Inside the Santa Ynez Valley Magazine Spring 2003 Edition

The wit and wisdom of Father Stacy.
by Brooke Comer

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Father Chuck Stacy s voice sounds muffled when he answers the phone and I ask if I m interrupting his lunch. He assures me that I m not. I was picking out some new hymns on my clarinet. They re pretty wild. I brought them back from New Zealand.

Where did they come from? I ask. An aboriginal tribe?

No, says Stacy. I got them from a Methodist. Down in the south islands of New Zealand there are a lot of Presbyterians, but there happens to be a Methodist who writes good hymns. They re really wild! They re melodic and traditional, yet they speak to modern situations. That s a lot of who I am too; a combination of old and new. There s something comforting about an old, basic truth, that can t always be expressed in a modern way. I m always interested in the new, but I like to go back and wallow in the old because it feels good.

Stacy grew up in an integrated neighborhood in the flatlands of West Berkeley. His father was a businessman who became an episcopal priest when Stacy was in the sixth grade. His mother was a social worker, and his paternal grandfather, who also lived in Berkeley, ran the heating plant at the University.

Berkeley was a quiet place in the 50s, Stacy recalls. Students couldn't vote until they were 21 then. He describes a tranquil childhood, bicycling and playing his clarinet, two pastimes he still enjoys. I ve always found interesting things to see and do on a bike, he observes.

Integrated neighborhoods were not the norm in America in the early 50 s and Stacy believes there was something special about growing up in such a unique environment. His childhood friends were African Americans whose parents had come from west Louisiana and East Texas to work in the shipyards, Japanese children who d been born in the camps, Mexicans who d turned from field work to factory work. And there were a few white kids like myself.

Stacy and his childhood playmates have kept in touch and held a reunion about ten years ago. We all felt fortunate to have grown up in such a racially mixed neighborhood. It was a big plus in our lives. We all turned out well. One of his young friends, Lalita Tademy, grew up to pen the bestseller Cane River. As an undergrad at U.C. Davis majoring in economics, Stacy had no idea he d end up in the pulpit.

I was interested in the politics and philosophy of numbers, the thinking behind the formulas. When a professor recommended an article in the New Yorker on the God is Dead movement, Stacy picked it up and found the piece so moving that he enrolled in the Divinity School of the Pacific upon graduation.

It wasn't my father s influence, he explains, that steered me towards religion. I d spent my junior year in Freiburg, Germany and I really didn't want to leave. It was 1965 and I was depressed when I returned to Davis. That article in the New Yorker, which was a three part series on Modern Theology, talked about a certain expression of God that had become so removed from reality that in effect, God was dead. From a philosophical theological perspective, you could argue that they buried that God too quickly, as an element of that God does exist. I thought, This is what I ve been looking for and off I went to Divinity School.

Stacy met and married his wife, Shirley, during his studies and when he completed his degree they moved to the outer Mission District in San Francisco, where he joined a High Episcopal church. The first time someone called me Father, I turned around to see who he was talking to.

He worked with a former Franciscan priest in a community redevelopment agency and got an M.S. at San Francisco State in vocational rehabilitation counseling. The counseling skills he learned became very important in Stacy s life, because I came to conclude that psychology is really theology without the theo, the theo being God. The people at school didn't get it; I was a happy priest and they were used to disgruntled clergy who wanted to learn a new trade.

When Stacy completed his M.S. degree, he moved his family, which now included a son, Peter, to Carmel, where his daughter Sarah was born. To my surprise, I liked it there, he admits. I got rid of my West Berkeley chip which was that I knew nothing about people with money. Carmel opened my eyes to a new economic group. But I liked these people. I could socialize with them and not feel that I was selling my soul. Carmel prepared Stacy for Santa Ynez Valley.

Brooks Firestone had recently moved to the Valley from the Carmel area, where he worshiped at Stacy s church, All Saints. There was an empty pulpit at St. Mark s in the Valley, and at Firestone s suggestion, Stacy came south to discuss taking the job. I felt comfortable here right away, comfortable in the old Latin sense of the word, which means to be yourself and be comfortable. I could sense from the beginning, that this place was ripe for change, for something to happen.

Two weeks after the Stacy s moved to Solvang, Shirley won an election to the school board. They d just come out with a disclosure law, and nobody wanted to disclose, says Stacy. We were new, we had nothing to disclose. It was 1976, and the Valley was already beginning to change; fields of alfalfa and horse pastures were being replaced by vineyards, traffic lights made an appearance, and everyone tended to know everyone else, Stacy observes. I was told, when we moved here, that people in the Valley were judged not by what they have but by who they are. There were parties that everybody attended; you d find all kinds of economic groups. A lot of that s been lost over the years. There is no racial mixing because economic policies have racially cleansed the Valley. And that s going to come back to haunt us.

It s haunting us now. The lack of affordable housing is a problem that Stacy feels is not being addressed. A lot of people who rented here can t afford to do so anymore, which I think is a shame. It makes us too much of the same, and it gives us a not very realistic outlook on the reality of the whole world. Some little memorial ought to remain, a little Tijuana on the Avenue of the Flags. We ve kicked a lot of Hispanic people and people not limited to that racial category out of town. They d like to live here but they have no choice. And a lot of people made money on the backs of the poor people by charging exorbitant rents. On the other side, I do know some people who have been very fair and aren't gouging, and there s a special place in heaven for them. It s too bad there aren t more of them.

How can the Valley pull together to help it s own? We live in such a beautiful place, and we should be doing a better job, says Stacy. The hope for the valley, he believes, lies in incorporating into one political entity. Right now we have the county and each city unit, and all the sewage, school and water districts involved. That s nice up to a point. But one political entity could work more efficiently.

Then there's the casino, which is ready to go willy nilly. I m not opposed to the casino, but I believe that it should learn to be a neighbor. The impact of the incredible amount of traffic that the casino attracts is significant. People have worked hard to preserve a sense of ruralness here. And Indians are a sovereign nation; people from other nationalities aren t allowed to make contributions to politicians or organizations. I'll probably lose my scalp for saying that, but it's okay because I ain t got much hair.

St. Mark s underwent a radical new look when it moved from its modest Solvang home to Los Olivos. As a structure, it's very striking, says Stacy, but the structure is just a means to house the things that are happening inside.

And what's happening inside? A senior residence is in the works, much like the Solvang Lutheran Home, a pre-school is under consideration (Catechisis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori-themed Sunday School for pre-school through fourth graders, is popular with St. Mark's youth), the church's Grief Group has published a booklet that s been well received around the world and is used at Cottage Hospital's Psych unit.

And we ve made friends with the Lutherans, says Stacy. He was told that he and Jarmo Tarkki, the Finnish pastor at Bethania Lutheran would like each other, and we do. Actually, the Lutherans and the Episcopals always liked each other, but now it's official. In theory, Jarmo could come over here one Sunday and give a service and vice versa. I thought it would be fun to explore that.

Who is Father Stacy? Advocate for the disenfranchised, clarinetist in the Valley Wind Ensemble, comforter in times of grief. Father Stacy is in part a living myth, says Stacy. I hear all kinds of things about Father Stacy. Sometimes they re true, but they were true yesterday or last week or fifteen years ago, and I find I've moved on from that. One of the most interesting aspects of my life is to have Chuck Stacy stand back and listen to Father Stacy.

The state of the world, not just the valley, has affected Stacy's parishioners especially in the past year. People are very troubled these days, he observes. It's time to look at ourselves and see who we are and how we can relate to each other. I ve seen wonderful examples of that. That s a big issue with us these days. We re intent on making the rest of world like us. Who are we? I don't think we know. So it's time to get to work. That's a tall order. But one thing I'll say about living in the Santa Ynez Valley; when you re down, you can't blame the scenery.