The fear of the Lord--the wrong way

When I was younger and a lot more vain than I am now, I used to believe that I was the kind of person in whom famous people could find unqualified friendship. I believed I had no desire to be famous, after all, and believed myself incapable of vanity, so these people could confide in me without the fear that I was using them as a ladder to fame for myself.

I've long since disabused myself of the notion that I'm incapable of vanity. (If you ever find yourself believing that you possess some virtue that makes you particularly ideal as a choice for some role in life, that would be your vanity speaking.) I have more "fame" than I could ever want as a pastor, by the way, as proven by the fact that I've had people stalk me online, trying to find fault with "the man of God." I've also become jaded toward the notion that most celebrities are people with whom I would want to find friendship, were I ever to meet them. There are, however, a few with whom I believe I would enjoy a conversation over the beverage of choice.

One such man is Alan Alda. I've been fascinated by Alda for as long as I can remember. M*A*S*H began its run before I was born, but I remember watching the finale on our old black and white television. Alda's character, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, was intriguing, even as young as I was. I certainly didn't understand everything that went on, but even I, callow youth, could tell that Hawkeye was a complex character, and the man who played him made the character believable, no matter how far-fetched the situation seemed. Age has only allowed me to see with more clarity just how rich a character he portrayed, just how brilliant his portrayal.

I recently purchased the two books he has written, his memoirs. I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised, to read that he was no longer a Christian. He had been a practicing Roman Catholic, but He departed from the faith in his twenties. He describes it this way:

I was still going to mass every Sunday, because I believed that if I didn't, I would take a one-way trip to hell. I was twenty-two, and the nuns' words from my adolescence still burned in my ears. I envied people like Arlene and her father, Simon, who seemed not to need to believe what someone else told them they had to believe. Simon was a quiet man with a twinkle in his eye and a stomach that showed a strong belief in food. Hew had a simple rule that covered politicians, clergymen, and insurance salesmen. "They're all a bunch of fakers," he would say with a sweep of his hand that gave them the official brush-off.

I couldn't take the priests so lightly. They had a list of things you could burn for, and once you had heard the word, not believing it was at the top of the list. I didn't want to burn, and I didn't want to take the chance in believing there was no such thing as eternal fire. I kept thinking of what William James said in a gallant attempt to be pragmatic about the unprovable: "Faith is a bet you can't lose." I supposed he meant that if you get to heaven after a life of belief and you find out it isn't actually there, well, nothing lost. I turned that over and over in my mind, until I thought: But what if you spend real time doing things you wouldn't do if there really was no afterlife? What about endless novenas and countless trips to the altar? What about meatless Fridays, and what about people who lock themselves up for life in a monastery? Is that nothing lost?

Still, I was locked in by belief. Every exit was blocked by a sentry in black with a wimple and three nostrils, holding a yardstick.

Then one day, the heavens opened for me.

It was a sunny Sunday morning in spring. I kissed Arlene good-bye and took the train up to Fordham, where there was a little chapel I still went to for mass. There were fifty or sixty people in the pews. We knelt, we stood, we sat, we knelt. In the hundreds of masses I had been to, I never could remember when you were supposed to stand and when you were supposed to kneel, I watched and did what the others did. And when I couldn't figure out which it was they were doing, I put my behind on the seat and my knees on the kneeler and did the all-purpose half kneel.

Then the priest reached the moment when, after consecrating the host and holding it in both hands, he lifts it above his head. I looked at it. I had always looked at it. But this time I noticed that the other people in the chapel were bowing their heads. Maybe I should be bowing my head, I thought. But, no. If you're not supposed to look at it, why is the priest holding it up? We're going to be swallowing it in a minute; why can't we look at it? This led to a train of thought I had never taken before: I wonder how many of these people bowing their heads actually believe that this is the body of Jesus? Do they realize you can't regard it as just a symbol? And suddenly, in that moment, I remembered what the Jesuits had taught me. "No matter what," they said, "you have to follow your conscience." And I thought: I don't know what these other people believe, but if I'm honest with myself, I do not believe the priest is holding anything but the same piece of unleavened bread that it was a few minutes ago. I was like the boy of fourteen again, refusing to rise from the pew, holding stubbornly to his right to think for himself.

And then I remembered a second thing the Jesuits had taught me: If you don't believe in transubstantiation, you're automatically excommunicated.

I'm out, I thought. I didn't quit; they don't want me. They let me go. I'm fired.

A ray of sunlight fell across the chapel, just the way it did in The Song of Bernadette.

It always haunts me when I hear that it is fear that has motivated a soul to practice Christianity. It's not that we have nothing to fear apart from Christ and His Church--indeed, the opposite is true. But if a man does not move from fear to joy, he will find himself questioning God, His grace, His gifts. He will bend beneath the burden of the Law. He will doubt. And then he will break. He will depart--with cynicism, or with that same fear.

It saddens me that this is how Alda experienced the faith. I hope someone has the opportunity someday to speak of the love of God, the joy of faith, the peace of God's gifts. I pray that for him...and for all who have departed in fear or cynicism. I am not vain enough to believe I will be that man. But if God gives me the opportunity, I'd love to try.

If nothing else, I think we could be friends.

[The excerpt above comes from pages 81-82 of Alan Alda's book never have your dog stuffed, (c) 2005, 2006 by Mayflower Productions, Inc.]

Give me liturgy, or give me death!

My apologies to Patrick Henry for borrowing his thunder, but I couldn't resist. After doing a google.com search, I find that I'm not the first to make this statement (though in all fairness, I had never heard it before). But regardless of the originality of the statement, there is as much need for these words today as there was for Patrick Henry to speak the original words over two centuries ago.

Perhaps some might view this as hyperbole. Oh, that Kornacki character doesn't take things seriously. On the contrary, there are few things in this world that I consider with more gravity than the divine liturgy of the Mass. I have always loved the liturgy. Outside of baseball achievements, one of the things I remember most about my youth is the day I realized in the midst of the worship service that I knew by heart all the words of the liturgy, both for the congregation and the pastor. I was eight at the time, and the congregation had just made the move over to the "new" hymnal, Lutheran Worship. This was a major accomplishment for me. Instead of reading the words, I could recite them--pray them--and consider their meaning. Of course, at eight years of age, those considerations were hardly profound. Nevertheless, it was the start of a time of spiritual growth for me.

Having the liturgy in my spiritual toolbox was especially important a few years later, when I got into my car accident. I don't remember much about that evening. But in what to this point in my life was my darkest hour, when I was laying terrified on a gurney in an ambulance, on a day of which I remember precious little, I remember praying parts of the liturgy, including the Lord's Prayer. I remember singing "Abide With Me". These gifts, these treasures which so many in the Church disregard and dispose of with nary a thought, took me to the feet of my Savior in the midst of tribulation.

A year later, on vicarage, my supervisor took me to visit one of our shut-ins. This beautiful woman welcomed us with open arms, even though she didn't know who I was and couldn't remember who her pastor was. She remembered very little. But when Pastor began the liturgy in preparation for Communion, this child of God who remembered so little otherwise began to pray the liturgy with us, word-for-word.

It is in the liturgy in which we are given the Sacraments, where we receive the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation. Some might complain that the liturgy is boring because of all the repetition. But it is that very repetition that makes the liturgy so important for the Christian in his daily walk with Christ. When we walk out of the sanctuary, we walk out into the world, where Satan, "this world's prince", is looking for someone he can lead away from the rest of Christ's flock, someone to devour. In returning to the liturgy, we return to the waters of Holy Baptism, where

I've experienced the generic Protestant service. I will say this: there's a lot of excitement. Some have the dancing, some the arm waving, others the exciting new music, still others the incomprehensible rambling from the people "speaking in tongues"--which, by the way, are never interpreted for the congregation--and these things are very emotional. But there's not much substance there, and I'm hard pressed to figure out how I could rely on any of these things to help me to pray while I was laying dazed in an ambulance. After all, so much of what happens without liturgy is that we tell God what we do for Him, how much we love Him, how we lift His name high, how holy our desires for him are. And those moralistic sermons are informative, but when your life is in shambles and you feel like you can't make it right, how can it help to hear that you have to do even more?

I find great joy in the words of Scripture upon which the liturgy is based. I become very emotional during a number of our "dull" hymns and at points of our "boring" liturgy. We sing about "Easter triumph" which destroys sin and brings us "Easter joy". We sing that Jesus ". . . lives and grants me daily breath. He lives and I shall conquer death." What comfort, what joy those words are! We sing about Christ who is "the life of all the living". We sing about vocation, which is lives as Christians which are lived in response to what Jesus has done for us. We hear sermons which tell us that we are forgiven children of God, relieved of the burden of "doing more" because Christ has done all things necessary for our salvation. These are beautiful things, and I literally weep tears of joy for the wonderful blessings God delivers to us in the Divine Service and the words we have been given to speak and sing in response to what we receive.

After all, the Divine Service is, first and foremost, about what God does for us. It's not meant to focus on us and how we feel or what we do. Instead, the Divine Service points us to Christ and what He gives to us there: forgiveness, life, and salvation. The gifts we receive in the Divine Service are vital to our lives as Christians, and we take those things with a deadly seriousness, even as we experience great joy in what we receive.

For all you turkeys out there

I'm a Facebook person. Yes, I'm one of those. I while my days away with idle chatter and silliness. Actually, I don't play any games, and I mainly use it to keep in touch with old friends. Anyway, as you couldn't help but notice, today is the Day of National Thanksgiving. I wasn't feeling very schmaltzy today, so I posted the following status message:

Alan Kornacki is thankful for his job that stresses him out so much that he eats more than he should until he has reached the point that he looks like a beached whale. He's thankful that his son is autistic. He's thankful for four years outside parish ministry. He's thankful for knees that ache, fingers that don't do what he wants them to do, and a head that needs SPF 60 to get through a summer day. In *everything* give thanks.

This might sound a bit sarcastic. But that's not how it was intended. Each of these things, and hundreds of more that can (and do) often seem like frustrations and messes are things which God uses to demonstrate His goodness in my life.

When I moved with my family to Louisiana four years ago, I had no job and no prospects for a job. This part of Louisiana is mainly oil and gas with some shipbuilding thrown into the mix. The available jobs at the time called mainly for laborers with mechanical skills, and I have none. I applied for every job for which I was remotely qualified . . . and even some for which I wasn't. When the job at the community center opened up a year after I left Ohio, it was a true blessing. Here was a job for which my life experience had made me uniquely qualified. It's not parish ministry, which is where my heart is and where I hope to return sooner rather than later. But it's a good job, a worthwhile job, a stimulating job, and one which I can actually do. I may find it frustrating at times, and I let myself wallow in the frustrations too much at times, but it's a job. I can do it, and by doing it I support my family.

Michael is autistic. Communicating with my son is difficult, but he's a smart and healthy little boy who just has trouble expressing himself in verbal way. I was the same way, and I wasn't autistic. But I have a son, one who I love as much as my other children, one who reminds me daily that it doesn't take a whole mess of words to express love to someone.

You all know that I greatly desire a return to parish ministry. Yet the past four years have been a blessing. I got to spend nearly a year being a full-time father to my newborn twins. I've been able to preach in over a dozen churches in the Southern District. I've been able to grow in areas that will aid me when I do return to the parish. I'll be a very happy man when I return to parish ministry, but until then, I'll continue to learn and grow as a man and as a pastor.

As for my body falling apart . . . It's not easy to look at myself in the mirror and be pleased with what I see. That's my fault. I've been a poor steward of this gift God has given me. Yet I have a body with four limbs that work mostly the way they should, a head that works right most of the time, and enough strength to deal with most of the things that I face in a day. Now that Thanksgiving is over, I'm going to be a better steward of this gift and try to appreciate it a bit more. (Besides, I'd rather be bald than grey.)

It's easy to be thankful for the things we want, for the things that go well. It's not so easy to be thankful when things don't go the way we want them. In the Lord's Prayer we pray, "Thy will be done." Sinner that I am, I'd certainly prefer that my will be done, yet it somehow always works out so much better when I don't try to get in the way of God doing His work in my life. Each of these things allow me to be weak so that I can see the power of God in my life.

I Thessalonians 5:18 tells us, "In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." God grant us all the ability and will to do so. And God help me to remember this lesson daily, since it's all too easy to forget.

By the way, in addition to everything else, I'm thankful for all the people who take the time to read this blog. A blessed and happy Thanksgiving Day to all of you.

God in the midst of calamity

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

--Romans 8:28

Today is an anniversary of sorts. Twelve years ago today, I was in a major two-vehicle accident. I was twenty-two years old. Around 6 PM, I was in my (beautiful) 1987 Buick LeSabre, on my way back home from my field work church after worship and an afternoon of every-member visitation. I turned onto Townline Road in Wheatfield (I believe). That's all I remember. I don't remember driving down Townline. I don't remember coming up to another intersection. I don't remember being broadsided by a pick-up truck. I have brief flashes of being in the ambulance and humming hymns and praying. (It's good to know what you fall back on in times of greatest need.) I remember seeing my parents as I was wheeled into the ER, and I definitely remember puking on the shoes of the doctor who was about to run some sort of scan.

I was told that I ran a stop sign. I don't remember that happening, and I can't imagine that I would run a stop sign on a road I traveled constantly, but that's what the police report and the newspaper article said. Every so often I will get a flash of what might have happened, but I don't know if those are memories or if they are constructs of a mind that spends too much time trying to figure out every damn mistake I've ever made and how I might have avoided it if I'd been smarter, cleverer, less clumsy, whatever. The images I see in my mind are of my car and the other vehicle, but since I didn't have those images in my mind until after I saw the pictures my father took of the vehicles after the accident, there's no guarantee that what I see is a true image.

No one in the truck had life-threatening injuries, nor did I. I had cuts from the windshield glass breaking. I had major bruising on my torso from the seat belt. I had a bump on the right side of my head, possibly from hitting the steering wheel, which was so big that we couldn't see my right ear. My mother couldn't look at me without crying (though many women had that kind of reaction to me at that point, I think), so we never did get any pictures of my face. But I was fine after about a week.

As I've said before, my life changed after that accident. My grades in seminary to that point had been, at best, average, and that year had been so miserable that I'd considered dropping out altogether. The accident sharpened my focus and priorities. That's not to say I became a model student, but I cared more after that about academics and less about what happened at the ping pong table. I still slide back from time to time, but I'm not as . . . I can't say "wild" because I've never been wild--I'm too inhibited for that--but maybe I'm less distracted than I was. I didn't lose my naivety--that came later in Ohio--but I think I finally became an adult.

I was also pointedly reminded of the goodness of God that day. Though this was a high-speed collision, nobody was gravely injured. My car was totaled, but I didn't have a passenger in my car as I had for much of the day. A passenger would almost certainly have been killed on impact. So much of what happened could have been so much worse, and it is only by the grace of God that it wasn't worse. I usually don't make a big deal about guardian angels, since people like Oprah tend to hijack the concept and make everyone who does a good deed an angel. But I can't deny that God set mine to watch over me, and I cannot deny the diligence of that heavenly being on that day. God is good.

Anyway, here are the pictures. Above is the picture of the outside of my car. She was nearly spotless before the accident. Beautiful car, a joy to drive. I still miss her.

This is the view from the window on the passenger side of my car, looking at the driver side. It doesn't look too bad, really, all things considered. It probably wasn't very hard to remove me from the car after the accident, as my legs came through with only minor cuts and abrasions, and the door doesn't even look like it was hard to open.

This is the view from the window on the driver side of my car, looking at the passenger side. Note how much of the passenger seat is showing. Any passenger would almost certainly have had crushed legs; likely, any passenger would have been killed on impact. I thank God constantly that the accident didn't happen an hour earlier when I had a passenger with me.

And this is the other vehicle.