After the show…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

they call your name. Once, twice, three times and you’re done. Somebody else takes your place.

Outside the wind is cold. The band moves out into the night. The audience heads in from the cold after a last cigarette. It’s not much. A cot and a few feet of space. No privacy really. If someone snores everyone knows. The chapel where the show had been turns into a large bedroom faster than the band can get its gear into the parking lot.

But its warm and tonight the wind is cold. They say its going to get below zero and they call your name, once, twice, three times. If you don’t respond you lose your place. There’s always another person without a place to go, another body in need of a bed. Jesus said that the poor would always be with us and this mission never closes, never has to post a “vacancy” sign, never runs short of lost men needing to be found.

In the end there were five left and three spaces. The names were placed in a bucket and two were left out in the cold. There was nothing that could be done. There are thousands of fancy hotel beds but only a few places for the men with long hair who live in the alleys during the day and sleep in missions during the night.

Right now I’m home. The show is over. My gear is all safely inside. I’ll be in bed shortly. Somewhere out there are two men and probably more, the ones whose names weren’t picked, trying to find a place to keep alive as the wind rolls in from the northwest and the temperature sinks.

Lord have mercy.

 

Lublin…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

There is an Orthodox Church in Lublin, Wisconsin, population a lot less than five hundred, and its been there for over a century. A small building, but well maintained, with a cemetery next to it (how can I get a spot?) and a parsonage with a church hall in the basement. You can see it in this blog’s header.

And its beautiful, not just for the way its been kept up over the years but also because of the kind of people who will to keep such a parish going in an out-of-the-way place. Inside and out there is a serene beauty, simple not fancy yet real to the perceptive.

People think, sometimes, that the best Orthodox churches are the ones with magnificent buildings, six figure plus budgets, and every possible group or service to be desired. Perhaps. Yet I think there’s something wonderful about a small group of people who, given opportunities to close the doors or move on to so-called bigger and better things, believe enough in their faith and their place to stay.

Year after year they dust and clean and mow the lawn and give what they can to have a traveling Priest visit every so often. There’s really no one to pass the responsibilities off on. The choir director, unpaid, finally retired at 85, and some of the men come early on Sunday morning to open up the church and get the heat going. When God calls you home you don’t have to travel far, just across the driveway to the grassy field with the three bar crosses.

I’ve preached before hundreds, really, but Holy Assumption Church in Lublin, Wisconsin, at the edge of the forest and miles from the main road has stuck with me somehow. There is something there or perhaps something that it evoked in me that was deep and special and holy.

I may never get back there again. They may not last much longer but I hope they do. There would be a distinct hole in the world where they used to be. We need little churches with their faith, their love, their constancy over time and the will to be a parish even if worldly “success” passes them by. We need little churches out in the country to stand sentinel over their towns. We need to keep a humble simplicity in our collective lives, a simplicity more beautiful than any gold fixture. There’s a world of lessons in places like Holy Assumption for all of us and if such places pass away we’ll be the less.

There’s more to write, but now this is enough. Until then my mind is still looking east, past the altar, through the stained glass, and somewhere beyond the woods in Lublin.

7:30 p.m….

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

16 degrees outside. On my way to purchase a few items at the store before going to my workout. Walked in to the store in shorts with a hooded sweatshirt. No one even bothers to stare. Ahhhhh Minnesota!

Wisdom…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

“Each of us individually is searching for a meaningful fullness of life which is not to be found in subjective personal pleasure, inanities, and the mirages which so easily surface in our lives. The goal is not to have a short and illusory pleasurable life with it’s resultant melancholy and despair. A life is meaningful only when it is moving or striving toward Absolute Good.”

Bishop Mitrophan ( Znosko)

It Was a Quiet Afternoon…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

yesterday. The weather was unseasonably warm. The sun was shining. A dog lay sleeping on the couch and outside the birds gathered their sustenance from a feeder without care, just like Jesus said.

It was just the two of us, people who wouldn’t have known each other except for the coincidence of history and music, going through the catalog of songs gone by. Nothing of ours is that modern and even the modern stuff is written to sound old. We’re old too, old and free from the need to shake our asses on stage or try to thrill people we don’t know, or maybe even care to know. A porch is fine with the trees for an audience and the wind for applause.

One song followed another in elegant simplicity. The best music seems to be that way, not a flurry of notes but each one picked specifically for its part, for its emotion. Songs from the mountains. Songs from New Orleans. Songs that really were prayers. Songs that made one wonder about the moment they came into being, the day, the hour, the flush of emotion that gave them light.

For that time, sitting on the porch with the dogs and the sun and the birds and our thinning hair, there was a great peace. Stuff was happening. Stuff is always happening. There was a world out there but there was a boundary too, an invisible line of music across which things troublesome were afraid to cross. Heaven must be, in part like this.

In truth its the only reason I would like to have some real money, so I could have a porch in the sun, a few old dogs, and enough time to sit and play the old songs with friends. Everything else is just a chase, running around a track set up by another to try to get to a destination of someone else’s choosing.

The world is, more or less, mad as a hatter. Except on front porches where people play old songs in the warm afternoon sun.

Its a Little after 10…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

the house is quiet and the music of rehearsals has faded away. Just not a good day. Too Tired. Too worn out. Too uninspired. I hope the guy we auditioned today will say yes to the band. I hope he didn’t hear my mistakes. There are lots of hopes.

Life can be exhausting sometimes. I’m not sure, though, that I’d have it any other way because if I wasn’t tired I fear I would not be living it as much as possible.  Fatigue is the cost of pushing out beyond our boundaries but no horizon seems to be reached without it. In the end that’s where I’d like to be when my time comes, pushing on to the horizon.