St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral celebrating sesquicentennial in the heart of Salt Lake City

    Having an occasional freelance assignment now, in semi-retirement, from The Salt Lake Tribune has been a nice change. What is old is new again, kinda sorta. :)

This is my latest assignment for Religion Editor Dave Noyce (friend and former boss).

    "In the mid-19th-century Mormon theocracy ruled by pioneer-prophet Brigham Young, plans by smatterings of Episcopalians to carve out their own religious niche in the Utah Territory seemed audacious.

    But, in July 1867, two decades after Young had led Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley, newly consecrated Episcopal Bishop Daniel Tuttle — having first paid a courtesy call to the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — presided over his church’s first services in Salt Lake City’s Independence Hall.

    These pioneering Episcopalians went on to establish one of the earliest organized, permanent Protestant presences in Utah.

    “You could characterize it as both a gamble and a miracle, but it’s also what love does — it spreads out and drenches every nook and cranny [of a community],” says the Rev. Tyler Doherty, dean and rector of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah’s Cathedral of St. Mark, which is celebrating its sesquicentennial in September. . . . 

Read rest of my story, with photos by clicking this web link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/07/10/after-years-utahs-second/

A bright spring morning, an old dog, a wagon, and honoring the Walk of Life

 Part of my daily routine is a contemplative morning walk along riverside trails or in parks. I put on my earphones and log on to a podcast, or play portions of an audio prayer book, psalter, or if I'm in a more secular mood, an NPR, Axios or BBC newscast.

 Today, it was the prayer book on play as I did several circuits around a soccer fields complex above the Murray City Park. The air was invigorating, cool and crisp ahead of a warm spring day, a slight breeze in the trees where sunlight dappled a swaying canopy of leaves, while nesting birds chirped and fluttered through the branches.

 Then, as I got into stride and sipped my Starbucks French roast, I saw him -- an athletic man in his late 30s or early 40s towing his mixed-breed, gray-muzzled dog behind him. The canine lay nearly motionless on a small mattress and blanket aboard a wagon.

 Perhaps, in days and years passed, the man's four-legged friend had taken his human for long walks. Like so many other dog owners do with the wide open greenspace there, human and dog had played on the acres of green, tossing and chasing balls or frisbees. But now the years had taken their toll, replacing a puppy's boundless, energetic youth with the ragged, slow breaths and half-closed eyes of an ancient dog.

 Stamina had faded, aches in hips and shoulders grown, the runs becoming walks, the walks becoming shorter until this routine of quiet, simple companionship became what I saw today.

This day may have been the dog's last, or at least one of them. Yet, his human friend was honoring a life that had been -- and remained, even in its twilight -- precious and beloved.

 I remembered the many dogs I have had the privilege of knowing and sharing all-to-brief moments in time and unconditional love with over my life.

 I did not intrude on this moment of bonding and honor between the man and dog he dutifully towed behind him. Instead, I just stood still, quietly witnessed the pair as they went down a hill and disappeared.

 And, with a smile and wet eyes, I said a prayer for two souls on the Walk of Life.

 

Soul Searching: On Confusing the Duties of Faith with the Lure of Political Power

    Hopefully, this will truly be a time of soul searching for Evangelical Christians (as for us all) over confusing faith with political power, and thus a bitter harvest -- often borne of willful ignorance of moral compromise in leadership.

    And of course it is not just Evangelicals who detoured into this dead end path; still this uniquely American Protestant community seemed to fall hardest for a false secular gospel that clothed itself in fear -- and ultimately looked little different than the violence and hate that likewise betrayed and usurped other, initially peaceful protests over legitimate racial and justice concerns this past year.

   My friend, and a mentor in my Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, Fr. Steven Clark, put it this way in a comment:

"The evil one showed the world and said: 'This I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.'

And. . . well.. . . . you know."

Please read, and consider: 89.3 KPCC | 'How Did We Get Here?' A Call For An Evangelical Reckoning On Trump (scpr.org)

Grace in the Time of Covid: On a cold winter's morning, a lesson from Michael

 It was a bone-chilling cold, pre-dawn Tuesday morning. The 5 a.m. alarm on my phone sounded, and for several minutes -- nestled in my warm bed -- and debated with just turning it off and drifting back to sleep.

But I got up, with a moan. It was the day for early-morning liturgy and communion at Sts. Peter & Paul Orthodox Church in downtown Salt Lake City. I knew I needed it, and needed to be there. 

After the service, the guys would meet for coffee and scriptural study with Fr. Paul downstairs -- a time that has become especially precious to me during this season of prolonged Covid-19 related isolation.

Showered and dressed, I donned a heavy coat, scarf and gloves and bundled myself into the car, first scraping a sheet of ice from the windshield. My decades-old Honda Civic coughed to life, I turned on the heater full blast, and drove down the road.

It's a 15-minute trip to the church, and to my usual morning prayers and added not a few laments about life as we have come to know it in the age of pandemic. Finally, as I drove on near-empty, slippery streets, I passed the homeless camps of shopping carts draped with makeshift tents that regularly pop up along the curbs of the Salt Lake County-City Government Complex.

Deseret News photo

But I was so self-absorbed, irritated that the old Honda's heater was just beginning to warm the car's interior, that I hardly noticed the desperation and poverty of wrecked lives that have become part of the urban landscape.

Pulling into a dark side street and then the small parking lot behind my parish church, I sat for a time behind the wheel, relishing a belated moment of warmth. Then with a grunt I got out, put on my mask, shivered, and began walking down the alley to the entrance of Sts. Peter & Paul.

The homeless, I'm ashamed to say, have too often become the faceless, nameless backdrops of our lives today. If not ignored, then they only elicit a brief thought or an occasional a few bucks quickly handed over to appease the inconvenience of guilt.

But there is one denizen of the street many in the parish have come to know, and some befriend.

"Michael," also the name of his patron saint, adorns the sleeves of his arms and coat with iconic images of saints and angels, secured with transparent plastic and duct tape. Slight and gaunt, his beard and graying hair often seeming as wild and surreal as his thoughts, Michael has good days and bad.

Some days, he holds forth on the warfare of angels and demons in the skies above, where clouds may swirl, punctuated by thunder and lightning. "See? There they are, fighting over the souls of the dead? Right there," he once told me on a summer day, pointing and nodding.

On other days, he seems to have the simple clarity of a saint. That is the case on this particular frigid December morning, as he steps out from behind a plastic tarp draped over his nest of blankets and sleeping bags near a building's steam vent.

He won't do the shelters. He has horror stories of sickness, bed bug-infested cots, drug use and violence inside them. He's often been robbed of his few possessions. Over the years, our priest and parish have tried to arrange other housing and psychiatric care, without success.

So, one does what one can, meeting this brother where he is, and with what he needs -- warm clothing, food, a few dollars for coffee or a snack, and friendship, to the extent this gentle and enigmatic man allows that.

So, on this morning, I just want to get inside to the warmth, comfort and spiritual refuge of the church. Michael recognizes my voice, this time, and hurries to my side. I'm grumpy; he is ebullient, and our pace toward the open iron gates of the entrance slows.

"It's a good day," he rasped. "It's a cold day," I grumbled back.

He either didn't hear me, or ignored my reply. "God is so great! He provides what you need. Even a hot shower!" Michael pointed to the steam coming out of a head-high pipe. "They shut down the showers where I was going," he explained, vaguely waving toward an undefined downtown Salt Lake City location, "But then God provided this!"

He went on to list a few other things he attributed to Providence. A place to fill his water jug. People cared enough to check on him, feed him, take him to the free clinic, even just talk for a few moments.

Then, Michael grinned, pointed at the church where he, like me, received baptism a few years back, and said, "And we get to go inside His house and have communion! Hey, it's the Breakfast of Champions!"

And we did that. We climbed the steps inside to the candle-lit darkness, venerate the icons of the saints and stood for the ancient prayers of the liturgy, culminating with the Eucharist.

I watched Michael approach the chalice, a look of awe on his smudged face as he received the mystical Body and Blood of Christ.

As he made his cross and silently walked away, I sighed, ashamed at first, then humbled, and then grateful for the lesson.

For Michael.

Lord have mercy, indeed.

Remembering Mom: an end to mourning, a bitter-sweet celebration of mercy

Hard to believe it has been a year since my mother, Katherine, passed away.

June 17, after having called aloud in delight for her own mother, she "reposed," as we Orthodox Christians say. And, a year later, I see that moment of her leaving us as a blessing -- ending the confusion and haze of final-stage Alzheimer's disease, the physical pain of one unable to speak or understand speech, walk, or care for herself in the most basic manner.

But she knew love and knew how to give love to the end of her 91 and a half years. She could still smile, and raucously laugh, and cry tears sometimes of pain, other times of joy she could not otherwise express.

As dawn turned the sky silver over the Jordan River this morning -- candles lit, a ribbon of burning incense drifting up toward a small photo of her nestled amid icons of Christ, His Mother, and an assortment of saints in my home prayer corner -- I recited the ancient Akathist to Jesus for Those Who Have Fallen Asleep.

I had offered this same prayer for 40 days following her death last year, as I had for my father when he had passed away six months before. And as I had done for my father, Robert Sr., on the one year anniversary of his repose, I prayed for Katherine.

There were, again, some tears for me. There also was peace and hope.

Our broken hearts: Where hope flees, riots and madness fill the vacuum

Violence, looting and arson engulfed Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and other cities this week, played out in endlessly recycled video clips of mob madness on our screens.

And we wonder, "Why?"

The myopic, yet narrowly accurate answer is that -- in scenes echoing such civil breakdowns in past years and decades -- a handful of criminal opportunists can quickly turn peaceful protests into riots, steering the desperate masses into acts they will later individually regret . . . while the thugs sparking it all could not care less.

But history teaches us that wherever trust, justice, hope, and mutual respect are absent, anger and madness waits to fill the vacuum. And this has been true for all ethnicities, racial strife, political rage, religious hatred sadly being universally human (https://www.brainz.org/riots/). 

Now, we see black faces, twisted in rage over the death of another African-American man fatally injured during an arrest exhibiting excessive force. But look beyond the sensational, incendiary in themselves clips on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, et al, and you also will see faces of our brothers and sisters sobbing amid those truly mean streets; others scream in impotent angst; some pray, and most deplore their legitimate grievances being hijacked by violence and destruction  . . . mayhem that undercuts the message we should hear.

This is not a new pattern in America. In the late 1960s, riots scourged Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Kansas City. Louisville and many other cities. At their roots were racial oppression, segregation, and economic hopelessness in the slums, ignited by grief and anger after Martin Luther King Jr. -- the prophet of non-violent protest -- was gunned down. 

Mixed into this cauldron, too, were anti-Vietnam War protests. And again, given human nature, non-violent protests morphed into darkness as mobs picked up rocks, sticks, Molotov cocktails, and firearms to battle police, and to "burn baby, burn," as the cry went at the time.

And here we are, half a century later. Trillions of dollars spent on education, jobs, urban development, welfare, anti-gang programs, wars on drugs, etc., etc. Technological advances and social engineering unheralded in modern history. So much has changed.

And yet, so much has not changed at all. For this truth remains, as it has from the beginning of humanity: our hearts are broken. That "image of God" we bear is tainted too often by our choices of pride over humility, materialism over charity, offense over forgiveness, hatred over understanding.

When no one listens, the desperate scream louder. Unaddressed pain and injustice eventually will bring anarchy and the Abyss, that dark chasm Nietzsche warned stares back at those who gaze into it for too long.

True for individuals. True for communities, for nations, and for civilizations.

Lord have mercy, we repeatedly pray in services at my Orthodox Christian parish church.

We all need that mercy. And we all must somehow learn to give it to our fellow flawed humans, as well.

Senior Hour Treasure Hunt at CostCo, or the Quest for Toilet Paper (for your) Booty

Well, some things are just impossible lately to get shopping online for pickup or delivery.

So, I tied on the homemade polyester-blend T-shirt mask Barbara crafted for me (and, Lysoling the sucker inside and out beforehand) -- and donning some plastic janitorial gloves -- drove to CostCo at the b**tcrack of dawn for "senior shopping hour."

I got there at 7:20 a.m., well before the official 8-9 a.m. Golden Years hour . . . and still was eighth in line. Tape marked off 6-foot intervals stretching from the entrance down the side of the building, and into the distance horizons, out of sight.

By 8 a.m., all those social-distancing berths were filled; the queue stretched around the warehouse, behind it, and was nearing a full circumnavigation of CostCo.

There were surgical masks, dust masks, dish towel masks, knee socks masks, and not a few underwear and T-shirt masks; gloves like mind, white dinner/butler gloves, driving gloves, work gloves, and a few folks who had wrapped their hands in sanitizing wipes.

A few people smiled -- I think they smiled, from the crinkled eyes -- but most were silent, and tense. I felt especially sad for some frail, octogenarian women and shuffling elderly (well, more elder than myself) couples who wore near-dispair like a quivering, dark aura.

Fear. This is what we have come to, as Covid-19 and its seemingly increasing isolation, restrictions, shortages -- and uncertain future for our social institutions, civil rights, and economy -- weighs more heavily. The 15-day plan became the 30-day plan and now, some warn, could stretch through summer.

Once inside, the first thing this serpentine procession of seniors saw as a smiling employee parceling out the allowed "one only" 30-roll megapack of Scott toilet paper. Plop, roll the cart 6 feet. Plop. Roll the cart 6 more feet. Plop . . . .

I added a 12-pack of off-brand paper towels next. Then some hand soap. A few grocery items. Oddly enough, couldn't find orange juice -- frozen or liquid -- anywhere.

The pace inside was glacial as it was surreal. The 6-foot rule was a challenge to observe, with people suddenly stopping to gaze at their cellphones, or just standing with confused, tired looks.

Not an experience I would want to repeat anytime soon, but it was nice to be able to find something to . . . well, you know.

Oh, did I mention the on-site security? Two large Pacific Islander guards, each easily 300-pounds and 6-foot-3, 4, watched the crowd outside.

Nary a graybeard in queue challenged them, though they did turn away a few younger types trying to enter the store during the Hour.

I know this experience was traumatic emotionally for some people in line (I passed the period listening to Eikona chant the daily Orthodox Prayers on my iPhone) . . . but compared to the chaotic conditions in other countries due to Covid-19 right now, we have things easy.

We need to remember that, right? And this will end.

As for the aftermath, the impact on future pandemic preparations -- and how much this all has further weakened our freedoms of movement, association, privacy, even, some say, religion -- remains to be seen.

In the time of COVID-19: Community compassion ultimately is a personal, not governmental act

Watching what is becoming the daily White House briefing on COVID-19 (a.k.a. the Corona Virus), I am impressed with the all-out assault on slowing and defeating the spread of this 21st century pestilence.

Nearly a trillion dollars committed today, overall. More to the point personally, people over age 60, like me, are strongly advised to just stay home, and if outside, avoid close contact.

I joked with my cousin, who lives in the United Kingdom (where even more stringent self-isolation has been ordered) that pretty soon we old folks will be required to ring hand bells and shout, if not "unclean!" like lepers of old, then perhaps, "Hey, seniors here, steer clear! (followed by a muttered, "Some people's kids . . . ")

We need a slogan, a catchy jingle. Imagine, gray-haired grandparent types with canes, doing a "Puttin' On the Ritz" type dance while singing:

"If you're gray and you don't know where to go to

Make sure to not go where youngsters sit,

When you cough or spit

Different types of wear all kinds of masks

Some just paper, some rags and some with filters fit

For when you cough or spit

Dressed head-to-toe like limpin' hazmat troopers

Trying not to look like a feverish Gary Cooper

Super-duper . . . ."

Now I know, this is serious stuff. We need to take care, for ourselves -- and on behalf of others as well. Then again, it's NOT the Black Plague (up to 200 million dead in the 14th century, roughly a third to half the population of Europe included). 

It's also not the Spanish Flu (20-50 million dead worldwide in 1918-19, 675,000 Americans), Swine Flu (1 million dead globally in the late 1960s, 70,000 in the U.S.), SARS (some 775 deaths from 2002-2003, about 10 percent of those who were infected), or even more recent Ebola (an estimated 1,200 worldwide 2014-2015, but very few here). 

In the U.S., so far, about 5,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19, and about 90 have died; globally about 170,000 have been infected and more than 6,600 have died. The mortality rate is about 2-3 percent, and most of those victims are elderly people, many of them with pre-existing immune or cardiopulmonary weaknesses.

What makes COVID-19 unique is that is seems to spread much quicker and more easily than its more deadly SARS  viral cousin. That's why it is a pandemic, and that also is why it is not the End of Days ( i.e. the Pale Horse of pestilence running amok).

Still, this is certainly a time, a noted above, for a wartime footing, as it were, to fight the pandemic. But ultimately, it will come down to how we react as communities, and individuals, with compassion for each other. That can take the form of calling a self-quarantined neighbor offering to shop for groceries, or to share what we ourselves have stocked up; staying in contact with loved ones from afar; and personally, taking these suddenly empty hours as opportunities to read, reflect, contemplate and appreciate the good times, and pray for their return -- along with a deeper gratitude and determination to never take them, or our friends and loved ones, for granted.

For me -- my heart "upgraded" in the past decade with first an artificial aortic valve and then a pacemaker, as well as two previous bouts of pneumonia -- this crisis has meant reluctant compliance with the various COVID-19 restrictions. So, that's "social distancing" while out talking daily walks, entirely avoiding markets and theaters and gyms, etc.

The worst part for me? Suspending attendance at Sunday services at my beloved Sts. Peter & Paul Orthodox Church.

Instead, late last week, I attended Communion Thursday morning with less than a dozen others. It's the sort of "off-off Broadway" approach for Orthodoxy, I suppose; early weekday services are lightly attended (compared to the hundreds on Sundays). It was eerie, standing so far apart from other parishioners, but the liturgy and Eucharist were spiritual anchors in a troubling time.

It will be interesting to see, once this pandemic eases, to see how hungry believers are for gathering for the prayers, chants and communion we have so taken for granted in the past.

Wouldn't it be great if that time of reunion, and perhaps renewed Lenten devotion, comes by Pascha (Easter?)

Faith-based fostering: Pastor remembers harsh upbringing, works to help today's lost kids

Here is my last feature article for AGNews, (just click on the previous link) ending a wonderful 12-year association. 
All good things come to an end, and with my recent changes in personal faith (to Orthodoxy) it seemed the right thing to do. May Our Lord bless and enlighten all who call on His name.

Faith-based Fostering 

Ask Pastor Rick L. Smith where his compassion for foster and parentless children comes from, and he’ll tell a century-old story, one that began with his grandfather’s painful orphanage odyssey in the wake of 1918’s deadly influenza pandemic.

Smith’s grandfather, at the time still a toddler and one of five siblings, was placed in an Oklahoma foundlings home; he did not leave until 12 years later, when his just-married, but still teenaged older sister in Texas took custody. That arrangement didn’t last long.

“As you can imagine, it did not work well for a newlywed 18-year-old girl to try to parent her 14-year-old brother, so he left and began to live on his own at a very young age,” Smith explains.

Even in his later years, Smith’s grandfather, who died in 1999, was uncomfortable discussing specifics of that period of his younger life. His grandson suspects the orphanage stay included neglect and abuse.

Smith left behind more than a decade of pastoring Assemblies of God churches to found and direct Pathway Family Services in 2006. While pastoring, he saw the tremendous need for godly foster parents. After a season of prayer and fasting, he decided to fully engage in ministry to care for marginalized youth.

He, along with wife and ministry partner, Jane, plus hundreds of families from multiple, mostly evangelical, Christian churches have done just that over the past 14 years. An estimated 4,000 children, from infants to teenagers, found emergency shelter, short- and long-term foster care, and hundreds of adoptions into forever homes during that span. . . .

To read the story in its entirety, click on this link: https://news.ag.org/en/News/Faith-Based-Fostering

Prepping for the Poo-ocalypse: Folks, toilet paper won't wipe out the Coronavirus

Visiting Costco, I cannot get over the hordes of people stocking up on water and toilet paper.


The water, pushed on stacked carts by, in my observation at least, mostly Latino shoppers, I can sort of understand. I’ve noticed that even when the country isn’t in the grip of mostly media-hyped Coronavirus pandemic fear, Latinos shoppers seem to buy massive amounts of purified water in bottles and jugs. Despite assurances that our water here is safe, I suspect they where they come from it is not potable, etc.


That’s not meant to be an ethnic putdown at all. Indeed, given the numbers of spoiled white Americans who get sick drinking questionable water on trips down south, despite the abundant travelers' warnings and the ready example of water-caution exercised by our wiser Latino neighbors, who do you think has more smarts?


But(t) the TP obsession? I see a lot of Latinos recently stocking up on that, too (and there have been shortages in several central and southern American countries of late, so ...) , but nowhere near the scenes of Charmin junkies pushing crateloads of the stuff . . . in Utah, those folks seem often comprised of two or more women clad in gingham, ankle-length dresses; a slew of stairstep kids; and an older male leading the way to the checkout stands.


Meanwhile, paper towels seem untouched. Or paper napkins, boxes of tissues. Seemingly good second-choices for bum cleansing.


And has anyone asked for leftover corn cobs from Cracker Barrel’s dumpsters? Hmm? Or even bought out all the used socks at the D.I.?

And really, even if you run out of TP, there’s always that neighbor’s yippy, miniature wire-haired terrier. . .

Or in a dire emergency, a visit to the car wash in the dead of the night.


That particularly dark car wash bay, the one in the middle perhaps . . . and setting the wand on power wash and then rinse! One minute, all done.


No one thinks of alternatives, there’s just no innovation anymore.


That’s what made America great, you know. Corn cobs, Sears Catalogs, and outhouses.


Sheesh.