Dear friends and family,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Happy Lent! Or, well, you get the idea. Alexander Schmemann, with characteristic gravitas, speaks of Lent as the season of “bright sadness.”
The painting below, which was my dad’s favorite on our treasured visit to the Musee d’Orsay, is—for me at least—the objective correlative to the phrase “bright sadness.” The painting itself is luminous, which checks the “bright” box. But then there’s also every detail. The new dawn which colors the clouds is slowly solidifying the countryside into something no longer murky and dim, but intelligible. Young John wringing his hands and considering whether it wouldn’t be better to just break into a full sprint. Thinking nervously of his new mother, Mary, who could really use a resurrection about now. Peter deranged by hope, eyes wide and brimming as incredulity roils his denying mind. Barely keeping his shawl on, he’s thrown it on so fast. Both shaken from the stupor of grief by the inconceivable announcement which quaked them awake, now treading the path to the tomb which will confirm or deny their deepest longing, their deepest fear.
Lent remains this precise journey for us—the journey (the pilgrimage!) from our sin-stupefied and vice-darkened and death-shadowed daze towards the divine promise we only dimly perceive and half-believe. So we mortify our desires and confess our utter insufficiency and mourn our inborn enmity and wring our hands and throw on our cloak and ramble or trudge or scurry towards the tomb we’ve been told is terrifyingly empty. And you’ll find it’s empty. Looking for death, you find it gone, rolled up and rolled away. Now there is only life—Jesus’ imperishable life—loose in the world and animating even you.
May God grant you a season of bright sadness, and may you reach the incandescent joy of Easter.
Peace of Christ,
Zack
V
Now we are five.
As with all major life changes, the transition has been abrupt, irrevocable, and utterly mundane. When dramatic events approach—your wedding, a move, the arrival of a new child—they fill you with the vertiginous dread of the inconceivable and profound, something not far off from the experience of the numinous. “This will change everything,” you basically chant to yourself in some anxious and (hopefully) optimistic mantra, as you assemble the bassinet and re-arrange your pinterest boards and also, occasionally, pray.
And then, at last, what has been long-expected arrives—in a eruption of rejoicing or a cloud of pain (or, more likely, in a combination of both)—and you snap back from prediction-land into a brief, absolute experience of the present. All of your prognostications and premonitions and preparations vanish; and you’re left again in the normal state of human affairs: tending to present obligations, dreaming of future ones. And those present obligations have radically changed! And so does your life. You could not for the life of you tell anyone what your daily life was like 48 hours ago.
So it is with life after the arrival of Virgil Ezekiel.
What is life like now?
I spend a greater percentage of my waking and would-rather-not-be-waking hours hunched.
A full sixty percent of our fabrics smell like milk, or second milk. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my clothes will never be truly clean.
I know the precise location and status of all three children approximately ten percent of the time.
We have ten-score and seven pacifiers, but can literally never find a single one the moment it’s needed (Ames has claimed and hidden most of them).
Very rarely (but not never!), the gremlins which craft the conditions for child-crying (leaving slippery puzzles on the floor, hiding favorite stuffed creatures, &c.) synchronize, and we get to experience wailing not in mono, not in stereo, but in true surround sound.
But then some bright Saturday morning you look up and see this decidedly unstaged scene:
and what are you gonna do, complain?
Seminary, cont.
Time for a quick update on my seminary schooling, the putative reason we’re down here in Birmingham.
In short, it continues apace! We’re already in mid-term season for the breathless, breakless Spring semester. The lineup this stretch:
New Testament Theology
Exegesis of Acts
Medieval & Early Reformation History & Doctrine
Anglican History & Doctrine
Mentally, then, I’m spending about half my time in the weird wooly world of the apostolic church, and half my time in the weirder, woolier world of the Middle Ages (say, 450-1550). This temporal displacement has been salutary, I think. Any time spend studying history—particularly with an eye to God’s providence and the Spirit’s —lifts away some of our contemporary baggage, corrects our present-prejudiced myopia, and helps us imagine new possibilities for discipleship, obedience, and community life.
Every believer in 1st-century Corinth or 6th-century Ireland or 9th-century France also had 24 hours in a given day. The Church in Acts, and in Lindisfarne, and in Cluny, had the same Spirit, the same Savior, the same character to grow into. They all responded in radically different ways, of course, but even that is instructive. Why shouldn’t the common life of the church be as disruptively communal and generous as that in Acts? Why shouldn’t our spirituality be as strenuous and severe as Celtic monks? Why shouldn’t the Pope, the See of Peter, have universal jurisdiction over the souls of all men, and not just those in Rome?
As that last question should’ve made clear, I don’t think Christian history typically presents us with conclusions we must simply obey. The Church hath erred, to paraphrase Article XIX. (To avoid any possible confusion: we’re not going to Rome.) But having history pose such questions might awake us from our own dogmatic slumbers. Where might we be erring? How can we listen in and through our “cultural moment” to the steadfast word of God? What cultural freight is actually ballast, which we should throw over the side? What is and has always been essential, and are we putting first things first?
All that is frustratingly vague, of course, and in desperate need of some actual specification. I’m hoping to do some of that thinking and writing soon, and would welcome your comments and questions and suggestions as well (see the “Leave a comment” button below)! I was also recently blown away by some study of the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, so check the blog (which, I know, has been inexcusably dormant) in about a week’s time for those reflections.
Tectonic-planning-wise, I’ve recently made a decision that feels momentous, but is, on writing it out, very mundane. Beeson’s Master of Divinity program is designed to take 3.5-4 years. However, if you take a full load every semester, and take every summer course and January term, you can complete the program in three years flat. Which is what I’ve decided to do. I’m not trying to rush through this important season of formation so much as I’m trying to concentrate it. Lord willing, it should be the best move academically and financially for our family. Anyway, the “best laid plans of mice and men…” and all that, so I’d covet your continued prayers for my formation as a minister.
Scenes
I may be morally opposed to most platforms for the sharing of images (which, I would argue, are much more likely a violation of the Second Commandment than, say, this), but that doesn’t mean I’ve opposed to making or sharing photos as such.
Status Board
Reading: I finally read Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy this past month, a bona fide classic I had heretofore neglected. It’s a genuinely great summary of the important bits of Aristotle (esp. Nicomachean Ethics) and Plato (esp. Timaeus and Gorgias), with welcome resonances of Augustine. I only hope I can write something half as profound when I'm waiting for my own execution.
Listening: My necessary Lenten albums are Sufjan Steven’s Carrie and Lowell and the Benedictines of Mary’s Lent at Ephesus. Listen at your peril.
Watching: Lent. No comment. (But Erin and I enjoyed, for the most part, a pre-Lenten viewing of Abbas Kiarostami’s playful, discursive, meditation on art & artifice & acting, Close-Up.)
Food & Drink: Lent. No comment. (But the meal train post-Virgil continued into late February. It was glorious.)
Prayer Requests
The best way to support us is to join with the Son in remembering us before the Father. If you’d like to pray with and for us, here are some things you can remember:
pray for Virgil before his baptism, scheduled for this Easter Vigil
that Eleanor & Ames would continue to love & receive well their new sibling (and help around the house!)
that we might guard Erin’s studio time, and that she would continue to find rejuvenation in it
that we would again find opportunity to open our home in hospitality to friends, neighbors, and family
that Zack would be faithful to his diaconal ministry at Christ the King
that Lent would be a season of genuine repentance and renewed devotion to our Lord
that the new job prospect for Zack would begin soon
We’d also like to pray with and for you! If you’re reading this, you’re probably already in our prayers, but we’d love to know more specifically what we can pray for. You can text us, of course, or you can email us prayer requests at clemmonsonmission@gmail.com
We’re the Clemmons family–-Zack, Erin, Eleanor, Ames & Virgil–-living & studying & working in Birmingham, Alabama for sake of God’s Kingdom.
If you’d like, you can support us financially as we navigate this new season on mission, without incomes.
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