Sunday 7/14/24
I depart Olivet Baptist Church during the chanting of the Creed (what a way to go out! I’m putting that in my notes for a good death: I’d like the Creed to be chanted over me as I lay dying) and head to the airport.
On the plane I sit next to a couple who are concluding their honeymoon. The husband is a hospital doctor and the wife is finishing-up medical school while also working on a degree in ethics. We strike-up a conversation about “medical ethics” and the interdisciplinary field called “medical humanities.” We’ve know some of the same names and I encourage her to pick-up and read the magisterial book “The Anticipatory Corpse” by Jefferey Bishop which concludes with the reflection: “perhaps only theology can salvage medicine.”
Monday 7/15/2024
Layover in Dallas. I read about the French Revolution and the way in which the revolutionaries, in order to counter the power of the Gospel, went to great lengths to create and alternate liturgical life, exchanging the musical world of the church with the bawdy and lewd music of the Carmagnole and replacing the liturgical calendar with a new kind of festal order.
I am picked-up in Birmingham by Will, a friend I made at my (other) friend Grant’s wedding last year. Friends multiply –the more of the heavenly bread we share the more we have to give away.
Will drops me off at 3rd Presbyterian Church in downtown Birmingham where the Theopolis Ministry Conference on “Sexual Sanity” is already underway. It’s a glorious event. Numerous reunions with old friends in both the Anglican world and the Theopolis world are crowned with new friendships from, literally, across the globe. Paul Buckley is on piano, Dr. John Ahern is at the organ, and Caleb Skogen is chanting the liturgy. I’d be a better man all my life if I could spend more hours in moments such as these.
Afterwards, I grab pizza with Fr. Blake Johnson (Holy Cross, Crozet), Fr. Dan Claire (Resurrection, DC), and Gerald Hiestand (Director of the Center for Pastor Theologians) before heading to “Beth Elim” (the name of the Leithart residence) for the Theopolis Alumni gathering. It is a merry band and the Marian Star of the Theopolitan world, Laura Clawson (the chef and hospitality director for the program) has laid-out a spread of food and drink. The evening concludes with the singing of our (newly chosen) alumni fight song: “Babylon is Fallen.”
Tuesday 7/16/2024
Wake-up at Beth Elim and head to the conference. The lectures are just fantastic, all aiming to recover a robust, vibrant vision of biblical sexual sanity. We all sing Matins, Sext (that’s the Latin word for noon prayer), and Vespers. I give the last lecture of the day (mine is on “Friendship”).
After things conclude at 3rd Pres., we all shuttle over to the magnificent facilities at Christ Church Branch Cove where we have our annual Trinity Feast. Ken Meyers is the Speaker for the evening. More reunions (Micah and Emma Thompson, Will Merrit, etc.), more new friends, wine, Cajun food, folk music, Psalm chanting.
Wednesday 7/17/2024
Wednesday is a day of rest between the conclusion of the Conference and the beginning of the Fellows Program.
Down the hall John Ahern is crafting lectures with titles like “Music of the Spheres” and “Musicology” and “Radical Contemporary”. Across from me at the kitchen table the unfathomably multi-tasking Alastair Roberts is drafting his lectures for the program, editing his commentary on the whole Bible, prepping for his work at the Davenant Institute, thinking about his work with the Mere Fidelity Podcast, and fistfuls of other essays and writing projects. Upstairs Paul Buckley is going over different arrangements of the Psalms. Dr. Leithart is in the study hammering furiously at the keys on his laptop (I can hear them over the music playing in my headphones). Pastor Jeff Meyers crosses the house going between fielding pastoral phone calls and prepping teachings. I’m listening to Irish folk music while drafting my notes on Biblical Hermeneutics. Caleb Skogen rehearses the orthodox chants he’s selected for use in the preludes before Vespers.
At one point Dr. Leithart comes out and declares “This is just a hotbed of theological production.”
The day ends with an opening reception dinner of the new Fellows Class: Timothy, Michael, Michael (yes, two Michaels), Ethan, Kody, Micah, Alex, Ryan, and Wilson. Nine men from across the continent who are eager to spend the next week and a half in study, prayer, and the breaking of bread.
Thursday 7/18/2024
The Fellows Program begins with a huge breakfast in the fellowship hall at 3rd Presbyterian Church, then Matins (that is, morning prayer).
The rest of the morning is filled with lectures which end in Sext (noon prayer), then Lunch, a brief break, coffee, more lectures, chanting practicum with Paul Buckley, and Vespers.
I gave one of the afternoon lectures on “New Testament Hermeneutics.”
After Vespers, we pile into cars and go to “Vulcan’s Knee” --the large historic house we’ve rented as the Fellows’ residence for the week. There we have dinner and close the night out with more conversation.
Friday 7/19/2024
Friday passes much like Thursday: Breakfast, Matins, Lectures + coffee breaks, Sext, Lunch, Break (during which some of us go walking to an Antique store down the road from the church which has the feel of a store from Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter series), more Lectures, Chanting Practicum, Vespers, Dinner at Vulcan’s Knee, Conversations late into the evening, Bedtime.
I gave the afternoon lecture on “Genesis chapters 4-50.”
Saturday 7/20/2024
Saturday is primarily filled with a visit from Michael Nakashimada who made the 2 hour drive from Atlanta, GA to hang-out for the day. He picks me up and we drive into downtown Birmingham with Alastair. We drop Alastair in the heart of Birmingham to do some book shopping, and head over to Homewood (the neighborhood around Samford University/Beeson Divinity School) for lunch.
After lunch we grab coffee and explore another antique store with one of Michael’s friends before heading to the Birmingham Art Museum. Open to the public free of charge, the museum is amazing and has an impressive collection of art from Asia –including huge section of Jade, the fineness and color of some of the pieces on several occasions quite literally took my breath away.
After Michael drops me off at Beth Elim, the faculty (Ahern, Leithart, Roberts, Meyers, Buckley, Skogan, and myself) enjoy a dinner of rice and butter chicken (praise the Lord for rice, I’ve missed it so badly) hosted by Mrs. Leithart.
Following dinner, we sit outside on the back porch and debrief. We reflect on how things are going so far, consider a few adjustments, give feedback, and make some changes in the following week’s schedule.
Sunday 7/21/2024
I go with the Leitharts to Immanuel Reformed Church –-the church-plant they are leading. They meet at a Messianic church’s building. I help them with set-up, which is minimal (setting-up an altar, prepping the fellowship hall, etc.). I meet the group of families who are a part of Immanuel and it reminds me very fondly of the early days at All Saints.
After church, I go over my notes for the homily I’ll be delivering at Monday’s Vespers service, and spend some with Jeff Meyers. It is a very rich conversation filled with a wealth of wisdom from Pastor Meyers’ more than three decades of ministry experience.
Sunday evening we have a reception for the new wave of students, the Te Deum Fellows, who arrive for a week of musical and theological training. Both groups of fellows will be sharing in meals, in the services of prayer, and in fellowship, though their lectures and curricula are different.
After dinner and the formal welcome, a large number of us go out to the porch at Beth Elim for singing and chanting.
After everyone either leaves (for Vulcan’s Knee) or heads to bed at Beth Elim (the faculty) two of the fellows linger. They are two college friends who are church-planting together with their families in Iowa. We talk late into the evening about theology, denominations, liturgy, church-planting, and friendship.
Monday 7/22/2024
Breakfast. Matins. Classes. Sext. Lunch. Afternoon classes. I give the homily at Vespers. Dinner at Vulcan’s Knee.
Every evening so far has ended with the faculty dragging me out of some deep theological conversation in which I find myself embedded. Tonight we decided that I’d pack a bag with clothes and toiletries and crash on the couch at Vulcan’s Knee in order to complete the multiple unfinished conversations and answer the handful of “hey-I’m-dying-to-ask-you-a-thing-about-Anglicanism” questions.
Those conversations, some of which carry me past midnight, are punctuated by a session of singing –hymns and sea shanties mainly. It is wild to try to describe what it is like to have a conversation about the differences between St. John and Plato’s understanding of desire paused in order to sing (in this order) a Hobbit pub melody, ‘Christ is Risen from the Dead,’ ‘The Song of Jonah’ (to the ‘Wellerman’ Tune), ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing’. And then, after refilling their pipe bowl with tobacco, to have my interlocutor turn to me with dead seriousness and ask “So then, what were you saying about Plato?”
I finish my various threads of conversation, do the load of dishes which comes into the kitchen as everyone departs, shower, and sleep on the sofa in the living room to the sound of a Birmingham rainstorm crashing on the antique windows.
Tuesday 7/23/24
Breakfast. Matins. Classes, during which I lecture on my favorite subject: the Song of Songs. Sext. Lunch. A long break after lunch allows a large group of us to go to the Museum. While making sure to go an gaze upon the Jade and Ivory masterpieces in the Asian section again, I move through the Western art galleries on the first floor with a sizeable group from the Fellows program. Arranged in historical sequence it was amazing to trace the shift in western art from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century both in subject matter and (in my opinion) in majesty.
In our first room there are icons covered in gold leaf, hand-carved altar pieces lacquered in bright reds, and depictions of the great medieval synthesis (e.g. the seven virtues paired with seven corresponding Biblical figures, paired with seven corresponding mathematicians and scientists). On one wall hangs a ‘Madonna and Child’ which covers the whole wall and is so deeply cerulean it makes you tremble and your hands ache.
By the time (rooms later) we reach French Rococo all trace of Christ is gone, as is the gold leaf (except where it appears as baby cherubs on the handles of chaffing dishes and flatware). What remains is a strangely libertine aesthetic: that portrait of the Marquis in hunting attire is simultaneously infantilizing (why do all the adults look like babies?), sexualizing (why are there all the nude bathers in the background smiling garishly at me?), and parentified (why does the 2yr old son of the Marquis have a powdered wig, a horn of gun-powder, and a lute?). The seeds of the French Revolution were laid in art which took its form thus. All the subjects of Rococo portraiture came alive in the body of Maximilien Robespierre.
Back to 3rd Presbyterian for Music Class. Vespers. Dinner. Fellowship after the meal. John Ahern and I have a conversation which keeps circling back to the intersection of art, revolution, and music. I fall asleep back in my room at Beth Elim.
Wednesday 7/24/24
Breakfast. Classes. I lecture on the Book of Ezekiel. Sext. Lunch. Classes. Music Lessons.
I leave early (missing Vespers) in order to help set-up Vulcan’s Knee for a “keipi” (a festive supra in the Armenian tradition). We scoot all the tables together in one room, lay settings, prep food, cover the table in dishes of lentils and chicken, platters of steak and green beans, bowls of candied fruit, in addition to salads, nuts, grapes, cheeses, and all manner of edible. Once seated we explain the “moderately-structured-convivial-chaos” that will ensue. My friend John Crawford (the Chair of the Board at Theopolis) and I sit together at one end of the table as joint “tamada” –joint toastmaster. We lead the table through eight waves of toast-giving. At the other end is Dr. Leithart who we call the “Zakeyn” (Hebrew for “old man”) who is responsible for keeping order, calling on people to give toasts, and making-up rules. Some toasts leave us weeping noble tears (e.g. one of the fellows toasted his father who brought him up in the faith), some toasts have people falling over their chairs in laughter (as when John Crawford sings Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” riffing off of Augustine’s concept of the City of God). At the end of every toast everyone raises their glass and says “Ave Civitas!” which in Latin means “Hail thee, City!” by which we mean that blessed City Heavenly Jerusalem of which we are citizens.
People kept telling me “This is awesome, how’d you learn to do this?” or “Man, you’re a natural at this!” or “I’ve never been a part of anything like this.” To which I smile and explain what life is like at All Saints and tell them that my church and I do this kind of thing all throughout the church year.
After the meal we all help clean up and I say my many good-byes. A bunch of the theology fellows line up at the door and chant “Christ is Risen from the Dead” as I leave, each giving me the Kiss of Peace.
Thursday 7/25/24
4:40 am I depart Beth Elim for the airport. I arrive in HNL around 1 pm HST. I walk into my house and feel a little like Samwise Gamgee:
“[…] But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Eleanor upon his lap.
He drew a deep breath, “Well, I'm back,” he said.”