ACNA vs JAFC 2025

 

ACNA vs JAFC

 

https://worthearlwoodnormanjr.substack.com/p/the-acna-raid-of-the-jafc

 

https://worthearlwoodnormanjr.substack.com/p/ceaseless-undercurrents

 

https://worthearlwoodnormanjr.substack.com/p/an-ecclesial-coup-detat

Pope Francis: A transition to a new Pope

 

Pope Francis

 

The death today of Pope Francis will no doubt cause many to write of him and his legacy. As a Christian not of the Roman Catholic expression I contribute my thoughts as one of many.

 

Upon the papal election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit, he gave himself the name Francis, a name which I have always associated with Saint Francis of Assisi. Of the two orders, the Society of Jesus and the Franciscans, their missions or ministries could not be further apart. So, when the Jesuit Bergoglio donned his pontifical nom, perhaps there was an intentional misdirection in play to the public.

 

One interpretation of the chosen “Francis” is that Bergoglio wanted the public to believe that he was not of the traditional Jesuit ilk. Another interpretation could be that the public would think the ministry of Assisi, but that his papacy would continue in historically Jesuit pursuits. Given his performance in the Chair of Peter I believe it to be the latter.

 

The sequence of popes over the past several decades, it must be said, gave Pope Francis some level of difficulty, the difficulty of following Saint Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Both of those popes kept to the Gospel in a world ever secularizing with its nihilist attitude. Many people responded enthusiastically to those two popes. John Paul II always drew a crowd of young people as he traveled the world. Then there were those Catholics who were disappointed when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected.

 

On the evening of Ratzinger’s election, April 19, 2005, the ABC Television Network evening show Nightline interviewed reporter Cokie Roberts, a Roman Catholic. One might say that Roberts had a meltdown about the winner of the conclave. She, for the most part, wanted a softer, more liberal pontiff to replace the traditional JPII.

 

Then many faithful and traditional Catholics became incensed, frustrated, and confused - not to mention being more than mildly disappointed – when Benedict resigned his office. Some even refused to forgive him, even if that were necessary. Their world collapsed upon his announcement.

 

Then Francis of Loyola was elected and the church had two popes simultaneously. Well, resignation seemed an impossible if not unlikely occurrence in these times. But it happened. The early controversy then – before Francis really had time to do anything – revolved around Benedict assuming the title “Pope Emeritus” instead of “Bishop Emeritus of Rome.” That rancor died out fairly quickly.

 

Attention to the upcoming conclave will dominate the news. The Roman Catholic factions will be loud and non-stop until the white smoke appears. Father Gerald Murray, a regular contributor to EWTN, was a guest on Fox News this morning explaining what he thinks will happen in the weeks to come. But he also talked about the factions within his church. From an outsider’s perspective it was refreshing to see Father Murray speak frankly about the problems with Francis’s pontificate. Roman Catholics in the past have seemingly refused to talk about or to acknowledge any sort of problem within their faith community. The EWTN group led by Raymond Arroyo’s The World Over has been somewhat forthright through the years of this Jesuit pontificate. The comments were measured but otherwise unrestrained and they spoke respectfully of their pontiff.

 

Back to the upcoming conclave: what will happen, no one knows. The majority of the College of Cardinals received their red biretta from Pope Francis and one would think that would tip the balance of power in favor of another Jesuit or at least a left-leaning prince of the church.

 

One can speculate, and I will do so here, about papal prospects. This past December Pope Francis elevated a young Australian bishop to the cardinalate: Ukrainian-born Melbourne Bishop Mykola Bychok. If this cardinal is chosen to be the next pope, there appear to be many opportunities for Christian re-unification. This “Eastern Rite Pope” could be the lever that resolves the 1054 split which in itself could generate other processes of unity. Just as Pope Benedict XVI created the Anglican Ordinariate, such movements could engender a larger Christian unification movement. Who knows?

 

Why should the non-Roman Catholic faithful have any interest in this conclave? Just given the size – meaning the number of communicants worldwide – of the Roman Catholic Church, the person in the Chair of Peter affects worldwide events, people, and hearts. One cannot ignore the one who sits in Peter’s chair.

 

What all of Christendom wants is the faithful presentation of the Gospel worldwide, and by sheer size if nothing else the leadership represented by the Roman Catholic Pope is impactful, for good or not. A fractured church is scandalous to the world. It weakens the Gospel message.

 

Whether we are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, or Protestant, we need to pray for Divine Guidance  of the election of the next pope.

 

The Bard of Ocean View

 

My father could tell a story
He conjured on the fly
Digging into his deep intellectual quarry,
Narrating in effortless try.
 
Daily walking the beach on the Bay,
Both summer and winter too,
He never met a stranger any day,
To him old friends, not new.
 
He would point out beyond the beach
At a cargo or Navy ship to this friend
And spout its history to teach
With some accuracy (and flourishes) in the blend.
 
He was never a ‘know-it-all’
And never pretended he was.
He had no gall
Which drew my applause.
 
 

© 2024 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

 

BOOK REVIEW: Hell Shall Not Prevail - Essays on Ecclesiocentric Postliberalism

 

Ecclesiocentric Postliberalism:
Will It Play in Peoria (or Portland, or in Protestantism)?
 
Hell Shall Not Prevail:
Essays on Ecclesiocentric Postliberalism
James R. Rogers and Peter J. Leithart, eds.
Athanasius Press. 176 pages $16.95

 

In July 2024 I was listening to a FIRST THINGS podcast where Mark Bauerlein interviewed James R. Rogers about his recently released book Hell Shall Not Prevail: Essays on Ecclesiocentric Postliberalism. I purchased Rogers’s book and began to explore its content.

 James R. Rogers and Peter J. Leithart are the co-editors of, as well as contributors to, a collection of essays about the little understood or little appreciated centrality of the church in the current American context.  The seven essays are written by six scholars of several disciplines. Rogers contributed two essays and an introduction, Leithart the foreword and an essay. The offerings in this volume assert the centrality and social nature of the church “in an age and culture that dismiss or trivialize, or are even hostile to, the church and church life,” according to Rogers.

 The essays in this book present and examine a spectrum of philosophical, historical, moral, economic, social, political, and theological issues affecting some Christian enclaves whose developments have ignored, abandoned, or misunderstood the church’s uniqueness. In other words, the event at Pentecost was not a one-time gathering of disciples of Christ in baptism by the Holy Spirit. It was the beginning of something new, but in continuity with all of God’s historical work of salvation prior.

 The genesis for this book follows from the formation of the Civitas group, a symposium sponsored by Peter Leithart and the Theopolis Institute. Two years before the publication of this volume several members of the group met frequently (and secretly according to the first episode of the Civitas podcast) to discuss the current political and religious situation in the United States. The approaches taken by its six authors to the centrality of the church and its apparent cultural insignificance vary.

 Rogers’s introduction presents the theme of the book, identifies the authors of the essays and expresses his own view that “The Church Is My Polis, the Church Is My Ethos, the Church Is My Oikos.” The common individualistic notion of “it’s just God and me” is challenged by citing social, political and corporate understandings of the church as the body of salvation, perhaps difficult to digest or accept by many American evangelicals: that is one problem. Another is that although each author is Protestant, he is “Roman Catholic sounding” in his ecclesiocentrism. Rogers writes that some Protestants possess a level of indifference toward the centrality of the visible church as contrasted with that of their Roman and Eastern ecclesial siblings. Leithart suggests that “Catholic integralists are ecclesiocentric, but the ecclesia they hope will dominate public life excludes the majority of Christians.”

 American evangelicals, it is asserted, are more American than Christian, more individualistic than social. If there is an order to civil living for Protestants it would be that the culture overrides religion except on Sundays. Tocqueville’s prescient observation in his Democracy in America has come to fruition and is now lived out in American culture and not without a persistent restlessness.

 The articles therein submit selective evidence for the development of the current American religious temperament. This project of the Civitas group will be a hard sell to many Protestant bodies, at least in an indeterminant short run.

 Peter J. Leithart in his essay writes how the church has been trivialized or undercut historically. Citing works of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, both, though taking different approaches to the “problem of the church” in their day, result in the same: the domestication of the church.

 Gary L. Young offers (“The Church Builds the World”), Andrew K. Bobo cites Tocqueville in (“Liberalism and the Restlessness of the American Soul”), and Ben Peterson argues that ecclesiocentric political theory provides a robust basis for religious tolerance and liberty in (“Beyond Liberalisms and Illiberalisms of Fear: Ecclesiocentrism, Tolerance, and Liberty”).

 Philosophy professor David Reiter, in his article “Can Liberalism Provide an Adequate Secular Justification for Respect for Persons?” analyzes Kantian ethics and its principle of respect for persons (RFP); John Stuart Mills’s liberty principle (MLP); and John Rawls’s theory of justice (TOJ). Each attempts to provide secular justifications for freedom and liberty. With argument and summary syllogisms Reiter draws attention to the inadequacies of those theories and offers the biblical imago Dei as the only foundation respecting and guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons.

 James R. Rogers writes the concluding chapter (“The Common Good in Ecclesiocentric Economic and Social Thought”).

 What has all the above to do with postliberalism? Rogers limited himself to identifying six concepts of a plausible range of 22 to 57 forms of liberalism, one of which is “ontological individualism,” the denial of the existence of any truly corporate person or body. In the prolonged death of liberalism several competing definitions of postliberalism float in the ephemera, none of which has yet to capture the zeitgeist. Leithart suggests that any definition of postliberalism containing principles of [non-classical] liberalism is heretical ecclesiology.

 Ecclesiocentric Postliberalism’s aim is the “reformation” of the American cultural church, a reorientation to the church’s social and political centrality. Though Protestant evangelicals might chill at the thought of “social salvation,” the “true character of the church as a political society” is taught by Anglican theologian Oliver O’Donovan. How many denominations (or individuals) would accept Henri de Lubac’s assertion that individual salvation is contingent upon the social salvation of a people? Even though Rogers writes that there is nothing extra-biblical in this book, this effort will be a “hard sell.”

Given the pervasive historical and secular attacks on the church, one can understand why many American Christians tune out when religious and political discussions ensue. But where will this call for renewal of the understanding of the uniqueness of Christ’s church play out? Preaching and teaching in local congregations is a beginning. Perhaps such an approach might be a “Peoria.”

 Worth E. “Woody” Norman, Jr. is a priest at the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd in Pelham, Alabama in the Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy (JAFC) of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

 

JAMES THE JUST - The Former Slave James Solomon Russell

 

Preface to

My Biography of James Solomon Russell

 

On June 14, 1962, a Thursday night, I graduated from Norview High School in Norfolk, Virginia. It was, of course, a happy event. But it was also an historical event. When I was about to enter my high school freshman class in 1958 the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia closed all of the State’s schools that were ordered by the Federal Government to be racially integrated. That was the period of Virginia’s “Massive Resistance.” With our public school doors chained – not just Norview but Granby and Maury high schools – the white community set up schools around the city. In my neighborhood three churches allowed the use of their buildings for temporary schools. In the Five Points section of the Norview community there were three large churches: Norview Presbyterian Church; Norview Baptist Church; and Norview Methodist Church. All of these churches became temporary schools in the fall of 1958. Not all of the students attended these church schools. Some moved away to live with family members in the western part of Virginia which was not affected by the closures. Many went out of State. But I settled into my new high school, Norview Methodist Church.  Many of our regular high school teachers taught in those temporary church schools as if the high school had opened. So we didn’t miss a beat, academically. The Norview High School Band still rehearsed in the afternoons for football games, and the football team practiced each week for their upcoming games. And despite the interruptions, the Norview HS football team became the best team in the State of Virginia over the four years until graduation in 1962.

 

My class studies in the church school were the same as if I had entered the official high school. The “colored” students who were selected by the School Board to attend the previously all-white schools were tutored at the First Baptist Church on Bute Street in downtown Norfolk. We all waited on the outcome of the huge political battle between the Governor of Virginia and the United States Department of Justice. Eventually Virginia complied with the Federal court order and the city’s schools opened in January, 1959. That first day – that first day of integration – presented itself as a mass of humanity converging on almost every square foot of Norview’s campus. Of the seventeen colored students selected, seven were assigned to Norview.

 

I lived on Sewells Point Road directly across from the high school. Never did I have to ride buses to schools during my twelve years of public schooling – I walked. But the colored students near our neighborhood, who, ironically, lived behind the high school in a section named Oakwood, had to ride school system-chartered commercial buses across town to attend Booker T. Washington High School or Ruffner Junior High. Those buses passed by my house every school morning and afternoon. But on the day of reckoning – in January 1959 – seven African American students entered Norview High School, and so did I. One of the new students was most memorable to me, Andrew Heidelberg. My personal history with colored people was not all that new to me, but attending school with them was simply expected to be different, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I remember Andrew fairly well because the two of us were in many classes together and in our senior year we were in the same homeroom. He was athletic, but that is not the attribute I remember most. He had personality and was not shy. Or so it seemed. He was certainly assertive in spirit but allowed himself no aggressiveness, which, according to our expectations, would have been natural for a Negro in a strange place, or so I thought at the time. It was only later in life that I learned that Andrew was mortified at attending the previously all-white school; he was scared to death. From my point of view, he was successful in his high school career despite the many obstacles placed before him. He and the other African American students had to have been brave. I know, because I recall hearing ferocious verbal attacks thrown at them. But Andrew appeared to brush them off. Such was the image I have held for all these years in the back of my mind. Why do I write about this experience now in 2012?

 

In the spring of 1965 or 1966, I cannot remember precisely, while stationed at Marine Corps Schools in Quantico, Virginia, I thought I saw Andrew. A regional college sporting event was taking place at the base. I was a military musician returning, in formation, to my barracks from the opening ceremonies at the football field. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Andrew, so I cocked my head slightly to the left and looked directly. It was Andrew. So I yelled “Heidelberg” as loud as I could. He looked up to find who bellowed his name, but with seventy military musicians in uniform marching past him it would have been difficult to pick out a single voice. And after the band was dismissed I walked to the athletic field to find him. I never did. For more than forty years afterward I forgot about Massive Resistance and all that went on during my high school days. As I began studying James Solomon Russell, and through the rigors of that process of research and learning, my youthful and adult experiences with matters racial returned to my mind. One day last year I connected with friends (from high school days) on one of the Internet-based social media websites, some of whom were connected with Andrew Heidelberg. Well, you know what I had to do. I made the connection with Andrew and we exchanged several Internet-based chats. Although he recalled that particular Quantico sporting event, he did not remember my yell. This, however, was sufficient verification for me.

 

Andrew told me that he had written a book^[1] about his experiences from1958 to1962. Naturally, his experiences were totally different from mine. There was so much that I did not know; so much that escaped my attention; so much activity that I thought would never have happened. It was an awakening for me. For those days in the late 50s and early 60s were dark  for many. Hopefully Andrew and I will meet again before our times come to an end. In the meantime, I struggle with my own thoughts. My high school experience was one factor in my research on James Solomon Russell.

 

Although mostly unknown, James Solomon Russell was a key person in the post-Reconstruction educational movement with former slaves in Virginia. Russell was a double-sided entrepreneur: his educational venture produced what is now St. Paul’s College in Lawrenceville, Virginia; and in his spiritual and religious life he was at the center of developing the largest convocation of African American churches in the Episcopal Church. Why study Russell?

 

Russell’s life was, seemingly, lived mostly “under the radar” as we would say in the twenty-first century. Although he wrote his Autobiography,^[2] other people wrote three academic theses (one Ph.D. dissertation and two masters’ theses) about either Russell himself or the St. Paul School. Several articles have been written about the man and his work. Russell is remembered mostly in a small quarter of the African American community, the Episcopal Church, and the Southside, Virginia region. Why was Russell important to me, important enough to write about?

 

In the year 2000 I began my serious investigation of Russell. There were two reasons motivating my research. The initial reason, and at the time the only reason, that I began my study was due to my mother. During my childhood she would talk about Dr. Russell, off and on. But her talk was frequent enough and consistent in its content over the years that it must have made an indelible impression in the back of my mind. My mother was born and reared in Lawrenceville, Virginia and to her Lawrenceville was idyllic and the perfect place to grow up. She did not stay there for long after her high school graduation and eventually moved to Norfolk where I was born in 1944. For eighteen years of my life mother would talk of Lawrenceville and Russell and, of course, we traveled the short ninety miles to visit family over the years. So, when I began my investigation of Russell it was a project taken up in my own old age. My initial output was a Master of Sacred Theology from the School of Theology at Sewanee, the University of the South. I was awarded that degree at age sixty-six, and I knew that I could not stop with just the thesis; I had to study more because something happened to me during the project.

As I wrote above, my mother provided the initial motivation for my study of Dr. Russell. But it was my engagement with that study that brought to light my second motivation – my high school experience and its attending race problem. Why do we have race problems in the United States? In 2011, 150 years following the start of the American Civil War, our nation is recalling those years when we were divided. Did the North and the South really reconcile? Have we as a nation learned anything over these years? Am I learning anything which might shed light on our continuing national predicament? It came to me that if I could attempt to fix James Solomon Russell within the context of his circumstances, his history, then perhaps I could identify the parameters of my own experience. Little things that my mother told me about Lawrenceville and Russell have stayed with me. For example, Russell was really white in complexion, but he lived as a black man. He was the nicest man in town. My mother and one of her sisters were telephone operators. In those days there were no push-button or rotary-dial telephones. The caller had to speak with a telephone company operator in order to place a call. On more than one occasion, my mother and her sister Willie would tell stories about directing calls to the “Archdeacon.” (Many if not most of the Lawrenceville locals referred to Russell as the Archdeacon.) Almost without fail the Archdeacon, after finishing his telephone conversation, would reconnect with the dispatching operator (my mother or one of my aunts) to thank them for placing the earlier, usually long-distance, connection. My grandfather, Fredrick Lewis Jones, owned and operated the grocery store in Lawrenceville. He conducted business with the St. Paul School and Dr. Russell. My grandfather died in 1952 and whenever we visited him he always had a nice story to tell about the Archdeacon.

 

Russell’s Autobiography is just one resource that I have studied to understand his life. His addresses, sermons, and work logs also provide clues to his approach to living. He cites in his four situations where he is mistaken for a white man, yet he pleads no interest in nor has available time for ancestor worship or genealogy search. He was a man about tasks and projects, both secular and ecclesiastical. He was often presented with many vexing situations during his lifetime, many situations filled with manifestations of racism. He successfully dealt with black and white alike. He argued with and challenged both. Of concern in this book is Russell’s statement that the mass exodus for former slaves from the Episcopal Church was a mistake. Though understandable, why did Russell deem it a mistake? He exhibited the patience of Job in some of his judgments which may have led some to call him an “accomodationist,” a term some would link with “compromised” as it was applied to Booker T. Washington. But how Russell handled his situations is instructive.

 

James Solomon Russell certainly was a pioneer in post-Reconstruction education for former slaves and their families, and he was a principled leader in the reconstruction or reordering of ecclesiastical attitudes of racism played out in canonical manipulations and justifications. The simple fact that Russell was born and reared in Virginia is also significant. Virginia, the colony and then the state that produced Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, generated the new American republic and its ideas of freedom. Virginia also produced Booker T. Washington, Robert Russa Moton, and James Solomon Russell. How Virginia as a State worked through its racial situations, and how the Episcopal Church in Virginia did the same, formed Russell. He lived his entire life as a Christian evangelical. In this book I attempt to situate Russell in the history he inherited and in the milieu he experienced. How I present the Archdeacon to the reader necessarily filters through my own life experience. I remain faithful to the facts found in Russell’s writings and in third party documentation, but in no way can I avoid interpreting his life. He was a man who understood who he was, accepted what life gave him, and made something of it.

 

Worth E. Norman, Jr.

January 31, 2012

Birmingham, AL

 

Link to my biography of James Solomon Russell

 

---

[1] Heidelberg, Andrew I. The Norfolk 17: A Personal Narrative on Desegregation in Norfolk, Virginia in 1958 – 1962. Pittsburgh: Rose Dog Press, 2006.

[2] The single word Autobiography, in italics, is used in this book as a substitute label for the book Adventure in Faith: An Autobiographic Story of St. Paul Normal and Industrial School, Lawrenceville, Virginia. New York: Morehouse Publishing, 1936.

Pardon Me, Mr. President

 

Galleria Elvis

 

 

“Galleria Elvis”

Hoover, Alabama

 

 I saw him walk the tiles a pace never a stall,

A slow rhythm of quiet repose

Daily where shoppers in an urban mall

Noticed his recurring outing in this place he chose.

 

He talked with no one, none to him.

What could underlie his repetitious jaunt?

Any peace or pleasure betrayed by his facial grim

He lived in retreat, no joy to flaunt.

 

His familial blessings went in a flash,

The love of his life first departed,

He then widowered with daughters to care.

Years later they too passed, he broken-hearted.

 

Walking aimlessly as if guided by a breeze,

The mall was the retreat for Ronald Freeze.

  

© 2024 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

See the Hoover Sun November 2024, page B12

https://hooversun.com/

 

Axioms of Irrationality

 

Axioms of Irrationality

 

Irrational enthusiasm

Possibly a conundrum

But an iconoclasm

Directed to the numb ones

 

Impervious to truth,

Believing in a fading happiness

Through the lies of a sleuth

In all its craftiness.

 

The Irrational claims a future,

Simultaneously preparing a tomb

For those deprived of a life-giving nurture,

But murdered in the womb.

 

And Irrationality had a goal,

A deadline though previously foreseen.

But political haste took its toll

On thirteen butchered Marines.

 

What do we make of it?

What do we believe?

Shall we endure or quit?

Or simply bereave?

 

Irrational enthusiasm,

(Perhaps circumscription)

Albeit a conundrum,

Is contradiction.

 

Better not our hopes and words misuse.

Living in our Creator is the Rational enthuse.

 

 

© 2024 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

Hank, Ben, and Ray and Other Memories

 

Hank, Ben, and Ray

And Other Memories

 

Five Points in Norview (a section of Norfolk, Virginia) was a meeting place back in the 1950s and 1960s. There Sewells Point Road, Chesapeake Boulevard, and Norview Avenue converged.

 

The men, fathers, and uncles, met at their watering hole, Vann’s. It was a beer joint, and it was located next to the Be-Lo Grocery Store. Those businesses faced Sewells Point Road.

 

Most of the employment in Norview, the entire area, was the United States Navy. My father worked at the Naval Supply Center (NSC) on the Navy Operating Base (NOB).

 

When I advanced from elementary school, the newer junior high school experience was a jolt. It seems that there was less control of students by teachers in the classroom and in the halls of the school. Junior high brought on the change of classes every fifty-five minutes, and a change of teachers. Wow. That was great. That began in 1958.

 

Norview Junior High School was the old Norview High School campus. As I recall there were three different buildings: the main building with two or three stories; the old elementary school building (my first through sixth grades were there); and another building, probably where the shops were, and the band. I was in the band – a trumpeter-convert to French Horn.

 

Downhill from the “band” building (yes, a gradual decline going off campus) was Twine’s Grocery Story. Before school and after school, Twine’s was at those moments not a grocery store. It was a hangout for junior high kids. It had no soda fountain.

 

Twine’s faced Sewells Point Road bordering the junior high campus, and about one quarter to a half-mile from Five Points proper. The side of Twine’s facing the school was the area for smokers. Unofficial, of course.

 

My home was on the other side of the school from Twine’s. That meant that when I walked to school in the mornings – there were only five houses between my house and the school – I never passed by Twine’s where the morning smokers gathered. No telling how my clothes would have smelled had I joined in with them. My luck, however, was that I was surrounded on four sides by fourteen-year-old smokers in the classroom.

 

Eventually I discovered Hank’s. This was not my discovery. One of my friends, probably an older friend, suggested that we walk to Hank’s one afternoon after school. The walk was beyond Twine’s near the center of Five Points, and further away from my home.

 

Hank’s had a soda fountain. It had six bar stools, a juke box, and a pin-ball machine. It was really a hobby shop. But I am sure that Hank made a lot of money from serving up fountain cokes: vanilla and cherry. I had never heard of either.

 

Hank’s owner was Hank Bachman. To me at that time, Hank was just a friendly man with red hair and a strong voice, which means he had a strong, dominant personality. He needed to be that way because most of his customers, I suspect, were junior high and high school students. During the working day Hank probably had his hobby clientele to take care of. But after school Hank’s the store was inundated with students.

 

I learned only years later that Hank Bachman and Ben Buckner (the owner of the barber shop next door) were World War II veterans. I suspect the same of Mr. Twine.

 

Woody Norman: written on April 8, 2020

The Distraction

The Distraction

 It was on a Sunday,

The Fourth after Trinity,

When liturgy renewing its One way

Mocked Divinity.

 

Whether intentional,

(Perhaps egotistical),

Or a knowledge sophistical,

It nonetheless smacked of the atheistical.

 

While offering the Great Thanksgiving

The Prayers of the People were read

For those passed and for the living.

But so revised it was something dread.

 

The reader not a layman

But the ordinary leader,

Voicing like a shaman

To his own glory a feeder.

 

Indeed, a disastrous distraction

By one who knows better.

His free-form liturgical infraction

Chose himself and to God locked in fetter.

 

The local congregation

Astonished and not amused,

And knowing its place and station

To the ordinary reader should they accuse

 

And bring him before

The Body of Christ?

Perhaps this distraction they would ignore

And to the bins of history dice.

 

But this distraction should be addressed,

Observing repentance and forgiveness,

And not without acknowledging those distressed

Disciples observing the abuse of God’s liturgical business.

 

© 2023 Worth Earlwood Norman Jr

 

 

  

AWAITING THE COMING

 

AWAITING THE COMING

 

After the anarchy the turning continued

But the falconer was replaced

By a single spinner through some grace.

Anarchy’s reordering moved in painful pace

But killed in the old falconer a developing sinew.

There, innocence never was.

The adversary emerged again in strength.

The meek, mild, and the tolerant sat.

 

 The Revelation was always at hand.

The Second Coming is still at hand,

But the second cataclysm could not hold

And western social fabric began to tear.

The Spiritual Mundi or Zeitgeist of fear

Rendered the single spinner its strength.

The Orient and the Bear now intrude

On freedom the spinner spun.

It is now a darkness, no light, no shadow.

A darkness crushing Revelation,

The falcons turn upon themselves

Devouring, denying their own future.

Awaiting the Coming, the light on the hill dims.

 

 © 2021 Worth E. Norman, Jr.

June 29, 2021

My Bucket List

 

 Given that I will turn 77-years old next month, I think that now is the time to work on my bucket list.

 My assumptions are:

1.       I have three years remaining in this life.

2.      My cognitive faculties will remain steady or even improve.

3.     That  I break none of my extremities.

4.      That the COVID shutdown no longer exists.

 MY BUCKET LIST

 1.  Drum Major the Marine Corps Band, also known as The President’s Own, on the field at Marine Corps Barracks, 8^th & I SE in Washington, D.C.

a.      Caveat: my legs are not strong, therefore an alternative is

b.      Conducting TPO in concert

                                                              i.      National Emblem March

                                                           ii.      Semper Fidelis (Six Bits [17]75)

                                                         iii.      Marine Corps Hymn

c.      This No. #1 item will require some “politickin’.”

2.    2.  Compose an original march for band.

3.   3.   Write a history of the political and cultural transitions of the Commonwealth of Virginia from colonial times to present day.

a.      A subtitle might be “From Aristocracy to Social and Political Elitism.”

4.     4. Give a recital on a musical instrument in which I have not been trained.

a.      The music will be a technically difficult piece.

(c) 2021 Worth E Norman Jr

Ode to a Fractured Fibula

 The event described in this limerick occurred on the Monday following Christmas Day 2020

Ode to a Fractured Fibula

I took a brief journey one day.

Not a long trip, I would say.

Carrying the day’s trash

Down the staircase I dashed

And missed the last three steps on the way.

 

My fall made a very loud noise

From a tumble of amateur poise.

 When I fell on my back,

Unlike a skilled acrobat,

I yelled for the neighborhood boys.

 

No boys were near or around,

And for a moment I uttered little sound.

Then she made her descent

Seeing the floor of cement

With this old man permanently down.

 

“What happened to you? Are you hurt?

“No, I’m having dessert.”

She offered some help

Then I screamed with a yelp

And expressed an expletive blurt.

 

What broke, in particular?

Was my right leg’s fibula.

No surgery required

No steel to be wired.

I am glad it was the stairs and not vehicular.

 

© 2021 Worth E Norman Jr

 

 

 

A Litany for the United States of America

 

A Litany for the United States of America

Pray and fast between January 16 – 20, 2021

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth,

Have mercy upon us.

 O God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

Have mercy upon us.

 O God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the faithful,

Have mercy upon us.

 O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God,

Have mercy upon us.

We, the people of the United States of America invoke your holy presence on this land, particularly during this time of transition from one national administration to another.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Calm our passions, clear our minds, and hold our tongues that we may not offend or injure our fellow citizens.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

We pray to you Lord God that you redirect our thoughts and actions toward a righteous recognition of our fellow citizens.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

We pray for consolation and for reconciliation among all of us.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

We repent of our sins against you and our fellow men and women and ask for your forgiveness.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

We seek an orderly world and personal spiritual transformation by following you and your Word.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Do not abandon us in this time of national trial.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Give us your grace to seek understanding during this our struggle.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Lord overcome our anxiety with you Spirit and smother our fear with your Love.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Son of God, we beseech you to hear us.

Son of God, we beseech you to hear us.

O Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world;

Have mercy upon us.

O Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world;

Have mercy upon us.

O Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world;

Grant us your peace.

O Christ, hear us.

O Christ, hear us.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Christ, have mercy upon us.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

 

America’s Faustian Bargain

America’s Faustian Bargain

 A little more than a decade ago

They made you an offer

Of unlimited communication possibilities

And channeled notoriety.

 

In the deal

You could talk to the world,

Express your thoughts

And be heard.

 

The package allowed

You to promote and advertise.

It allowed you to stigmatize

Anonymously.

 

Connect with friends,

Voyeur others

Made easy by new

Technology.

 

In return for this power

You gave them

Your soul

With personal information and location.

 

The ride was great

For many a year.

The progress you made

Was unbelievable.

 

“What could be better,

What could top this?"

You began

To think.

 

Unsuspecting the collection

Of all your activity,

The digital bargain

Began weighing heavily

 

On your sudden inability

To undo some

Misdirected viewings

And online sayings.

 

You were ridiculed,

A reputation damaged.

What’s wrong with

This formerly good bargain?

 

Once the hero

Of one million followers,

You are now the stooge

Of the same million.

 

The big boys,

The big tech guys

Effectively reduced you

To a little boy.

 

You don’t exist.

You never did.

There is no record

Of you.

 

Much worse,

Your mistakes linger

And float eternally

In cyberspace.

 

But now there is

A national malaise

Incumbent upon millions

Of national individuals 

Trapped in the bargain.

 

Censorship, cancellation

And freedom’s usurpation

Reside in Faust’s domain

Forever.

 

Grand power in private,

Business has gained

Dominion over the people

And national governance.

 

The bargain

Was no bargain at all.

It was to your succumbing

To a false deity.

 

Giving your soul

To big tech or the state

Ended your comfortable life

And you did not know it,

Until now.

 

“Sheep’s clothing,”

Ever heard that phrase?

It is freedom’s closing.

You gave the wrong God praise.

 

© 2021 Worth E Norman Jr