. . . late in Advent

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It’s always tempting to offer some borrowed eloquence; but that’s cheating, and now that I’ve lived officially three quarters of a century I’d like at least to cheat a little less than in former years. No intimation of winter yet—the season hangs indifferent, damp as the leaves in my back yard that I’ve not yet raked, neither cold enough for winter nor fruitful enough for fall. The sap wrung out of the time, I journey a sodden way towards solstice, towards the longest night.

Some years the sky has opened to thousand Seraphim striding the air, their great pennons shedding dark love. Today at dusk a fat squirrel pawed through the leaves, found an acorn and scampered up the fence to the garage roof and thence to the hanging branches of the huge old oak in my neighbor’s yard three houses down. Better bury some acorns in the ground, I thought, lay down some supplies against the time when the light goes; though yesterday at the clinic smart young doctors shined lights in my eyes and pronounced them healthy.

Lord, the thing I know best is that I don’t know much of anything. I can’t imagine not being, can’t think not thinking. But the death wind blows around me, not urgently, not swiftly, but firmly nonetheless. What angels will stride in its wake this year? I read of murdered children in the news and wonder how anyone . . . so many innocent, but would fewer have been less . . . I can’t finish the sentence. I resolve to rake my leaves before year’s end (mine by possession, not by ownership), to clean my gutters, and to sit on my back porch at dusk to watch the time go afterwards.

These will be my last things for the time being—though of course I have good memories, hierophanies some of them and those I don’t like to use too much, don’t want to wear them thin. But if you come by again, I’ll be as ready as I can be, having recalled that once you astonished me in the old red brick church, so that I ran out into the night with tears streaming down my face. After that you dropped in occasionally, like that time in the Intimate Bookshop when I picked up “A Song for Simeon.” But mostly you’ve stayed hidden in the world, the “still unspeaking and unspoken word” I wait upon.

—Come, Emmanuel.

Arguments for prayer

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It’s an appropriate exercise for Advent that a growing number of members of the SLU community are meeting at noon each day for common prayer. As we await tomorrow’s Trustee meeting, both the Post Dispatch and the Beacon have printed major analytical pieces about the crisis at SLU. News of serious concern among the trustees is leaking out, some of it not bad. Apparently at least some trustees are trying to address the issues and concerns that have been brought to light by the faculty and student revolt. I don’t know whether to hope or not; so I’ll hope, and pray that I’m not wrong.

On another front, today’s New York Times carries a story about the hate campaign orchestrated by the Institute on Religion and Democracy against All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena. The IRD is not a church or a religious organization. It is a right-wing political organization (Rev. Chuck Currie calls it a think tank). The attack began with an IRD sponsored piece by Ryan Mauro published at frontpagemag.com, but IRD has deep pockets and lots of connections that enable it to orchestrate potent email mob attacks.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council will be holding its annual conference at All Saints Church tomorrow. The event offers IRD three of its favorite targets for smear campaigns, LGBT friendly churches, ecumenism, and Islam. The Times quotes the Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr., Rector of All Saints, about the virulence of the attack:

I’ve been called names all my life from the ultraconservative reactionary position, but this is a level of demeaning that I’ve not seen before. Demeaning not just of me, but of the Muslim faith, of this organization, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

While it might be tempting to write this off as Michelle Bachman (or Joseph McCarthy) all over again, All Saints and MPAC have been forced, as reported by the Times, to seek aid from local police and private security guards to protect those who will be attending the meeting.

Happily, All Saints is also receiving positive email. The Rev. Susan Russell, a Senior Associate at All Saints notes on her blog that “the positive and negative are trending just about equally” and characterizes the MPAC partnership as a “witness to interfaith peacemaking,” noting, as the Times does, that the Los Angeles Times called the effort a mitzvah in a recent editorial. Pastor Russell also urges her readers to “pray for the people who send us this kind of polemic—that they be healed of the fear that blinds them to the neighbor God loves just as much as God loves them.” I also wrote about this very thing recently. Here’s a link to that piece.

And now, as I write, my beloved is watching the appalling news reports about the school shootings in Connecticut. I’m going to close this piece as Pastor Russell closes one of hers.

—Kyrie eleison

Two cheers for SLU faculty

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A few weeks ago I posted about events at Saint Louis University. Since then we have been told that the executive committees of the Faculty Senate and the Trustees are talking to one another; but the discussions (if indeed there are such) are being kept secret on the advice of Fleishman-Hillard, a high-priced PR firm the Trustees have retained to help them manage the crisis on campus. Reasonably good summaries of recent events at SLU may be found here and here.

The SLU faculty have now produced a report detailing grievances against the University President and Vice President for Academic Affairs. It reveals the dark side of Saint Louis University with which inslders have always been familiar but which has until recently been hidden from the public at large. It’s good to see this excellent report, produced by many hands, some of whom have chosen to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal. That discretion is well-advised, as we have it on good authority that enemies lists are presently being drawn up and punishments prepared. But the SLU faculty seem to have united after years of abuse during which the careers of those who have opposed the tyranny have been wrecked, their salaries frozen or lowered, their requests for earned leaves denied, their travel funds withheld—and that’s only the surface. By far the worst part of being punished at Saint Louis University is that one becomes a pariah, marginalized in one’s own department, shunned by colleagues and former friends. This excellent faculty report is most welcome—it’s just a good many years too late, perhaps permanently too late with respect to collegial relationships that have been destroyed.

Post Dispatch columnist, Bill McClellan, has referred to Fleishman-Hillard as “mess Busters” in a recent column, not failing to note that the firm is also consulting for the embattled Missouri HIstory Museum in the midst of scandal over a dubious land purchase. The cases are similar in that both involve secretive executives, captive boards, and official stonewalling in the face of public criticism. But there’s been no suggestion of graft at SLU, at least so far, though some prominent trustees regularly do business with the university. And McClellan, himself, points to another difference: “Unlike the History Museum, SLU is a private institution. [Trustee President Thomas H.] Brouster does not have to communicate with the public.”

But SLU does have to communicate with accrediting agencies. The SLU law school is presently out of compliance with a number of accreditation standards relating to President Biondi’s high-handed appointment of interim law dean, Thomas Keefe. And on another front an instructive parallel might be drawn with the University of Virginia, whose board’s high-handed firing of President Teresa Sullivan six months ago has now occasioned a warning from the Southern Association, citing the board for “compromising the university’s integrity, not having a formal policy for involving faculty in making decisions and not following its governance requirements, which forbid a small number of members from controlling the board”—ethical and governance violations that are only too familiar to members of the academic community at Saint Louis University.

The SLU Trustees meet this Saturday, December 15. SLU Students for No Confidence are sponsoring a march. We’ll see what happens.