by SUZANNE CLOUD

He first met the Rev. Ron Parker when I was booked one Sunday for a jazz vespers at the Christ Church Ithan in Villanova. When I heard that the Episcopal priest would be playing guitar with the band, I winced, figuring it was another rerun of a wannabe musician hosting a jazz gig to play with the big boys. Little did I know that "Father Ron," as the musicians call him, IS one of the big boys.

This Philadelphian's music background is aces (Combs College grad), and his life story reads like a boy-makes-good fairy tale. He opened with the Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields Broadway hit Sweet Charitywith Gwen Verdon in 1966, played in the pit band to Burt Bacharach's Promises, Promises, jammed and toured with jazz drummer Chico Hamilton and, in 1967, accompanied the legendary Judy Garland in her third and final appearance at The Palace in New York resulting in a bestselling album. He formed a music center with Paul Simon's brother (Yes, THAT Paul Simon) where a young Ben Stiller (Yes, THAT Ben Stiller) turned up as one of his guitar students.

Leading a musician's dream life, Parker was not only not scrambling for gigs, he was hanging out with some of his idols like bebop guitarist Jimmy Rainey. But something wasn't right. "I was starting to get depressed because I had done everything I'd wanted to do and I kept saying to myself, like the Peggy Lee song, ‘Is That All There Is?’ I was sitting in St. Thomas' Church at 5th Avenue one day and thinking about Jimmy Rainey and his drinking [problem] … I didn't want that kind of life for myself … I kind of felt incomplete. I felt there was something else … in music you're serving yourself most of the time and I wanted more."

Doing a complete epiphanic turnaround, Parker entered the Episcopal General Seminary and supported himself playing the show Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris in 1975. In 1980, he received his master’s in pastoral ministry and six years later his D. Min degree in comparative religion from The Graduate Theological Foundation at Notre Dame in Indiana. As Rev. Parker's ministry took off and began to occupy his time, his guitar was left to languish. It wasn't until Parker landed at Christ Church Ithan in 1993 that the music bug began biting him again — hard. When he hooked up again with boyhood friend jazz pianist Father John D'Amico (a former priest!) he decided to indulge "my dual personality" and started the jazz vespers the first Sunday of every month. He told me, "It brings people to church who wouldn't ordinarily come to church and the people who usually come to church found that jazz wasn't as frightening as they thought. The other people find that church isn't as frightening as they thought too."

This summer, Rev. Parker spent time at Oxford in England, but not within the serene "Harry Potterish" ivied halls. Parker was ministering to the poor in a church on the infamous Cowley Road where hard-up and old-hat British rock groups play the pubs amid what one magazine called the area's "squalid glory." Along with the drinking establishments, the district is an eclectic mix of kebab shops, health clinics, sex shops and curry houses. Parker told me, "It was a mixture of all kinds of people from India and Pakistan, along with white working class Brits … a whole cross-section of humanity."

I'm such a political junkie that I had to ask Rev. Parker about his thoughts on our current occupation of Iraq. He sighed deeply and said, "War is a failure of diplomacy. We don't appear to be any more civilized then when the British painted their faces blue and lived in trees. … St. Augustine [referring to Augustine's Just War concept] was ignored.” I wanted to know what Parker thought of George Bush placing the impetus for going to war into religious terms, of Good vs. Evil, and he sincerely told me that "Jesus said, 'Call no man good,'" but then just as quickly and impishly quoted Mae West in the same breath aping her immortal phrase, "Goodness has nothing to do with it honey." Later he anguished, "I just think it's so sad. What was the reasoning behind this? I think we've gone backward and we're doing things for selfish, selfish reasons. It's about oil and it's about politics." Lastly, I wondered how his congregation was dealing with this and he was somewhat circumspect. "Some are definitely for the war, but many of the women are turning around because of the young people that are being killed." He described himself as a "C.S. Lewis kind of guy" in that he prefers Lewis' quiet metaphorical way of helping folks deal with moral dilemmas. 

Truth be told, ever since I got beat up by a bunch of kids outside our local Methodist church after choir practice in the late ‘60s, I haven't been much of a churchgoer. I figured if religion turned out creeps like that, who needs it? Oddly, though, I have always had an abiding interest in belief systems and how spirituality can give coherence to someone's life. It wasn't until I started singing at jazz vesper services many years later that I warmed up to the type of gentle celebration evoked in a gathering of shared support and good will. Okay, I'm still an avowed agnostic and think that the book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is right up there with The Bible, but my shoulders aren't quite as stiff now when I walk into a house of worship.

Rev. Ron Parker isn't one for sneering oratory such as the recent remarks by Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin and some evangelicals who love to play the my-God's-better-than-your-God game. He isn't judgmental and preachy about what folks should and shouldn't cleave to. His tranquil humor and self-deprecation clears him a easy path to any group of people so they can settle in, relax and listen to something soulful without feeling put upon. The mix of music and contemplation works very well. It's a "good hang" and Parker's got a "good ear," as we say in the jazz biz. And he plays a helluva guitar.

The Jazz Vespers take place at Christ Church Ithan, 536 Conestoga Rd. in Villanova on the first Sunday of every month starting at 7 p.m. For more information, call 610-688-1110.