May 8, 2024
As the congregation moved from Mikell Chapel to the post-quinceañera reception, the young woman whose service we had just celebrated said to me, “Padre Bill, estás entre mis abuelos,” or, “Father Bill, now you are among my grandfathers.”
Each Sunday for 18 years, I could be found on the Cathedral Close of the Cathedral of St. Philip, where I was a part-time Associate Priest, and where I continue to see patients at the counseling center, a wonderful, sacred space so dear to me. Among the services in which I participated was Catedral de San Felipe, our Hispanic ministry held in Mikell Chapel each Sunday. During those years, my learning curve was rapidly ascending, both in terms of my language skills and my role in relation to the congregation. They had several names for me, including “Padre Guillermo,” and more recently, “Abuelo,” meaning “Grandfather.” The latter is perhaps my favorite name. On Christmas Eve 2018 our granddaughter Sophia was born, and in December of 2022, our grandson Georgie joined his sister. Our twin grandchildren Jack and Alice—age 7 (who call me “Granddaddy,”) were born in March of 2017, so I am now un abuelo multiplicado por quatro or, a grandfather times four!
Sophia and George Harkins
Jack and Alice Harkins
So, how am I living into this new normal of being a grandfather, and how has it changed my ministry,
May 1. 2024
“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians
Among my favorite pieces of music is John Coltrane’s iconic composition “A Love Supreme,” recorded in December of 1964. Coltrane’s gift to us was a declaration that his musical devotion was now intertwined with his faith in God, a spiritual quest that grew out of his personal troubles and addiction. The album was recorded in one session on December 9, 1964, in a studio in New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones. Of that experience, Coltrane said, “I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening… leading me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.” After running the NYC marathon in 1979 I joined a group of college friends at the Cookery, in Greenwich Village. McCoy Tyner, who played piano on the recording, was playing piano that evening with the band accompanying the Blues impresario Alberta Hunter. As he began a selection from Coltrane’s album, Tyner said to those of us gathered that night; “It was just such a wonderful experience….we couldn’t really explain why it was… meant to be.
April 24, 2024
God covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills. … God gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.
~ Psalm 147
Somewhere John Muir wrote “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was going in.” As I write, I’m just in from a trail run up to Mt. Oglethorpe on a day of cerulean blues skies and spring breezes. The view from Eagle Rock was lovely, and reminded me of an annual trail run with friends in Colorado, near the confluence of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Roosevelt/Comanche Wilderness Area. An alpine start and half day’s climb to Comanche Peak (12,700’) reveals the crenellated waves of mountains from Wyoming to the north, and the San Juan’s to the south and west. Last year, an unusually heavy snowpack remained well into July. Daily visitations from moose, deer, raven and peregrine falcons—and, based on tracks around the cabin, brown bear enlivened and blessed our sojourn here in the lovely Pingree Valley. And indeed, in going out, I found myself going in, both here in the lovely Southern Appalachians, and in the Colorado Rockies. But what might “going out and going in” mean? Why did Muir find such inward solace outdoors?
Each year for 30 years I have gathered in wilderness settings with friends from Vanderbilt,
April 17, 2024
“The physical structure of the Universe is love. It draws together and unites; in uniting, it differentiates. Love is the core energy of evolution and its goal.”
~ Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy
One of my favorite professors at Vanderbilt University was Dr. John Compton, who taught courses in the philosophy of science, hermeneutics, and phenomenology. He was a brilliant teacher whose father, Arthur Compton, was a Nobel Laureate who worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where John attended High School.
John encouraged us to engage in the dialogue between science and religion, ask tough questions, and enjoy and explore the ambiguous spaces in between. We read Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) which challenged the view of scientific discovery in which progress is generated and accelerated by a particular great scientist. Rather, Kuhn suggested, new discoveries depend on shared theoretical beliefs, values, and techniques of the larger scientific community—what he called the “disciplinary matrix” or “paradigm.”
Building upon this, feminist scholars identified attitudes towards gender and race as among those shared values and beliefs, and suggested that we need to question the way in which histories of science recount who does what, and who gets credit. Evelyn Fox Keller, writing in her book Reflections on Gender and Science, suggested that science is neither as impersonal nor as cognitive as we thought.