Difficult Simple

Fred Rogers has been a friend of mine since before I really understood was a friend was. Sure, he and I never met face-to-face, but he visited with me every day during the week and he’s still around when I need him. He’s taught me a lot and he could teach me still more if I could learn to quiet myself enough to listen.

People make fun of Fred and I suppose that’s their right, though it doesn’t seem quite fair. Fred’s an easy target, what with his funny Pennsylvania accent, his sweaters his mother knitted and his old-fashioned sneakers. I suspect some folks are uncomfortable with his earnestness and his honesty and his very apparent goodness. It can be intimidating, I know, because sometimes I feel the same way about Fred, like I’m not even a good enough person to be his friend.

But as Fred would tell me, everyone makes the day a special day just by being who they are. That means faults and all. Fred didn’t believe that people should never be sad or never be angry. “Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness,” he said. “It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.”

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Perhaps knowing more about the black liberation theology of Rev. Jeremiah Wright will help those put off by him at least understand where he’s coming from.

A few years ago I tried very hard to gain admittance to Episcopal seminary. I had harbored a dream of such entrance since I was thirteen years old, and though for a long time I’d suppressed that dream in pursuit of more “practical” goals, it forced its way back to the surface in my early thirties and refused to go away.

So I sharpened my salesmanship skills and started making contact with my seminaries of choice. One is not far from where I currently live and another is back in my native Texas. Either way, I figured I had a winner on my hands; I could pursue this spiritual goal. And then the politics hit.

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Five years ago today, Fred Rogers died. He was to me as he was to many of you reading this: a good friend and neighbor who will forever be missed. In fact, it’s difficult for me to write this words even now without tearing up. And maybe I am tearing up a little.

A couple of years ago I went through a very difficult time. I had undergone extensive surgery to my upper and lower jaws and complications of aftercare meant yet another surgery and a battery of drugs and a long recovery that continues to this day. Because I wasn’t allowed to do much for weeks and weeks, I spent hours just sitting in bed: trying to sleep, trying to read, trying to surf the internet. Anything to take the edge off.

During that period an email dropped into my inbox from author Amy Hollingsworth. She had been searching around the internet for references to her book, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers, and discovered an entry I’d made in a former incarnation of this blog in which I expressed my deep admiration for the work and for Fred Rogers. I had, shortly before my surgery, been trying to reestablish a relationship with my long-estranged father and decided to send him a copy of Simple Faith along with The Message in order that we might have something positive to discuss outside of our rocky history.

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I have been estranged from the Episcopal Church, the church of my youth and the one where I have found the most solace, largely because of its abandonment of what I believe to be a core principle: independence.

Episcopalianism is related to the Anglican tradition founded and exemplified by the Church of England, but when the United States became a nation unto itself there was likewise a need to separate our churches from their churches; it won’t do for the state church of our colonial oppressors to be the mainstream American church. We gained our independence politically and religiously at that time, but there’s been a disturbing tendency, particularly in recent years, toward yoking ECUSA to the CoE. In essence, returning to the bad old days.

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