Category: Life

As I Limp…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

from place to place, not in agony but rather with the kind of nagging awareness of the disintegration of my right knee over the past few years, there are times when I wish I could be one of those fortunate souls that is miraculously healed.

I imagine standing at the Liturgy or in some moment of prayer and feeling something change, a warmth maybe or some kind of sign and then feeling the pain disappear with the later befuddled confirmation of my doctor via MRI. I know it can happen. I believe it can happen. There’s still time before my operation in October for it to happen. Yet, it hasn’t happened.

It’s not that I haven’t thought of bargaining with God or one of the Saints about this. I have. It’s also not that the whole thing hasn’t been frustrating at times. It has. I’ve had doctors shove needles deep into my knee with chemicals they hoped would help. I’ve had moments when I felt the whole thing on the verge of giving way. Sometimes its even hard to find a way to hold my legs in place to sleep. If there was a test to see how much ibuprofen was in my blood I’d be interested in seeing the results. How wonderful it would be, I think at times, if one day, one moment, God would grant the mercy of a miraculous healing to me and I wouldn’t have to face surgery, weeks of rehab, and the realization that in 10 or 15 years I may have to do it all over again when the replacement needs replacing.

Still, I have no intention of cursing God and dying. My osteoarthritic knee is a reminder of my own aging and mortality and I need that from time to time to help sort out the really important things from the junk. My bum knee has also made me much more aware of the reality of life for many of the Seniors I serve in my “day job.” It’s one thing to theorize about their pain and challenges and it’s quite another to have a little direct experience. It’s also a great reminder to try to stay in some kind of reasonable shape if, for nothing else, to just be able to walk.

Still, I miss dancing and I don’t like being weak from time to time. I regret not making better use of those days when all was well. Sometimes,  it just stinks for no reason in particular and my patience with the whole thing can quickly wear thin. As the date for surgery looms closer and I’m really not looking forward to those days when I’ll need to force myself into therapy and be stuck at home while the rest of the world goes by.

So yes, I suppose there is still time for a miracle. Yet God will also be with me in all the times ahead, a presence I don’t deserve yet one freely given to me out of a love beyond my depth and that, in itself, is a miracle I’m already experiencing whether or nor the unction “takes” in the way I had hoped.

 

Tomorrow…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 2 Comments

marks the 11th anniversary of my ordination as Priest in the Orthodox Church but there’s more to the story. I was first ordained as a Baptist pastor in 1989 so, in fact, I’ve been in ordained parish or chaplaincy service for over a quarter century and what a long and interesting trip it’s been!

I remember those days late in my last year of seminary, contemplating the future as a fresh, new, and young minister. I had hoped to do good things, many even great ones, through the best way I knew how namely the Gospel, the good news of Jesus. I had studied. I had tested. I had taken psychological tests. I passed the various boards and gatekeepers. I had arrived.

Two parishes followed in reasonably quick succession, parishes with good people but also malignant and vocal minorities who really did plan and scheme and attack and make life miserable. I remember being curled up in a ball deep in my tears in the hall of the parsonage of the church in Kansas that had just fired me without even a clue or a specific reason that I could recall. Somebody somewhere didn’t like me and they had the votes. Everything naive left in me died in those days as we packed our stuff and made plans to head back to Minnesota. All I knew was that I wanted to leave that little town and never go back to a Baptist church, ever, and writing about this even now hurts a bit.

Yet the hurt of those days led me home to Minnesota, older than my years and much wiser through pain. I found a “day job” and then a chaplaincy position in the environment where I started my working life, the nursing home. My studies, too, had taken me far from where I had been. I left the American Baptist Churches, became an Episcopalian, and briefly considered holy orders in the Episcopal Church. I knew then, though, that this community had already gone too far too fast from everything it had cherished and there would be no home for me there.

Instead I discovered in a magazine about a new movement called the Charismatic Episcopal Church, a group of evangelicals and charismatics who had embraced Liturgy and their understanding of the ancient Christian Faith through an Anglican ethos. There were trips to Kansas City to visit the Bishop and, in time, I was ordained Priest and sent back to Minnesota to plant a church. While this was happening I came in greater contact with Eastern Orthodoxy and began to explore its life and ethos. In that time of discovery my heart began to become Orthodox and when I, and then we in our tiny mission, discovered the Western Rite we made the plans to change. Our hope had been to continue our little community as a Western Rite Orthodox Mission (Up here in Minnesota where about 80 percent of everyone who claims a Christian title is either Catholic of Lutheran there is still great potential for such a thing).

Yet it was not to be. Our mission was fervent but larger things were at play and, in time, we chose to leave the mission behind and become part of St. George Orthodox Church. I was eventually ordained Deacon and then two years later Priest and sent to St. Elias Orthodox Church in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The parish was full of good people but needed money for repairs and the necessities of life so, over the years, I served bivocationally, living in St. Paul and traveling to Wisconsin on weekends. It was good work but the travel and the time left me exhausted and my feeling was to move on and let someone else build on a better foundation so I could rest.

My hope was that I would take a sabbatical year and then be picked up in the “draft” my term for the assignment of Priests that usually happens in the early summer. It never, for reasons I still don’t know, happened. Six years from St. Elias I am still in St. Paul, attached to St. George in West St. Paul, and in a mobile ministry of helping parishes in transition while I work my day job. I am a circuit rider of sorts but instead of a horse I have a Nissan and while the Apostle Paul made tents to keep a roof over his head I plan programs for Seniors in an Assisted Living.

I still dream of planting a church here in Minnesota. There is a great potential for this area but, at the present, the will is just not here. This dream, and its deferment, have been a constant in my heart and while I understand that it was not possible while I was in transition to Orthodoxy I may never understand why the dream has been given but its fulfillment has been rendered impossible to date. I still believe in Jesus, as well, even though there have been times when the people I trusted to care for me have provided plenty of evidence to the contrary. There is sin in me and sin in the Church and I’ve tried to be wise and forbearing in it all. Sadly, I’ve also learned through hard experience to be careful with my trust. They say “Once bitten twice shy” and there is some real pastoral wisdom in that phrase. A Pastor without an escape plan when things get hard places themselves in a very vulnerable place so have a solid amount of cash in the bank if a church board or Bishop changes their mind. If I would say anything to current seminarians it would be to love everyone but also be wise because some of the people you love won’t even try to return the favor.

It’s also been a great privilege to serve and help people which is part of the reason I got into the “business” in the first place. A good Priest can make a significant difference in people’s lives, a difference for the good. While pastoral ministry can be painful there are also many moments of joy, of the true satisfaction that comes from making a positive difference, and those moments are the fuel that keeps that original spark burning. For every hurt there are many more happy moments and when I doubt that I simply look back through my file of cards and letters and pictures to remember everything, good and bad, in its proper context.

Right or wrong, sinful or forgiven, at my best or worst, I’ve never lost the awe of serving at the altar and I suppose that if there is anything that could be salvaged from these years it would be just that. There have been moments, of course, when I just wanted to quit, to retreat from the battle and rest for a while. Somehow I always find my way back which either means I’m crazy or called. I’ve also never stopped believing in Christ, although sometimes that belief has come through tears or clenched teeth. Nothing that’s happened to me, good or bad, as a Priest and Pastor has changed my belief that Jesus is exactly who he and his Church claim he is and, because of that, everything he is and says is of the utmost importance.

As the 11th year comes and goes the truth is I have no idea what is going to happen or where this long, strange, trip will take my wife and I. Sometimes I wish I did but that seems to be about me learning the lessons of trust. There are things I would change, of course, like never moving to Kansas, but for the most part its been good and for that goodness the glory goes to the God who has enough of a sense of humor and even more of grace to let me ordained not once, but three times (Baptist, Anglican, and Orthodox) as a tender of his flock.

 

 

 

 

A Blessing in Aging

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

To me there is a kind of blessing in growing older because, in some ways, as our physical vigor diminishes so does the ability to actively sin. Surely our thoughts can be hot beds of temptation at any age but to turn that temptation into action can be more difficult as our bodies age. Quite frankly there are some checks, as we get older, that we just know our mind may be able to write but our body can’t cash. Perhaps aging’s limits of our physical ability to do what our mind contemplates can be a kind of gift when it comes to living out our temptations, a grace that keeps us from doing, by virtue of age, that which would deface and destroy us if we had the ability.

Every Day

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Sin, in ways small and large, continually knocks us down and by the grace of God we, with the struggle and blessing of repentance,  get back up every day and sometimes minute by minute. For the Christian there will be one last day when this happens, the day when we die and sin has it’s last hurrah with us, flattening us with one final blow. Then, for a while, we stay down but when we, by the grace of God, get back up again it will be forever and there will be no more stumbling, falling, or collapse.  In a weary and tiring world the knowledge of this is an enduring hope.

Somerset

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

It was good to be in Somerset, Wisconsin, today.

There have been too many sirens, too many people, and too much pace in my life these past weeks and the toll had been exacted in every part of me. Somerset, a small town in the rolling hills of western Wisconsin within an easy drive of my house in the big city is a tonic for such times. You can feel the pace decrease, smell the wind as it blows through your open car windows, and look around as the buildings fade into farms and woods.

If there were any kind of appropriate work in such a place a part of me would love to leave it all behind spend the rest of my life on a Saturday porch while the spring sun warms me and the quiet soothes. The older I get the less I like the sheer noise of the city and today I found Somerset.

My work, my life, my calling have all taken me to the big city and part of me is just tired of traffic, cement, and learning how to tell gun fire from fireworks in the night. Still, if I must be here it’s  good to know that there is a Somerset within an easy drive so I can plan my escape.

And I will.

Perhaps some people…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

understand that their transition to Orthodoxy represents a complete break with their past. Yet I am who I am and my journey is also is marked through time and part of what brought me to this beautiful path. Each place I have been has been a step along the way, each mistake a part of the larger fabric, and each blessing continues. If I were to erase any of it I would cease to be me even as I daily struggle to be something higher, better, and more godly.

The last little while has been tiring for me, and I can see it in my face and feel it in my body as each day takes another step closer to home. In these sometimes lean, dry, times though the places where I have been reach forward from my past to help me along the way. Witness this beautiful hymn we sang in the days when I was an earnest Protestant.

So much has changed in my life yet these beautiful thoughts, a part of the journey past, have come back to give me strength in the presnt. If I had not been in that place in those days this blessing would have eluded me in the present. To be Orthodox is not so much rejecting e erything that has gone before as it is to take the best of that journey with you, learn from the rough spots, and continue on along the beautiful path cherishing each good thing as a gift from the Giver, evidence of the grace that has never let you go.

 

Music for the Dying…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

The breathing was labored, but the room was quiet. Outside were the voices of staff doing their various good works. Inside there was a person completing the last leg of their journey with Alzheimer’s. Slowly but surely the time to go was coming. When Alzheimer’s takes someone it’s most often like this, quiet, very little sense of trauma, as if the disease was trying to apologize for all the crazy rough stuff along the way it decides to let go slowly, gently even into that good night.

A little voice inside said it was time to visit, to play a bit of music and to sing for the dying person down the hall. I even cut my program for the living a bit short so I could attend at the bedside and do something, perhaps, to make this part of the path a little lighter.

I’ve shared music with all kinds of people in my life from the time I was in grade school until now in my middle age. Some have applauded, some have not, some have told me how good I was and others have told me that I just didn’t “fit” in their group. I’ve made music for audiences that rocked and audiences of quiet older people just trying to stay awake. Still, the music for the dying, this audience of a single person most often without the capacity for response, are the most important audiences of all because yours is the last music they might hear.

So what to do? A little beautiful noodling to start, nothing to complex because this is no place to try to riff some experiment. Then what? Your heart has to be the guide and mine said “Simple”. Amazing Grace, done slowly with the intent to make sure the music doesn’t drown out the words. All the verses because they’re all that good. Then Jesus Loves Me for the very same reasons and who is more weak and in need of Jesus’ strength than a person who is dying. Finally a little more beautiful noodling and one more verse of Jesus Loves Me.

Then silence, the continued labored breathing, and the sound of the nurses in the hall doing their charitable work. No applause, not even someone opening their eyes. Yet that’s okay. A hundred years from now no one will remember even if I had somehow managed to score a Top 100 hit. I pray, though, that in some way the person on the bed across from my chair remembers, and perhaps God, too, on that soon coming day. It’s time to rest, this person made in the image of God from their labors and me, for a short while, to take a break before the needs of others need attention.

Inside, I wish I could cry. Outside, I put on my best smile and head out of the room and down to the hall to the others waiting for me.

To Be Honest…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I’m disappointed with America right now, what we’ve become, the lengths it seems we’ve fallen from the good and how what is happening with us affects the larger world. Our freedom is becoming more and more about license and entitlement, our wealth is less about charity and more about hoarding, and our technology is slowly changing from servant to master. Our chief exports seem to be war and moral decay. Our chief imports are whatever toys we can get the poor and oppressed of the world to make for us at a price point to occupy us while our hearts empty and the world around us burns.

Trump and Clinton, we like to point out their mistakes, their scandals, their moral challenges, but they are us and we are them. They are a mirror for all of us and yet we don’t seem to understand that the person we see as we look is actually ourselves. We’ve got some rough years ahead and we may never remember to pull the chute as we free fall because we’re so busy looking at our phones on the way down.

The sadder part is that while this has been happening the church has often been the chaplain for the whole process of decay. Many churches are deeply compromised and, in fact, have become places where there is a veneer of Christian ritual covering a substance that is deeply and profoundly disconnected from the actual content of the Faith itself. Where there is a substance of Faith there is often a mass complacency to the real nature of the times, a denial of what is really happening around us and a bunker mentality that increasingly isolates us from the people who need us most, the lost, the confused, the massive numbers of people who are victims of these times.

Someone, and I forgot who it was said “Americans will do the right thing, after they’ve done everything else.” I think there is some truth to this. Perhaps, in time, the pain we’ve brought on ourselves from our continuing experiments in selfishness and decadence will finally get to be so high that some of us will start to think the unthinkable, the possibility that we were wrong when we thought that getting rid of the standards tested in time and the crucible of real world experience, the traditions if you will, was a bad idea. Already the cracks in our new world order are beginning to show and eventually even massive doses of TV and weed will not be able to medicate the pain.

Until that time we in the church need to strive as best as we broken people can to live the gift we’ve been given and share it at every opportunity. The times call for courageous, loving, and transparent people to stand for something that is very unpopular right now, the idea that there are things in the human experience that transcend the individual, things larger and more true than any emotion, purchase, urge, or perceived need. Your culture will find ways, at the present, to punish you for this because you will be, wherever you are, the child that reminds the emperors of this world that they really don’t have any clothes. Your mere presence will be an irritant to those who plan on making fortunes for themselves while the culture goes bankrupt, forgetting of course that the bankrupt culture will eventually make paupers of them as well. The way you live your life will be an affront to people who believe that power over others is the way to their utopia by eliminating the dissent that reminds them of their own emptiness.

So, there is hope but it will be hope realized in long term, peaceful, and activist struggle. The struggle of those who are looking for sanity to achieve it for themselves and then the struggle to change the world around them by sharing that sanity one person at a time until it prevails. Those who choose to take on the struggle will need to understand that for years they may have to be on the outside looking in as they make the deliberate choice to live as exiles in their own land until the day its soul destroying tendencies can be healed. For the churches that remain faithful there will have to be an almost entire change of vision, a reorientation towards the understanding that this America is already a pagan land, as it were, and that, far from being acceptable and normal in these times, we are a community often at radical dissonance with the world around us, a revolutionary body who have been called to be salt and light in ways that will make us uncomfortable as we are torn from our isolation and complacency. In the end only the churches that have refused to baptize the brokenness of this culture will have any meaning, substance, or even existence and we have to daily make a choice what kind of church we will be.

I’m disappointed in America right now. While in the larger and eternal scheme of things nations don’t matter because they’re temporary entities subject to change they can, in any one moment of time, be part of the larger human good. Right now this America I live in is often not. The only remedy I can see is to be fully a citizen of my actual and permanent country, the observant Christian will understand what I am saying, and that by doing so transform my temporary one.

Long live the revolution!

 

The Class of ’79

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I had the chance to meet a member of my high school class a short while ago. We had both found our way to the hot tub in our health club and, while it took a second, we recognized each other and began to talk.

We talked about knees, mine, hers, the operations we had or anticipated. When only a few years have passed since high school people talk about jobs, success, cars, and such. As the years pass we talk about children, grandchildren, and knees that don’t quite work the same way as they did when we were younger. I suppose that in the years to come those of us who remain will talk about those who have passed on and one day there will only be one of us left to remember anything at all. Such is the nature of things.

In some ways my high school days seem like they really were decades ago, and sometimes it seems like an instant. I was new to town and so I didn’t have the advantage of history with people that’s so important when you try to fit in in a small town, and although the town I went to high school in was a metropolitan suburb, it was also a small town. My father’s job, a good job for him and us, uprooted me from the place where I had grown and I don’t think I ever was successfully transplanted to the new garden.

So high school was often odd and lonely for me and I certainly don’t look back at it as some kind of “Glory days.” It’s hard to be forced by law and geography to be at a place where you don’t feel you belong and combining that with all the craziness that is adolescence was sometimes overwhelming. There are days when even now I wish I could have somehow stayed in my hometown with the people who knew me from when I was a kid, the people I had to leave suddenly in the middle of 8th grade. That place wasn’t perfect either, no place is, but sometimes when I walked the high school halls alone I wished I was somewhere, anywhere, else and the place I left behind seemed as good a place as any.

Thirty plus years out from high school, of course, everything is different. Time and maturity do their work and wisdom helps you gain perspective. High school was hard for me but it also helped me grow strong, become a caring person, and provided the storm that made the calm that followed even more sweet. I left the place like a rocket launching into the air and I’ve kept climbing. A substantial part of who I am now is rooted in that time, the largest part, I suppose, just the sheer determination to prove to the world that the person they saw in those days was never going to be my destiny and that there was, and is, so much more. Knowing what it was like to hurt, and hurt badly, my whole life from those days has been about healing, my own, and, even more than that, doing whatever I could to see healing happen wherever I happened to be. It helped make me a Priest, and a caregiver, and a person fiercely passionate about the amazing power of Jesus to transform lives, even reality itself. Though I was often a stranger at my own high school I’d like to think that if they saw me now they would know that things have worked out well, thank God.

Still, I don’t keep track of many of the people from my high school class. I know some of them have died and from time to time I meet one here and there. It’s in my nature to have only a few close friends. It’s not that I don’t like people, my work is such that I’m surrounded by them every day and I probably know, or have known, hundreds of people all around the world. My inner circle, by my own preference, is just small. Still, I do pray for my high school class often, sometimes at church and more often when God wakes me up in the middle of the night to pray. I wish them well, I really do, and I wish them all the blessings and good things this life has to offer. I hope they are at peace and sometimes when I ponder things I think about what they may be doing or where they are and I hope the life they have is wonderful in the best sense of that word.

So it was good, this chance meeting in the health club hot tub with an old classmate. I remember her as a good person, still is, and we talked about knees, hers, mine, and ours, the kind of talk you get from people in their middle age. The thoughts of that chance encounter are the seed of what I’ve written and I pray, too, that her life has been, and will be blessed.

God is good, all the time, and because of His goodness to me I wish every one in the Mahtomedi High School Class of 1979 all of His blessings as well, peace in this world and heaven in the world to come. This coming Sunday I’ll do what I’ve often done before and light a candle at church with your names on it.