advice.  
Michel continues:
“Although I know nothing about his inner life or about his life before he became a monk, and he must have had one, because he was over 50 when he took life vows, what I do know about him was what I saw, which was Will going about his life day by day, quietly, often humorously, working and praying, which is the Benedictine way.”

Will had a very easy way of making friends throughout his life, even and perhaps especially as he got older and older.  He was, as most of you know, a trained horticulturist and was a docent at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens as well as a volunteer at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. A friend says:
“Will and I met during the middle of 2018 when I became an employee at the museum. I would sit with him and just listen, hanging on to every word he would say, and I would just imagine how he was as a young wild-eyed boy experiencing this great land back in the early years. He had a quiet demeanor about him, but don't be fooled because he had a great sense of humor as well. Will was really a gardener deep down and he loved nature so much and his walks were a testament to that love…. When I met Will he was 92 and I could not believe how healthy he was. And we would walk together occasionally, which was such a joy because I really got to see things from Will’s perspective…relaxed, with purpose and taking it all in while making every second count.”
 

Will was an immigrant to America. He left his native England in 1952 when he was 27 at the invitation of a horticulturist he had met at the garden of the Royal Horticultural Society. He ended up in the Deep South working at the Callaway Gardens in Georgia and then teaching horticultural programs at the Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta GA. He became active in the Episcopal Church and his beloved Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, while working at the university there. And then, quite by accident or Providence depending on your theology, he ran into a novice from the Order of the Holy Cross who, I assume, was there on a preaching mission. This chance encounter revived in Will an interest in the monastic life which began in his boyhood in Burton-upon-Trent.  A neighbor was doing research on Mount Saint Bernard’s Abbey in Leicestershire, and that piqued young Will’s interest in the monastic life.  It wasn't until he was 51, however, that he entered the Order as a postulant, not making his life profession until 1981. His was considered a very late vocation, and few could have imagined that he would be around and active and contributing to the life of the Order of the Holy Cross and to God's Kingdom for another 46 years. A late vocation yes, but not a short one.  

In his years in our Order, Br. Will lived and served at our monasteries in South Carolina and Santa Barbara and in Berkeley where he was Co-Prior with his friend Dom Robert Hale at our small joint community with the Roman Catholic Camaldolese Benedictines. He lived for various periods of time here at West Park and even served for six months at our monastery in Cape Coast, Ghana, going there when he was in his mid-60s. People often referred to Will as the Energizer Bunny who never seemed to stop. I have a suspicion that he is still on the move. His friend from the natural museum history says of Will: “I can see him now, head down, walking stick in hand and walking with purpose right up to God and with his sense of humor saying, I'm here, sorry it took so long."

The human heart and mind are indeed a mystery. The gift of vocation or place or purpose in life is a mystery. Life is a mystery.  And we rarely know much about each other, all things considered.  But I do believe that Brother Will had an interior life that was rich, if very, very private. We, his brothers, caught glimpses of it in his love of beauty and art, of nature, of the liturgy, and even occasionally in our communal sharing.  Those in his circle of friends caught hints of other facets of his character, as did those in his 12-Step Fellowship or his colleagues at the botanical gardens or natural history museum and the many, many guests and retreatants that he befriended and ministered with and to.  It is only in the mind of God now that all those facets are held together, integrated, polished and illuminated with a Divine Radiance.  

One of the great traumas of Will’s life was the loss in 2008 of Mount Calvary Monastery to a wildfire while living there for many happy years. The brothers had perhaps thirty minutes to escape the oncoming inferno and had to take what they could grab quickly and in the dark. All of Will’s books, papers, photographs, mementos of family and friends and all those little things that even monks hold on to that remind us of our place in the scheme of things were taken from him and from the other brothers residing there as well.  To deal with his loss and grief, Br. Will joined a poetry therapy group and became a quite prolific writer. I want to share with you one of his poems which was published in the Mount Calvary newsletter which says much about grief and loss but also about our brother Will. It is titled, After the Fire:

Let go, let go of lots of things-
Of clothes, of books, of cherished things
Of pictures, souvenirs-
Of shaving brush—all gone,
All gone in flames of night.
And there was more-
Beloved house, so cherished
And refurbished—
So loved by many, near and far
For safety and refreshment—
And more in prayer and daily
Sacrament that feeds the heart
And soul—all is not lost in
Blackened ash for see
A rabbit hides when I appear
And chipmunk always sprightly
Runs over charred beams-
A bird flies out-and I
Walk up the hill to where the
Cross once stood.
I see Yucca Whipplei—Our Lord's Candle-
Now like pineapple--symbol of hospitality
And the new green leaves sprout from the tip
All is not lost—the sun still rises in the East and sets in Western skies-
“Only a house” I said when gazing on the ruin
A special house—but we and countless lovers
Are not lost in trust.

This poem reveals Will, close to his true being, sharing his grief, sharing his hope, sharing his faith in prayer and Sacrament and fellow lovers and above all in God’s mercy. Today we remember him with thanksgiving.  We give thanks for Will’s long life. We give thanks for his vocation. We give thanks for his humor. We give thanks that he now stands in God's presence leaning into the very heart of God and being known finally and fully for who he is: a beloved child of God.

I close with words from the tribute Michel Choban shared: “I think of him as someone who found a way to live, work, and pray that was a true expression of the essence of who he was, perhaps, after all, of who he was born to be. Isn't that what many of us are working toward, that simple, true life?... So farewell, Will. I hope I will not forget you till I am forgotten myself."

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.  Amen.  May his memory be eternal!

Lent 1 A - February 26, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Daniel Beckham, OHC

The First Sunday in Lent - Sunday, February 26, 2023

 

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 

Romans 5:12-19 

Matthew 4:1-11

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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O God, my stronghold and my redeemer. Amen.

“After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’

Baptized. Led by the Spirit. Fasted forty days and forty nights.

And then, right on schedule, temptation. Welcome to Lent.

Our Gospel reading for this first Sunday in Lent – known, aptly, as The Temptation of Jesus – is … relatable. It seems to me that, in many ways, it is the story of the journey of Lent itself – not only of the liturgical season of Lent, but of the Lenten dimension of the life in Christ, which is always present regardless of the time of year. 

As indicated, the passage immediately preceding this one is Matthew’s account of the Baptism of Jesus. Jesus has presented himself for baptism by John in the river Jordan. The heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended upon him like a dove. The voice of God is heard to call Jesus his “Son, the Beloved,” in whom he is “well pleased.” We could be forgiven at this point for expecting it to be nothing but fair winds and following seas for Jesus from here on out.

But instead, it’s where his troubles begin. It’s where they tend to begin for most of us. We take a bold first step in reorienting our lives toward God, believing that we will receive an overflowing of grace, a reward of some kind for heroically putting aside our self-serving ways, and that, from here on out, God will have our back. But as you and I know, the road to eternal life is narrow and fraught with danger.

In my own life, I’ve often experienced these “post-committal” troubles in the form of fear, self-doubt, guilt, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy and in-authenticity and, of course, temptation.

And so what exactly is temptation? It’s not the passionate, carnal desire for comfort, money, food, sex, or power. Those are merely the disguises temptation wears to woo us. Temptation is the bold-faced lie we tell ourselves that we should quit something because we aren’t good enough, strong enough, or beloved enough. For Jesus in the wilderness, it’s the enemy trying to make him feel that he needs to prove himself, even though God had just declared that he’s God’s Son, and is well-pleasing to God. It’s the shameless attempt to get Jesus to deviate from the path of being his true and full self.

Likewise for us, temptation is devious, presenting as a more attractive, safer alternative for the sake of distracting us and pulling us away from the path to becoming our true selves. Instead of going to the gym to become healthier and better focused, I’ll lie on the couch and eat tacos today. Rather than spending time with a lonely friend or loved one so that we can both be nourished by one another’s company, I’ll stay in my sweatpants and watch internet cat videos instead. I’m all ready to do the work of committing myself to renewal, self-emptying, and service to God and others, when the passions flare. It’s as if the old tempter – or, more likely, my shadow or false self – is saying, “Do you really think you can do this? To shake off all your bad stuff? Well, you really can’t. All you’ll do is fail and mess it up, and everyone will laugh at you and hate you for it, so it’s better not to even try. Trust me, I know you better than you do, better even than God does.”

If I had to guess, I’m probably not the only person this happens to. And no wonder: When we make the decision to empty ourselves, what we’re really doing is letting our guards down, allowing our defenses to take a back seat to the Spirit of God working within us. We are weak in these moments, vulnerable. And while this is a necessary condition for allowing ourselves to grow into greater union with God, it is also an ideal condition for letting in the invaders – the demons of our pasts, so to speak, and our shadow-selves – all the bad stuff we’d rather ignore or forget.

If only there were some way to have one without the other. After all, letting God in is good. Letting demons and temptations in is bad. The two seem like they should be mutually exclusive, don’t they?

Well, as it turns out, they’re not. In fact, they sort of … go together. In order to become spiritually strong, we must first become weak, as the Apostle Paul counsels us. And, as somewhat of a spoiler alert, Jesus himself is going to demonstrate this principal rather dramatically at the opposite end of Lent.

This is because we can only grow in union with God by overcoming the bad stuff that assail us. We can only overcome it by naming and confronting it. And we can only do that with God’s help. So, strange as it may seem, the act of conversion really does demand that we take the bad with the good.

Of course, there are plenty of examples of people engaging with this reality with varying degrees of success. In our reading from Genesis this morning we can probably see a lot of ourselves: “I know I shouldn’t do such-and-such a thing, but I want to, and I’m being given a compelling rationalization by someone who claims to have my interests at heart and seems to know what they’re talking about, so that makes it okay. Or, at least, it makes me feel less responsible for choosing my own will over God’s.” Good old human nature at its less-than-finest.

Perhaps a more edifying example is that of the desert elders of the first centuries of Christianity who, following the example of Christ, fled to their own wildernesses where they certainly faced temptation. Those who were unable to contend soon either returned to the relative comfort and perceived safety of civilization or allowed themselves merely to acclimate to their circumstances without ever really facing – or getting to know – themselves. But for those who meant business – for the likes of Anthony and Pachomius, and later figures such as Benedict of Nursia and Isaac the Syrian, life in the wilderness meant a constant, intentional engagement with the bad stuff – the insecurities, the weariness, the hunger, the burning heat and biting cold, and, especially, the temptations.

I imagine those early desert monastics must have thought about today’s Gospel reading a lot. And, my guess is it must have provided a measure of both comfort and reassurance, along with a challenge. After all, Jesus likely had only the same resources at his disposal as were available to them: prayer, meditation, fasting, silence, solitude, and faith in God’s mercy. And if Jesus himself was not immune to temptation, then they certainly couldn’t expect to be either. And, most important, while he was enduring many of the same elements that they must have been experiencing, he still managed to resist succumbing to them because, at all times, his eye was on the prize, which was to do the Will of the One who sent him.

This is key. Jesus, having just been baptized, and in preparation for his ministry in Galilee (that’s the part that comes right after today’s reading in Matthew), undergoes a period of intense human and spiritual formation to prepare himself for the path he has committed himself to following: namely, the proclamation of the Reign of God. It is a process and a path we are each called to follow no less stringently.

Commitment, formation, and then proclamation. It’s a process that all of us must be willing to embrace in its entirety. The reason is simple: each step along the way, including all of the trials, the setbacks, the doubts, the temptation to stop and return to what we knew before – not because it’s what we really want but because it’s what’s familiar and known and, therefore, seemingly safer than what we think may lie ahead – prepares us in a particular way to live more fully into the Paschal Mystery and to proclaim the good news that there is a God who loves each and every one of us so much that he’s willing to walk in our shoes, to be baptized, famished, and tempted – all to show us that we are worth it, and we can do this too.

This can seem overwhelming, if not utterly unrealistic depending on where each of us is in our own life. For someone like me, who has spent the past nearly eighteen months being tested in a period of formation here at the monastery, I can see for the first time, really, just how much of a gift this path is. Drawn out of what was familiar to me and led up by the Spirit into the Wilderness of the mid-Hudson Valley, I have indeed been very much tempted by those parts of me that would prefer to throw in the towel and return to what feels safe.

Yet, as Jesus demonstrates to us in today’s Gospel, it’s worth it to resist the temptation to quit, to flee to what feels safe in the moment but what is ultimately unsatisfying and lifeless. Because on the other side is the promise of something far, far greater than the suffering of the present time.

Our Gospel reading is about the temptation of Jesus, but that isn’t where it ends. The closing sentence proclaims, “Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”

The enemy left. The attacks ended, the bad stuff was over. And angels of God surrounded him. The fruits of trial, prayer, perseverance, and unceasing faith in God’s saving power have won the day. Now that Jesus has experienced what we do, he is ready to begin his ministry in Galilee.

Of course, we know it’s not going to be smooth sailing from here on out – not for Jesus, and not for us. In fact, these periods of testing will repeat themselves again and again, and not just in Lent. But each time we experience the suffering that comes with living – the bad with the good – we are a little better prepared than the last time to face them head-on. If nothing else, it becomes a little easier each time around to have hope that angels are indeed flying our way to wait on us. This hope is, really, the hope of the Resurrection. That in the death of our anxieties, fears, self-judgement, and self-loathing, new life will emerge in the form of peacefulness, faith, self-acceptance, and love.

And, having passed through the gauntlet as Jesus did, we, too, will be ready to join him in the proclamation of the Reign of God. May each of us hold to the hope of the Resurrection, never allowing the enemy of temptation to fool us into believing that there’s any better option for us, no matter how appealing it may seem in the moment. And, when we emerge on the other side of these forty days, may we find ourselves tested and proved, bearing the marks of the struggle, yet strengthened and equipped to proclaim the glory of Easter morning. Amen.

Last Epiphany - February 19, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

Last Epiphany - Sunday, February 19, 2023

 

Exodus 24:12-18

2 Peter 1:16-21 

Matthew 17:1-9

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

 

In the name of the One God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. Amen.

Commentaries on the transfiguration stories inevitably follow a similar theme. After Peter has named Jesus as the Christ, Jesus takes his most trusted disciples up a mountain. There his glory is revealed to them, further confirming that he is the Messiah. While he’s transfigured, he meets with Moses, representing the Law, and Elijah, representing the prophets. These symbols of the law and the prophets confirm that Jesus the Messiah is the apotheosis of all Israelite expectation. He is, indeed, the savior foretold. In fact, some commentators point out that in Mark, the transfiguration story serves as the only resurrection appearance. In Matthew and Luke, it prefigures the resurrection.

Then we have good old bumbling Peter, who, of course, doesn’t get it. In that way, he’s a stand in for you and me. He wants to make three dwellings, presumably to hold on to this moment of revelation and glory. Many preachers will pick up on this impulse to tell us that we shouldn’t try to cling to the mountaintop moment.

Now, none of that is wrong. In fact, it’s a good and most likely correct reading of these narratives. But it’s not complete, and it’s not balanced.

Every time I read and pray with these accounts, I’m struck by the same line: “And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.” First the shock and awe, the glory and the revelation. Then the fear and trembling. And then, like the still small voice that Elijah hears from the mouth of the cave, Jesus himself alone.

We begin the season of Epiphany with the revelation that salvation has come to the whole world and not just to the people of Israel. It’s scandalous. God has taken human form in a tiny, powerless child. And that frail little human will be the salvation of the whole world. Today, we end the season of Epiphany with a kind of bookend. Not only is Jesus the promised Messiah. Not only is he God almighty—the creator of everything that is. But he is also still—and scandalously—human. He is both the fullness of the Godhead and simply the human Jesus himself alone, the man who has taught and loved and healed. The man who has laughed with his friends, and danced at weddings, and grumbled when he hadn’t had enough alone time.

When Moses goes up the mountain to meet with God, so powerful is God’s glory that a cloud covers the mountain to shield and protect the people looking on. In another story, we’re told that to look on God’s face is to die. So, God shows only his backside to Moses, providing generations of preachers and congregations a good punchline. The imprint of God’s glory on Moses’ face is itself too much for the Israelites, so Moses covers his face with a veil. God, unrefined and unmitigated, has a power and a glory too strong for us humans to bear.

You can worship such a God. You can certainly fear such a God. You may even be able to love such a God. But it’s hard to foster a tender, loving intimacy with the threat of annihilation looming over you at every moment.

And so God pours Godself out into a human being. God takes on the fragile, dirty, messy stuff of our little lives. And not the life of some powerful king or emperor. Not the life of some great warrior who overthrows the oppressive powers of the world. But the life of a small and powerless baby who will grow into a loving man who dies powerless on a cross.

I think one reason we tend to focus so much on the glorification of Jesus in his transfiguration is that we still, two millennia later, cannot bear God’s humanity.

So enamored of this world are we, that we look for signs of power and success and wealth, not only in others and ourselves, but in God. We crave spiritual consolation. We look for our prayer and our worship and our work in the world to make us into better versions of ourselves. We don’t want to be human. We don’t want to be weak and frail and needy. We don’t want the joy that comes mixed with sorrow or the love that binds itself to death. And, even without realizing it, we often look for a God immune to the things of the earth.

But that God is not Jesus. That God is an idol.

Jesus tells us, in his very person, that the God who made all that is is intimately, perhaps painfully and gloriously, interested in the smallness and the weakness and the wonder of our human lives. Our lives that, as the psalmist says, wither like the grass. Jesus shows us that our salvation does not lie in greatness or power or wealth or strength, but in drinking these lives we have to the dregs.

Perhaps we’re most afraid, though, that God’s voice will ring out around us calling us beloved. We, who are so small and afraid. Could we possibly be that beloved, just as we are?

I’m reminded of George Herbert’s extraordinary poem, Love (III):

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
            Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
            From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
            If I lacked anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here":
            Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
            I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
            "Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
            Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
            "My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
            So I did sit and eat.

In Jesus, the fullness of God and the fullness of our humanity meet, in the face of one who calls us beloved and who loves us into fullness of life. The banquet is laid. We must sit down and eat.
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