OF PIPS AND PUPS

I have recently been through a life-affecting experience in a quiet and subtle way---not so dramatically as Saul of Tarsus on the way to Damascus being blinded by God’s light, leading to his Christian conversion and ultimately becoming Saint Paul---nevertheless, a spiritual journey which affects my attitudes in life. And I am not alone in this feeling.

I belong to a Men’s Ministry group at my church which meets twice a month at 7:30 a.m. for a light breakfast and a member-created program regarding our faith in which we all participate. It is truly an inspiring group of men of diverse backgrounds, most of whom were PIPS (previously important people) in their working lives. We have several medical doctors, some PhDs, high-powered former captains of industry and an old clothing schlepper like me (just to prove our diversity!). Anyone who comes in contact with this group is awed by their sense of mission: a group of old guys who really care about the world and, in small but significant ways, want to make a difference. It is a group of caring people whom I am honored to be part of, and I always look forward to what they will do or say next.

Back to the life-affecting experience, every now and then we hold a retreat where as a group we go away for two nights, three days at DaySpring, a 92-acre preserve and meeting center owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida, not far from Bradenton on the west coast of Florida. We did a retreat there three years ago and then again in late January of 2011. We always have an inspiring moderator/lecturer/facilitator---in both cases, Episcopal priests.

The first retreat three years ago was conducted by Douglass Lind, an Episcopal priest-cum-psychotherapist, Harvard-trained, a Doctor of Divinity and PhD in psychology, who is semi-retired here on Sanibel Island, Florida, but who still maintains a consulting business with several high-powered major corporations and also assists our priest, The Rev. Dr. Ellen Sloan, in conducting services at our church, Saint Michael and All Angels. Doug called his session with us “Life in the Fourth Quarter” in which we examined our lives as old men and what gives then meaning. It was inspirational.

Now, this year, we had The Rev. Stuart Hoke, a North Carolinian, now living there in semi-retirement whose most recent assignment had been at Trinity Church, Wall Street in New York. When you meet Stuart, you immediately know there is a special aura about him of serenity and wisdom; he is one of those guys you just take to on sight. His theme for this retreat was “Spirituality is Surrender”, how by facing up to life’s challenges and accepting them as learning experiences we can improve our lives spiritually.

Stuart Hoke is not some Ivory Tower philosopher, isolated and insulated from the real world. He is a priest---and a dedicated one at that---but he is also very human. He’s been through a later-life divorce, life-threatening prostate cancer, and as a participant in 9/11. These searing and traumatic experiences have only served to deepen and strengthen his inner and outer lives. He is full of aphorisms and witticisms, plus blessed with an incredible gift for memorization so that he can quote a myriad of noteworthy quotations
from a vast assortment of resources, not just Christian but a range of philosophies and religions.

One of his lines that appealed to all of us was an old Buddhist adage: “When a student is ready, a teacher always appears.” In our case, it was Stuart who appeared. When you open yourself to receive new thinking, you will be amazed at what you can learn. To oversimplify, what Stuart was teaching us was that by letting go of our anxieties and problems and trusting in a power beyond ourselves (in our case, God), we can achieve spiritual growth and contentment. By listening to other voices than our own, we learn and grow. A quartet of seemingly paradoxical principles applies: (1) we surrender to win; (2) we give away to keep; (3) we suffer to get well; and (4) we die to live. When we redeem our lives, we find these four redemptive principles: (1) we bring good out of evil; (2) joy out of suffering; (3) light out of darkness; and (4) life out of death.

What really drove the subject home and emotionally moved us was when Stuart recounted his personal traumas. He alluded to his divorce with two grown sons but did not elaborate, but he really moved us with his struggle with cancer and his 9/11 nightmare.

He was boarding a plane to visit one of his sons in Florida when his cell phone rang. It was his Urologist who told him he had to get medical attention immediately because, on every test for prostate cancer on a scale of 1 to 10, he registered 10! He described his subsequent state of mind where he went through extremes of denial before he faced the possibility of his own death and dealt with the problem. Fortunately, by getting quick and the best of medical care, plus his spiritual acceptance, he survived this trauma.

As for 9/11, at the time he was one of the priests at Trinity Church, Wall Street, a famous New York landmark, next to the World Trade Centers. It is a huge and affluent church with an annual budget of $350,000,000, renowned for its good works, beauty, preaching and music.

At about 9:00 a.m. on September 11, 2001, Stuart was on his way to work on a subway train when the conductor screamed, “Get out, get out, right here at Rector Street.” In the ensuing pandemonium, Stuart could not, along with a lot of others, get off and the train went on. He got off at the next stop and emerged from the subway to a world of total chaos and destruction with bits of paper, scraps of clothing, and human detriti floating through the dense grey dust. He found his way, staggering through this fog to the 25-storey office building housing Trinity Church personnel and found his boss, the rector, Dan Matthews, trying to render some order out of this hellish chaos. “Get to the church,” Matthews screamed to Stuart and the church organist, “and do something. People are swarming into the church!”

Somehow Stuart Hoke and the organist made their way through the chaos to Trinity Church and found a disoriented disorganized mass of humanity seeking shelter. He had the foresight before he entered the church to don his priestly surplice. He laughed about this reflexive action, but, in view of the chaos he was about to face, it was probably the wisest thing be could have done as a symbol of authority and “someone in charge”. He started reading passages from the Bible which got the attention of the crowd. He kept reading; they sang hymns, accompanied by the organ, and people kept coming in of every race, creed and gender, a real potpourri of the Gotham scene.

Then a horrendous and continuous crashing sound in stages began. People screamed and dived under the pews as this frightening sound, like the deafening clapping of the loudest thunder ever heard, continued. Then there was absolute silence. It was, of course, building two of the World Trade Tower, right next to the church, crashing in stages, floor by floor, to the ground. The church survived with only a few broken windows!

As Stuart Hoke told this enthralling story of terror, the effect on a roomful of retreat attendants was creating its own trauma. One of our members from Rumson, New Jersey broke into convulsive sobs as he recalled the funeral of five of his friends from Rumson who died in 9/11. We were all choking or sobbing as this touching scene took place.

Stuart described the redemptive work that followed as volunteers poured into lower Manhattan to offer what help they could. One wonderful anecdote concerned a group of rich social matrons from Greenwich, Connecticut who came to New York to help---and teamed up with a group of Hell’s Angels bikers from L.A. in an unlikely but effective alliance. To this day these disparate allies keep in touch.

Another miraculous event of this cataclysmic day was the rescue of all of the children who attended school at Trinity Church. When the first cxplosion occurred, the children were rushed to the basement for safety. By walkie-talkie connections, a plan was devised to get the children to safety. All the streets leading to Trinity were blocked by cars deserted by their owners when the calamity occurred, so passage by street was impossible. A group of New York City buses reached Trinity by driving down the sidewalks---and took the children to a Catholic church in the Bronx where they all were later reunited with their parents. (Who ever dreamed the sidewalks were wide enough to hold a metro bus!)

Each day at the retreat we were divided into three tables of six or seven. After Stuart spoke, we would talk together and find the messages and insights that his words inspired. It brought us together and emphasized the bond of love that held us in spite of our diverse backgrounds. We were truly a band of brothers by the end of that retreat.

At one point during the meeting, I commented that the PIPS (previously important people) were now PUPS (Presently Unimportant People). At this retreat, a great thing happened: these former PIPS, now PUPS, learned some important life lessons which we treasure and will not soon forget.