Instructions for preachers (part III)

7. Remember charity. Sermons that depend for their effect on creating a smug coterie of insiders (sitting in the nave), contrasted with nefarious outsiders (sitting in the Oval Office, let's say), violate the spirit of charity. How many sermons have I heard in the last few years that read like Mad Libs on Luke 18? "God, I thank you that we are not like these _____": Republicans, greedy corporate executives, defilers of the environment, fundamentalists . . . Do we not want to "go down to our house justified"?

This point is related to the earlier one about the Screwtape fallacy. Rebuking our own sins is salutary; rebuking the sins of others is usually just self-satisfaction dressed up as prophecy.

8. Know your limitations. If you're bad at extemporizing, write out your sermon word-for-word and stick to the script. If your eyesight is bad, make sure you have the right glasses and good light. If you're the only one laughing at your jokes, stop telling them.

Instructions for preachers (part II)

4. Don't commit the Screwtape fallacy. In The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis notes the tendency of complacent preachers to warn congregations against the errors into which they are least likely to fall. In that spirit, I have heard any number of sermons against Bibliolatry and fundamentalism in parishes where no one was remotely likely to err by taking the Bible "too" seriously. Episcopalians are incomparably more likely not to take the Bible seriously enough, yet not once in my twenty years in the Episcopal Church have I heard an earnest exhortation to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the Holy Scriptures, or a rebuke to the vast majority who simply cannot be bothered to study the Bible.

5. Speak clearly. Christian theology is hard, but that's no excuse not to express yourself as clearly as possible. Hazy language is a sign of hazy thinking, and hazy thinking has no place in the pulpit.

6. Say something new. Novelty for its own sake is bankrupt, and no one hates theological novelty (which I call heresy) or liturgical improvisation (which I call by names too vigorous for publication here) more than I do. But if you find yourself always following the well-worn paths, recurring to the obvious and time-honored children's-chapel interpretation of a Bible story, or zooming back to your favorite comfortable truisms about God's love, something has gone wrong with your preaching. The riches of Scripture (and recall that you're preaching on the lessons!) are inexhaustible. Our own minds are rather less copious. If you keep having to go back to the same old thing, you're clearly drawing from the wrong storehouse.

Instructions for preachers

In no particular order, here are some instructions for preachers. (I'm trying to keep in mind that blogging is not essay-writing, so I won't be developing each item in any great detail.)

1. Preach on the lessons. The sermon should be on one or more of the lessons in the same way in which a good professor's lecture is on the assigned reading. That is, a mere glancing reference to a word or theme from one lesson in a sermon that is actually just a riff on some theme of the preacher's choosing does not constitute preaching on the lessons in this sense.

2. Don't be afraid of doctrine. Our seminaries must teach their students that the average churchgoer doesn't want to hear "dull, stale doctrine" from the pulpit. But

• since the average churchgoer has been at best very imperfectly chatechized, even the basics of doctrine are fresh and interesting;
• what's dull and stale is that gassy seminary-approved pablum about God's love that gets repeated in sermon after sermon; and
• Dorothy Sayers was right: "The dogma is the drama." Sermons that ruthlessly exclude doctrine exclude everything that's genuinely exciting and invigorating about the Christian faith.

3. Be afraid of politics. Pay attention, reverend fathers and mothers. I am a political conservative. Imagine what you would think if I preached a sermon in which I took it for granted that all genuine Christians support the wars of liberation in Afghanistan and Iraq or seek to eliminate the slaughter of unborn children. Imagine how you would feel if I repeatedly said that those who espouse pacifism or eco-alarmism are perverting Christianity and making it an instrument for their own political ideology. And then apply the Golden Rule.

To be continued . . .

Psych results

On Friday I trekked back to our see city to meet with the psychologist. He read his report to me and then left the room for a few minutes so I could look over it. When he returned, we discussed the aspects of the report I found questionable.

There were a lot of them. I told the psychologist at one point that if I were reading this report as a description of someone else, I would think that person was either robotic or deeply repressed and unhappy. The report repeatedly indicated that I suppress my emotions, that I have trouble enjoying life, that I do not let myself feel much. Oddly, although it said (correctly) that I am very even-tempered, it also said that I am vulnerable to periods of depression, lethargy, and low energy. Considering that I have hardly had so much as a fleeting bad mood in the last decade, that claim seems overstated at the very least. Of course, "vulnerable" is a word of possibility, not of actuality, and perhaps it's true that my characteristic ways of engaging with the world leave me open to depression that has so far not manifested itself. But then that hardly seems worth mentioning, since who isn't vulnerable to depression in that rather weak sense? (The psychologist commented that my self-perception was highly correlated with the more objective tests of personality functioning [such as the MMPI]. That indicated to him that I have a highly accurate take on my own personality. So it's hard for me to understand why he did not seem willing to accept my report that I do generally enjoy life and feel content and happy.) It would seem more important to highlight what is distinctive about me, which is my even-temperedness and my ability to control my emotions when I recognize that the indulgence of emotion would be counterproductive.

Now in the language of the report, this would be described as "repression." But that term has such unfavorable connotations, at least to a non-psychologist, that its use here strikes me as inadvisable. Indeed, that worry about misleading connotations came up repeatedly in my discussion with the psychologist. (I'll have to have some faith that the Bishop, having read plenty of these reports, understands what is and is not implied by their technical, clinical language.) For example, the report says I have "a rigid view of right and wrong." That could be taken to mean quite a number of things, only some of which are true. Yes, I do have clear standards of right and wrong, and I know how to differentiate between explaining behavior and excusing it. But I am not censorious or quick to find fault, which is what a lot of people would think is meant by those words.

In general I think I come across pretty well on the report, so perhaps I shouldn't be complaining. It's not as if the psychologist is describing me as someone in urgent need of therapy before I'm turned loose on the Church. It will be interesting to me, though, to see what the Bishop and the Commission on Ministry make of it. I meet with the COM two weeks from yesterday. I worry about being a bit rusty. When I was meeting monthly with my discernment committee, I was geared up for serious discussions about priesthood at a moment's notice. I was in the groove. But those meetings ended months ago, and I'll need to find a way to get back into that groove before I head off to the COM. Otherwise it will seem as if I have nothing to say for myself, and no serious thoughts about ministry.

How people land here

I'm not really writing in order to gain an audience, though if that happens, I'll be perfectly happy. But I am occasionally curious about how the few people who land here find me. This morning I noticed that I had had a few dozen visitors since I last paid attention to the counter, and I checked to see where they had come from.

The short answer: it's all about American Idol. Most of my visitors still come from Prof. Althouse, who linked to me some weeks ago. And most of the rest came here by doing a Yahoo search on "What happened to Vonzell?"

Since American Idol is nearly over for the season, I suppose I shouldn't be counting on a huge readership any time soon.

Funeral instructions (just in case)

1. Nothing that sounds remotely like “celebration of the life of ____" is to be uttered or printed. This is a burial service, not the Kennedy Center Honors.

2. There is to be no eulogy. I defy you to find anything about eulogies in the Prayer Book. Instead, there is to be a homily, as provided for on p. 480.

3. Notice that I just gave a reference to the Rite One burial service. I have very carefully put together a Rite One liturgy, and I expect it to be followed, without any variation whatsoever. Follow the rubrics, say the words just as they are printed, or I will haunt you.

4. Whatever can be sung, should be sung. Whatever can be censed, should be censed.

5. For some reason the organist likes to take “We sing of God, the mighty source” (Hymn 386) at breakneck speed. For purposes of my funeral, it is to be played at the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Tempo, which is half-note = 50.

Idol's final four

What were the judges going on about? Carrie sounded great in her second song. Naturally, when Randy says she was never on pitch, we can infer that her pitch was in fact flawless. But Simon is usually more reliable. I honestly can’t think why he would say it was an utter mess. At least everyone agreed that "Sin Wagon" was a smashing success.

I swear, if Bo doesn’t put that microphone stand down, I’m going to scream. The first performance seemed to last forever. The second was at least a little more interesting. I would have thought that even the second performance didn’t really connect, but the audience went absolutely crazy.

I wonder what happened to Vonzell today. Her first performance was pretty lackluster, and it was kind of Simon (yes, you read it right: kind of Simon) not to press the point after it had become clear that she was having problems. On the other hand, Vonzell has often seemed detached and non-committal in her performances, so I don’t know that whatever difficulties she had can be fairly blamed on a bad day. (And of course real performers don’t have bad days.) I have to admit, though: "Don’t Leave Me This Way" was excellent.

Anthony could not possibly have looked any cuter than he did in all that denim. His voice was beautifully controlled throughout "I’m Already There," even in the lower, quieter sections where he often has problems with support. Randy was clearly disappointed that he had to praise it. It’s not quite clear to me why the judges are so unenthusiastic about Anthony, but he often gets damned with faint praise even when he sings beautifully.

Oh no, he’s about to sing "If You Don’t Know Me by Now." He’d better way outsing Carrie. And he did! Unbelievable! And for once, Paula said something intelligent: he sang with conviction. That is what Anthony offers that not one of the others has: the songs get down into his bones and he conveys a deep sense of the meaning and passion and depth of a good lyric. For him, and for him alone, the sounds are not principally an excuse for vocal acrobatics, but a vehicle for conveying meaning. And that, brothers and sisters, is what a true singer does.

So in the actual order of merit, from top to bottom, we have Anthony, Carrie, Vonzell, and the increasingly unimpressive Bo. Likely results of the voting, however, are Carrie, Bo, Anthony, Vonzell.

Psych-blogging: the SILS and MMPI

Fifth came the Shipley Institute for Living Scale (SILS). This seemed to me to involve two disparate components, both of them timed (the only timed tests I took). The first component tested verbal ability; it was basically a multiple-choice synonym test. For some reason I got a kick out of 'dingo' as a possible synonym for 'amulet'. (Is that fact more psychologically revealing than whether I would like the work of a private secretary? Probably. But of course the tests don't reveal that sort of thing.)

The second component of the SILS tested intelligence by means of the usual complete-the-sequence items. I had a brief moment of worry when I couldn't figure out how to complete the following: 3124 82 73 154 46 13_ (where the blank indicated that there was one number to beinserted). The previous sequences of numbers had set me up to look for entirely the wrong kind of pattern. Those sneaky bastards!

But finally, the crowning achievement of the day: the 566 true-false questions of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). Taking this test was truly one of the oddest experiences of my life. I occasionally found myself laughing out loud at the questions. It would go along with perfectly normal sorts of statements and then come out with something like "Evil spirits possess me at times" or "Someone has been trying to poison me." I wondered how the designers of the test understood what I came to think of as the "religious nut" questions like "I believe in the second coming of Christ." ("He will come again to judge the quick and the dead," after all. I'm probably safe on that one, but I may get talked to about "I feel sure that there is only one true religion.")

There were some items I just didn't know how to respond to. "I like science." Does that mean that I like studying science, or that I think science is a Good Thing? It's false on the first interpretation, true on the second. I think I went with the second. "Horses that don't pull should be beaten or killed." I have to say that I don't have any strong views about the proper treatment of horses that don't pull, especially since I'm not sure I know what that means. But my favorite source of bewilderment was "I like tall women." That was the one question I simply couldn't answer. I don't dislike tall women, but I don't prefer them to short women, or have any particular sentiment of approbation toward tall women qua tall. The height of women is a matter of supreme indifference to me. What is that all about?

I had no trouble with "I used to like drop-the-handkerchief." That's clearly false, since I have no notion what drop-the-handkerchief is. And there was a subtle question to test for homosexual tendencies: "I am very strongly attracted by members of my own sex." Fiendishly clever!

I was struck by how many questions there were about physical health. It occurred to me only later that they are probably testing for hypochondriasis. I was even more struck by the fact that there were no questions about money, not only on the MMPI but on any of the tests I took. If there is a better indicator of mental and spiritual health than someone's attitudes about money, I don't know what it is.

Psych-blogging: tests three and four

Next was the Strong Interest Inventory. I was asked whether I would like, would dislike, or am indifferent to the work involved in various occupations. (My favorite: governor of a state. That was a like.) I noticed a clear pattern: I have no interest in occupations involving sports, children, or patience. I also got to puzzle over such imponderables as whether I would rather be a headwaiter or a lighthouse keeper and to express my relative preferences among ideas, data, people, and things.

Then I was presented with a list of 300 adjectives, and I filled in the bubbles next to the ones that I believe described me. Oddly, "initiative" was one of the "adjectives." ("Attentive to parallel construction," sadly, was not.) I hope I don't come across as overly self-congratulatory. I filled in a lot more favorable descriptions than unfavorable ones. It just happens that my many failings resist pithy description.

Psych-blogging: the first two tests

The first test was the attitude and activity test, which was pretty straightforward. How many hours a week do I spend watching TV, working, reading, having sex, and so forth? Then I did a test called "incomplete sentences":

• Criminals __________
• My idea of a perfect woman __________
• I think most boys __________
• When I am older __________
• When someone really attractive flirts with me __________

(I thought about "I'll let you know" for the last one.) The hard part of that one for me was at the end, where it asked me to name three famous people whose qualities I would like to possess, and to say what those qualities were. I wasn't allowed to list any religious leaders, and it was hard for me to come up with anyone else, particularly given that I wanted to avoid political figures. I settled on two nineteenth-century figures and one eighteenth-century figure, which I suppose will make me look even more retrograde than I actually am (which is saying a lot).

Psych-blogging, installment 1

Today I made the two-hour trip to our see city from my college town so that I could begin my psychological evaluation. I believe the canons require only that the psych evaluation be made before ordination to the diaconate (I could look that up, but PDF files always cause such problems), but our diocese quite sensibly requires it before admission to postulancy.

The first part of the day was a one-hour session with the psychologist. A recently ordained deacon in my parish, who was also a member of my discernment committee, had described him to me as having "a flat affect." As it turned out, that was a bit like describing the Pacific Ocean as "a tad moist." He asked questions in an almost robotic voice and seemed to have no reactions to anything I said, except for some (by his standards) enthusiastic concurrence in some things I said about the study of Scripture. He didn't probe very deeply. Perhaps he will do so later, after he has reviewed the results of my battery of tests.

I then went off to get some lunch before returning for three hours of psychological testing. Now I have a modest interest in the mechanics and theory of psychological testing, and I would have been glad to sit down afterwards with the designers of the various tests and find out just what they were up to. Some of the questions were oddly fascinating. I hadn't taken any of the tests before, so I didn't have the problem that I have now when I'm asked to take some version of the Myers-Briggs test, where I can see my INTJ profile taking shape as I go through. There were six tests in all, and I want to think a bit about each of them.

Another reason I love my Bishop

The university from which I have an offer has finally presented the details of the offer they're making to my partner, and it's a doozy: a tenure-track position with a 2-2 teaching load and a starting salary of $50,000. This is the Grand Prize of academic coupledom: two tenure-track positions (tenured, actually, in my case) with a light teaching load at the same research-oriented institution, both well-paid. We had both expected that it would take us two or three years to get something anywhere close to this; in our most sanguine dreams we would never have expected to get the whole enchilada in our very first time on the market together.

The only possible hitch was about my discernment. As I have discussed before, the new job is located in a diocese whose Bishop will not ordain or license a priest in a same-sex relationship. Although from a purely academic standpoint the offers are too good to turn down, it appeared that accepting them would mean postponing ordination indefinitely, which was almost impossible for me even to entertain. I was speaking about this with a marvelous priest (who was also counseling me about the Crisis that Dare Not Speak its Name), and she said, "The Bishop is someone who likes to find ways to make things happen. Just ask him to help you find a way to stay connected with this Diocese even after you've moved."

Suddenly I had a feeling of hope: it seemed altogether possible that I could do justice both to my relationship with my partner and to my relationship with the Church. So the next morning I sat down to compose an e-mail to the Bishop. By the time it was ready to be sent, my mood had changed. "This is the most cockamamie idea I have ever heard of," I thought; "the Bishop is going to think I've lost my mind." But I sent it anyway, because I was feeling desperate, and this was the only thing I could think to do.

A day passed, and I heard nothing. Worst-case scenarios, each more improbable than the one before, passed through my mind. The next day an e-mail arrived. Dare I look at it? I looked, and the Bishop was as accommodating as I could have hoped. I've talked with my Rector about how to maintain a real connection with my present parish even while I'm away, and I don't see any problems with that. Of course, there is still the worry about what will happen down the road when I'm ordained but unable to function as a priest where I live. But I'm willing to take one problem at a time.

Not even on an anonymous, unread blog

It has been -- what? -- a week and a half since I last posted. I have been through a serious personal sorrow that I don't feel I can write about, even on this blog, which is not only anonymous but completely unknown. The aftermath of that crisis is still with me, and will remain with me for quite some time. But I have always intended this blog to be primarily about my path to ordination, and I can at least resume writing about that, now that the first shock and dismay has passed.