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Where’s Waldo? Part One Remember Waldo? The little red and white fellow with the stocking cap? The Where's Waldo? books kept back seat denizens occupied on family trips which started out committed to the improvement of forming minds, and ended up dedicated to the restraint of homicide. Back-seat-icide. For one brief shining cultural moment, all it took to have a trip filled with happy harmony was to provide books filled with Waldo. Well, actually, not filled with him, but jampacked with his striped look-alikes. There was only one Waldo, which was the point. Squabbling kids magically became partners in the hunt, which could take blessed hours. My favorite Waldo scenario was a cutaway of a medieval city. From a distance it looked like a disorganized swarm of Waldo wannabes. But, up close, you saw a sideways slice of life in a hundred different locations: kitchen, guard room, throne room, laundry. To find the right pattern, you had to shrink your imagination small enough to fit. At General Assembly, after the paced procession of the opening session, the speed picks up. This year, in quick succession came the election of the moderator, the grand opening worship, the vote to uphold the moratorium on legislative consideration of sexuality as it pertains to ordination standards, and the wham bang! adjournment to committees. It’s all one blur to me. I bet it is to everyone else as well. In each of these scenes, I’m looking for something. I’m still trying to narrow myself enough to fit through the eye of the interpretive needle and weave it all together. Today, the best I can do is to share my spy glass with you. Maybe together we can find what we’re looking for. When Syngman Rhee is elected moderator, this is what stands out: If you tossed all the candidates in one hat, and mixed all their answers up in another hat, you’d have a hard time sorting the hats out again. Partly, this is good. None of the candidates is willing to let the immature demons of despair bind this denomination over to the death of irreconcilable impasse. Partly this is not good: it means the question and answer session bores rather than clarifies. It’s clear the election is Syngman’s before he ever opens his mouth. This is his year, this 50th year marker of his flight to the safety of South Korea from North Korea. If he needs to win it, he does so with one statement: we have conflicts because we love our church, not because we hate each other. He wins on the first ballot. The service of installation of the moderator brings to the stage a swirl of figures to split the attention and break the heart. There’s Freda, laying down her mantle, proud, poignant, and Presbyterian. There’s Syngman’s family: lots of family. The most present one isn’t even there in body. His daughter, the attorney general of Palau, has sent a moving message, in case her dad wins. The letter is so beautifully phrased you’re glad he won, just so you got to hear it. But there are other figures crowded on the stage too. In the spirit, if not in flesh, John Herndon’s family is elbow to elbow with Jill Martinez’ and Younghil Cho’s loved ones. Each of them is in Sunday best, prepared with Sunday speeches, just in case. Out of all these characters which pull the heartstrings, pick out the figure of Syngman Rhee. As the weight of each solemn charge is laid on his shoulders, he draws himself up like a soldier and bows before it. In the best moment of his 5 minute speech Syngman has said that we are not to be upon the judges' bench, but in the witness stand, to be witnesses to the reconciling presence of God in the world. If we will submit ourselves to Jesus Christ, he says, we will find a way to survive what splits us. As I watch him bend in a minuet of submission to his vows, I find the pattern for just a moment: the stole, the cross, the bow in assent. There’s Waldo, up on stage. Before you can capture it, it’s gone. But the after-impression of the bowing– the bending in respect to the other before beginning to speak, remains. Due to that blur thing, the next scene is the Sunday Morning Communion Service. Others have written eloquently of the gospel grooving of the swaying choir, the sassy scarves of the liturgical dancers, the measured march of Freda’s sermon. It’s all simply perfect. But there’s one moment I will hold in my heart forever. 2 third grade girls, Emily Takeshita and Lydia Yamaguchi, become the living embodiment of the "What does the Lord require of you?" passage from Micah. They have been superbly rehearsed. Especially, they get the inflection right. With what shall I come before the Lord? they ask, in unison and counterpoint. They read each devastating question with the rising inflection at the end of the sentence that only a third grader trained in the art of reading aloud can manage. What does the Lord require of you??? The query skewers us, as individual and corporate people of God. The rising emphasis still rings in the ears. But what my eyes picked out of the scene was this. Serving as liturgist was the Reverend Gerald Arata, a pastor at the Grace Church of Paramount. When the young ladies step up to the mike, he hovers behind them, casting the ends of his stole over their shoulders. The stole shelters them like the wings of a mother eagle. The stole authorizes their voices like a voice from a cloud. The stole bows them down under its weight. Under the collected gaze of ten thousand people, the stole turns into a towel. To do justice. To love kindness. To walk loyally with your God. The pattern is striped like a rainbow. On Sunday afternoon a Kaleidoscope event is held. It promises a dance troupe, a drama team, interactive bible study, and a moving re-affirmation of baptismal vows. But I am like the kid in the Far Side cartoon, "Mrs. Smith! Mrs. Smith! May I be excused? My brain is full." Kent and I wander over to the Queen Mary, which was such a sensation in my girlhood when she limped into the Port of Los Angeles and they revamped her into a heady tourist destination. We want to check out Seaport Village, which upon my last acquaintance was a classy little collection of art galleries and boutiques. It’s fallen upon seedy times. The terrific little restaurant is now the security office. It makes me ask dark questions about redevelopment dollars. All that money for a trend whose time and place is past. No answers. Just rising questions. Whatever, Waldo isn’t there. But when it’s time to head back for the reconvening of the business meeting, which is going to cast that important vote on whether the moratorium will hold or not, the shuttle bus pulls up late with a driver who had urgent business inside. When ya gotta go...he locked the bus and went. Now all the waiting commissioners are really pushing late. Then up came a dad with 4 kids, one in a wheelchair. What does the Lord require of you? Commissioners stepped back and waited while the driver went through the lengthy process of strapping down the chair. Presbyterians in a hurry gave up their seats to fit others on the bus. When the dad needed to get off earlier than his exhausted kids to pick up the van, perfect strangers with places to get to made sure the kids got off safe and waited till the dad got there to pick them up. They came to the meeting late, stoles shining, for those with eyes to see. That afternoon the Assembly votes to maintain a moratorium on overtures dealing with sexuality as it pertains to ordination standards. Some on both sides of the issue wanted to force it this year. Others think the Assembly – and the presbyteries – need more space for non-legislative consideration before tackling it again. There’s civility in the room, but in the hallways and caucus rooms the yearly fight is well-launched. I’ve got as deep feelings about it as anybody else here, but when you are on the edges of the assembly hall, it’s difficult to make out the individual words. The tone is clear, but the consonants all blend together. I wonder if, to God, all our simultaneous voices demanding holy attention to conflicting agendas make sense, or if it sounds like the din of a back seat full of kids with only one seek-and-find book to share. When God looks upon the General Assembly, what patterns does God see, and can God pick out Waldo? This is Erin Cox-Holmes, for KiskiOnline,
www.kiskipby.org,
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| Last Updated: June 26, 2004 | |||
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