Travels with Charlie
It’s 4:00am and I’m wide awake. My mind is on one of its tangents that have become a hallmark of my thinking style. The brown beady eyes of my dog Lucky just stare at me. Almost like he’s asking, “Dad/owner, why are you awake at this bewitching hour?” Not two words into typing this, I hear the clinging and clanging of the collar of my other dog, Spencer. At 4:00am, it’s me, two dogs, and the faint sound of the wind chime coming from my front porch. An eerie silence…one that I almost can hear envelops my house. It’s like a low humming in my ear. It sounds strange but such is the life of a small-town home at 4:00am.
In the far recesses of my mind and heart, I know full well why I’m up at this hour. My spirit is in grieving mode. I’m not sad as much as I am reflective. One of my heroes, Charlie Munson, passed away this past weekend. The reality sunk in even more as I read his obituary today:
“Dr. Charles R. Munson, 90, formerly of Ashland, and Goshen, Indiana died on Sunday afternoon May 10, 2009 at Vitas House in Irving, Texas. He was born May 3, 1919 in Scalp Level, Pennsylvania. He was a 1937 graduate of Ferndale High School of Johnstown, PA; a 1947 graduate of Ashland College, in 1952 he graduated from Ashland Theological Seminary and in 1954 he graduated from Western Seminary of Pittsburgh, PA; he was also a doctoral graduate of Case Western Reserve in 1971.
“He was ordained on July 17, 1949 in the Brethren Church by the Johnstown Second Brethren Church of Johnstown, PA; he served as National Youth Director for the Church of the Brethren from 1948-1953 and as the National Moderator of the Brethren Church in 1965, he also served pastorates at Gretna Brethren Church, Williamstown Brethren Church, Johnstown Second Brethren Church, Savannah Presbyterian Church and Lexington Presbyterian Church. He had also served as Master of Ceremonies at many banquets. He was professor of Practical Theology and Academic Dean at Ashland Theological Seminary from 1954-1985. He lived in Ashland until 1996 when he moved to Goshen and in November of last year he moved to Texas.
“On August 14, 1942 he was married to Aida May Snyder, she preceded him in death on July 6, 1994. He is survived by his daughter, Deborah M. (Don) Vick of Coppell, Texas and two grandchildren, Rachel and John Vick. In addition to his parents, and wife, a daughter Bonnie Christina Munson, died on March 5, 2008 and a half sister, Ruth MacDonald Ely and two half brothers, George and Ray MacDonald all preceded him in death.
What do you say to a life like that? How does a person my age even begin to fathom 90 years of joy, pain, reflection, gain, loss, and above all, hope in Jesus Christ?
I’m currently reading numerous books (not unusual for me). One of them is really causing me to reflect deeply. It is The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel. It is forcing me to examine the implications of the Sabbath on my own life. Deep pondering of the seventh day of the Creation poem forces me to realize that rest is not something to be found when I have time for it. Rather, rest is a presence found as the eternal manifests Himself in time.
A few quotes from the book will help illustrate what may sound like incoherence above:
“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments. In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on [humanity] but a spiritual presence. What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight rather than the place where the act came to pass. A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time. Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time” (6).
“There is no equivalent for the word ‘thing’ in biblical Hebrew. The word ‘davar,’ which in later Hebrew came to denote thing, means in biblical Hebrew: speech; word; message; report; tidings; advice; request; promise; decision; sentence; theme; story; saying, utterance; business, occupation; acts; good deeds; events; way, manner, reason, cause; but never ‘thing.’ Is this a sign of linguistic poverty, or rather an indication of an unwarped view of the world, of not equating reality (derived from the Latin word res, thing) with thinghood” (7)?
“One of the most distinguished words in the Bible is the word qadosh, holy; a word which more than any other is representative of the mystery and majesty of the divine. Now what was the the first holy object in the history of the world? Was it a mountain? Was it an altar? It is, indeed, a unique occasion at which the distinguished word qadosh is used for the first time: in the Book of Genesis at the end of the story of creation. How extremely significant is the fact that it is applied to time: ‘And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.’ There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness” (9).
“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world” (10).
I’m haunted by the tension between what I’m reading and what I’m feeling. I’m reading of the importance of rest. Heschel’s words call the reader to recognize that rest is not a thing to be held but a presence to be experienced. The Sabbath is not created by man for God, but rather out of God for the good of man. There is a way that we experience what it means to be made in His image when we rest.
At the exact same time I’m writing this, my little brain is screaming, “Full steam ahead…more power!” I laid in bed wondering what would be said of me if I’m fortunate to make it to 90. How do people view me now? What is up on my docket for tomorrow? How will I get everything done on my to-do list that needs to be done? And, by the way, one of the heroes of my faith passed away recently!
Today, I received a wonderful phone call. I was asked by the family of Charles Munson to be a pall-bearer at his memorial service. My heart sank upon the request. The full weight of the moment hit me. I paused. How in the world did I get asked to participate in the memorial service of one of my heroes?
What I think I felt, though, was a collision of the two forces woven all throughout this post. My soul grieves at the lost of Charlie. He was a mentor, a hero, a legend, but, above all, a friend and brother in Christ. Upon hearing of his passing I felt the happiest sadness I’ve felt in a long time. My mind continues to race processing his death, processing my schedule, processing processes!
At the same time, I keep asking myself, where is Jesus in all this stuff? In asking the question, an answer comes to mind. Jesus is not to be found but to be experienced in the process of journeying. It’s not as if He’s some cosmic Easter egg hidden just behind the divine lilac bush. Rather, like an afternoon hike in the mountains, he is the realization when you get to the top of the mountain and realize that all along you’ve been walking in him and the ‘finding’ was just a grand vantage point He gave you as you peered from atop a cliff over a pristine valley below.
As I write this, two images from Scripture come to mind. The first comes from the John’s gospel. Jesus says in this passage:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
The call is to “abide” in Jesus. To make our home in Him. Our primary calling is intimacy with Him. Intimacy entails time. Time entails moments of movement and moments of rest. Like a piece of music, we are sung along by a long string of notes and rests. The beauty of music is that in the act of listening, we often fail to realize where movement ends and rest begins, and vice-versa. Eliminate either rest or movement and the music fails to be. Might Jesus be calling us to continually rest in Him?
The second image comes not so much from an exact passage of Scripture but a period of time brought forth in Scripture. What might the world have been experiencing on the Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday? I believe that many Christians fail to understand rest and presence because we too quickly rush from Good Friday to clean it all up with Resurrection Sunday. In the cosmic scope of things, is our world not living in a continual Saturday? Is creation not groaning for the ultimate restoration and renewal promised at the end of the age (Rom. 8)?
Several years ago, a professor of mine prayed a powerful prayer at a chapel service. The words he uttered to conclude that prayer have stuck with me for years. “And now, Father,” he prayed, “may we live as the light of Resurrection Sunday in the darkness of a Good Friday world.”
Maybe that is why I grieve Charlie’s passing so much. The world still looks so much like Good Friday. Hope is so hard to move away from the abstractness of imagination to the concreteness of reality. At the same time, is reality merely something to be grasped? Merely a thing? Or, is reality a presence! Might the hope that Charlie and I share be just as real as the computer on which I’m typing this post?
In the tension of life and death, movement and rest, song and silence, may we find hope. My friend, Charlie, was a shining example of a man who experienced hope not as theory but as reality. In the mystery of Creation and Creator, Charlie basked in the love and light of Jesus Christ. Maybe my grieving is not so much for Charlie but for all of us who wait eagerly for our hope to be fully actualized. Maybe I’m struggling to be a Resurrection servant in a world reeling from Good Friday. Maybe my immature spirit is trying to grasp for words to describe the tension between being happy and sad at the same time. Or, and I believe they’re all true, maybe I just woke up at 4:00am to process with God that I’ll miss my friend and cannot wait to see him again!
Tags: Abraham Joshua Heschel, ashland theological seminary, Charles Munson, Charlie, Christ, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, time