Diatessaron

GONE...reports from Haitian Episcopal Church

2010-01-16T08:59:00.009-05:00

Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Port au Prince (l) completely destroyed by the earthquake along with murals painted by native artists.

The Diocese of Haiti (Eglise Episcopale d'Haiti) is the largest and fastest growing Diocese of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church is a Province of the world-wide Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church comprises the United States and 13 foreign countries (Haiti being one). Below are some notes from folks on the ground in Port au Prince which is the center (and strongest presence) of the Episcopal Church in Haiti.

Jan. 15, 2010: Update from Canon Beauvoir, Dean of the Seminary in Haiti and a priest in the Diocese of New York. The Rev. Canon Oge Beauvoir called the Trinity Grants Program office today by cell phone. Canon Beauvoir reported that he and his wife are safe and staying in a displacement camp organized by the Bishop of Haiti. Canon Beauvoir is providing leadership at the camp, which is holding roughly 1,000 people. The Sisters of St. Margaret are also there helping people. He described grim conditions.

"It is hard to get food and medicine because everything is closed," he said. At this point, they have water, but the camp only has access to one water tank, and the water is running lower. There is a single truck that takes the injured to the hospital and the dead to be buried. The hospital has been turning back some of the injured. "They can't take that many," said Canon Beauvoir. At the time of the earthquake, Canon Beauvoir and his wife were in their home. "I thought the house was going to crash," he said, but they managed to escape without injury. "For the first time I was certain I faced death. I was certain we were going to die." Bishop Duracin's home was destroyed and his wife was injured. She has been brought to a hospital run by Partners in Health, one of the few still open. "The Bishop has nothing left," Canon Beauvoir reported. Before the line failed, Canon Beauvoir described a litany of buildings that had "crashed" - the seminary, the convent, the university, the trade school. "It's scary," he said. -------------------------------------------

January 13, 2010 From The Rev. Ajax Kessner, priest in the Diocese of Haiti and Deputy to General Convention:

Dear Friends in Christ: We have devastating news to share with you from Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake yesterday. According to reports I have received here in Les Cayes, the damage in Port au Prince and areas around it is terrible. There is no Cathedral. The entire Holy Trinity complex is gone. The convent for the Sisters of St. Margaret is gone. The Bishop's house is gone. The College St. Pierre is gone. The apartment for College St. Pierre is still standing. Bishop Duracin no longer has a house in which to live. In Trouin, four people were killed during a service. In Grand Colline, the church is gone.one part of St. Martin of Tours is gone. In St. Etienne Buteau the church, the rectory and the school are gone. In Les Cayes, BTI is OK, but some people were injured trying to get out of the buildings during the quake. The rectory in Les Cayes is in very bad condition.

The Rev. Kesner Ajax Executive Director, Bishop Tharp Institute (BTI)8 Rue du Quai, Cayes>> Tel. Office: 011-509-2286-4676>> 011-509-2286-4677>> Mobile: 011-509-3445-3346>> 011-509-3724-8376>> Mailing address:>> 100 Airport Ave>> Venice Fl. 34285>>>> Or>>>>

Partnership Program Coordinator>> Episcopal Diocese of Haiti>> C/o Lynx Air>> P.O. Box 407139>> Fort Lauderdale, FL 33340

With Tongue Planted Firmly in my Cheek

2009-08-11T08:17:00.010-05:00

Today the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will debate and speak on the appropriateness of LGBT people in partnered relationships to serve God as ordained pastors. Reading a USA Today article, I found myself getting agitated and somewhat angry. It wasn't the reporting--it was actually pretty good--succinct, clear and efficient. No, when I read articles like this there is a certain existential assault on LGBT people that heterosexual may not be able to access. The presumptions that heterosexuals stand on when commenting on the sexuality of others is off-putting. So for illustration purposes, I re-wrote the article with the assumption that heterosexuality was being debated, with the hope that a few straight people (with partners they desperately love in their life) will maybe catch a glimpse of what LGBT people feel when their sexuality is debated....pass this on to any you may feel will be moved, or at least get a chuckle from my monkey-business....

Scott
(the above photo is of ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson)

The nation's largest Lutheran denomination will consider lifting its ban on straight clergy who are in lifelong, monogamous relationships as it gathers this month for a churchwide meeting.
More than 1,000 delegates will debate church policy Aug. 17-23 at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's (ELCA) biennial General Assembly in Minneapolis.
FAITH & REASON: Therapists, pastors agree: Heterosexual identity no block to spiritual growth

As at previous assemblies, the role of heterosexuals in the 4.6 million-member church is expected to be among the most contentious issues on the agenda.

The question is not whether openly straight clergy can be ordained. They already are — as long as they remain celibate. The question is whether they can have committed relationships and still be called to ELCA pulpits. Partnered straight clergy are technically prohibited, though some congregations break the rule without punishment.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Local churches Martin Luther Mark Hanson

Like most mainline Protestant churches, the ELCA has been deeply divided for decades over heterosexuality and how to interpret what the Bible says about it.

After much discussion, in 2001 the church formed a task force to study the matter in depth; several years later the same task force was asked to make policy recommendations that would be put to a churchwide vote.

This month, those proposals will come before the voting members in Minneapolis for their consideration. Among the proposals are a 30-page social statement that defines the church's position on sexuality and a four-step plan to lift the ban on partnered straight ministers.

If adopted by the assembly, the four-step plan would remove the blanket ban on non-celibate heterosexual clergy and empower local congregations and governing bodies to make their own decisions on whether to allow them.

The social statement can pass with a two-thirds majority vote, while the four-step plan requires a simple majority.

But the latter undertaking may be easier said than done, since even the task force could not reach consensus within its own ranks, finishing with three dissenting opinions.

"It's our best attempt at trying to deal with the reality that over the years of our study our church has not come to consensus and is not likely to in the foreseeable future," said the Rev. Peter Strommen, a former bishop who chaired the sexuality task force.

To ease concerns, the resolutions stipulate that congregations do not have to hire ministers in opposite-sex unions. On the other hand, congregations would be allowed to keep their openly heterosexual pastor without fear of repercussions.

The Rev. Bradley Schmeling of St. John's Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Ga., informed his bishop after committing to a life partnership; following an ecclesial trial, he was removed from the ELCA's roster of clergy in 2007.

But Schmeling's church has kept him in the pastorate, and the current bishop has not pursued disciplinary actions against the congregation.

"It's true that I probably wouldn't be called to a rural community in the Midwest but that shouldn't mean I shouldn't be called in a context that's more diverse and open," Schmeling said.
In the end, the ELCA could take baby steps instead of a leap. The task force has tried something new, proposing four interconnected resolutions, which must pass alone and in the following order:

• The ECLA is committed to allowing congregations and synods to recognize and support "lifelong, monogamous, opposite-gender relationships."

• The ELCA is committed to finding a way for people in such relationships to serve as clergy in the church.

• The ELCA agrees to respect the consciences of churchmembers who disagree on the issue.

• The ELCA agrees to remove the blanket ban on partnered straight clergy.

Any of the resolutions can be revised from the floor of the assembly. "If it doesn't appeal to people, it was either inadequate or way ahead of its time," Strommen said.

The ELCA assembly comes on the heels of the Episcopal Church's decision last month to lift its de facto ban on straight bishops and develop rites for opposite-sex unions.

"We've been paying pretty close attention to the Episcopal Church it should really be a warning to the ELCA of going down the path of approving in any way of opposite-sex relationships," said the Rev. Mark Chavez, director of Lutheran CORE, a conservative group. "They are on the verge of triggering what may be a schism within the whole Anglican Communion."

Chavez said Lutheran CORE is fighting the ELCA proposals "because it completely disregards the clear words in Scripture giving boundaries for sexual relationships as a lifelong relationship of one man/woman and one man/woman."

Scripture remains a paramount concern in the debate, and no wonder: Lutherans trace their roots to Martin Luther, who believed in "sola scriptura," — that the Bible contains everything necessary for salvation.

"One thing 'sola scriptura' is not is a way of expressing that the Bible is to be taken literally, exactly as written," said Phil Soucy, spokesperson for Lutherans Concerned, a pro-straight advocacy group. "...We do pray for straight rights, and full inclusion is very much within the message of the Gospel and the message of Christ."

Coming Into Los Angeles

2009-07-05T18:52:00.001-05:00

I will be blogging at this site during General Convention....

http://comingintolosangeles.blogspot.com/

OFF TO THE CITY OF ANGELS!

My Silver Jubilee

2009-04-07T08:12:00.004-05:00

It was 25 years ago today (in chronos), on the Saturday in the Week of Lent IV (in kairos), that the Rt. Rev. Robert Poland Atkinson laid hands on me in Trinity Church, Parkersburg, WV and asked the Holy Spirit to "make me a priest" in the Church. My seminary field-work supervisor, The Rev. Jim Bradley (of St.Paul's Church in New Haven and now Rector of St. John's Waterbury, CT) was the preacher and used the the words of an architect and reworked them to apply to priesthood by calling me to "provide a space for God's People to become who God created them to be". It was a powerful sermon, as Jim was and is one of the best preachers I have ever heard.

I was somewhat dismayed that I didn't really feel different than I did the day before, I wondered if it really took. One of my presenters, The Rev. Sandye Wilson (now a priest in Newark) knelt and asked me for a blessing right after the liturgy---that felt silly and awkward to me, wet behind the ears, ink not yet dry on my ordination certificate--but I blessed her as best I felt I could! I remember the people coming forward the next morning to receive Holy Communion after my first celebration of the Holy Eucharist at 8 o'clock Eucharist at Trinity Church in Parkersburg, WV (where I was Curate and Ken Price was the Rector) and thinking "These poor people, they actually believe this is real!". But looking into their faces as they held out their hands I realized that it was real.

Much like Baptism and Confirmation the sacrament sets us on a journey of revelation of who we really are. The Church and the Holy Spirit formed me into this vocation over the years. Learning to pray through the Prayer Book came much later in my ministry where I could actually pray rather than worry about the mechanics of presiding and preaching. Its an acquired charism we receive through the prayers, ministries and associations with The People of God. Seminary never prepares one fully for what is to come--it just provides the first toolbox and some crude tools with which to fashion ministry---the "good" tools come much later! It hasn't been an easy road for me. To integrate who God created me to be AND my vocation has had its rough places, difficult times and sorrow. Unlike others, my personal life and vocation have been in conflict in public ways that haven't always been pleasant. I need to acknowledge my children who have had to put up with not just one parent who is a priest but TWO! A "blessing" I would not wish on any child!

Reflecting on the past 25 years I have seen lots of change in the Church (mostly positive). I am proud of the Episcopal Church and its witness to a non-confessional, praying Christianity and its ability to be resilient in the face of the chances and changes of life...its ability to contain within it a catholicism that allows for divergent understandings of our pilgrimage as a Community of the Baptized. I pray that my contributions in ministry have helped bring forth the harvest that is promised by God to all who put themselves in his/her hands. The prayers of the Episcopal Church has arms, legs, heart and mind attached.

One of the poems someone gave me the day of my ordination has kept me honest in this vocational path. Its a prayer by poet John Ciardi (1918-1986). I first kept it in my Prayer Book, scotch taped in as a reminder of the humility and uncertainty that is our call to holiness. I share it with you:

Palaver's No pray-er
PALAVER'S no pray-er.
There's a nice-ninny priest
at tea in everyone,
all cozy and chatty as auntie,
but a saint comes
and throws rocks through the window.

Ironic perhaps. True, absolutely! Thank you for the privilege of this amazing, terrifying and awesome vocation. I couldn't have arrived here without God's grace and your prayers and ministry!

For the Bible Tells Me So

2009-03-31T20:39:00.005-05:00

I recently was able to view "For The Bible Tells Me So" which is a documentary film about gay and lesbian people's journeys as people of faith raised in Churches which gave them various (usually negative) messages about themselves and how they claimed their lives as l/g/b/t people (or didn't).

Recent Prop 8 "post mortem" reports from California claims that the coalition of Mormon, Roman Catholic and Fundamentalist Churches caused its defeat. Alas.

It is hard for gay Christians to stand firm in all of this, knowing the truth deep within them, knowing that it was not "choice" but innate wiring that is not bad, evil, perverted or intrinsically disordered. I hope that things are changing--it seems they are, no matter how slow and ponderous the movement forward may seem. I grieve those who are still filled with self-hating and self-loathing because of what God made them to be. A gay teen is twice as likely to kill themselves even with the loosening of societal prohibitions.

I am not one that is fixated on "Gay Marriage", I believe that the word "marriage" itself is somewhat wounded by heterosexuals, and is so wrapped in religious tradition, that it may be faulty language to do battle over. I do believe that there needs to be legal, religious and social mechanisms for two people of the same gender to receive the same benefits--inheritance, child custody, medical visitation/decision making, tax credits, health benefits etc etc---that heterosexuals receive. If they call it "Civil Union" or "Civil Partnership" and it has the same benefits for same-gender couples as heterosexual marriage, then that is OK --- if it walks like a duck....

Until we have role models for LGBT Youth, heterosexual society, and the larger gay community, then LGBT couples will be considered marginal and freaky by the culture. Until a Church can truly celebrate its same gender couples --- their union and anniversary --- then we have not come that far from Stonewall.

It is my daily prayer that this issue will be resolved soon, as it is divisive in our communities and destructive to people of both orientations. I do not believe that it can be a "states rights" issue. What if that were true of heterosexual couples--you would be married in Massachusetts, but when you move to Pennsylvania you would have no relational status. No. It must be decided by national law and will most likely end up in the Supreme Court (as all civil rights issues do). Its too important and too large to leave to state legislatures.

Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. What he did say was that faithful and long-term love was the highest value. Its what he showed, its what he lived. I would not have been surprised to find Jesus in a gay bar. An Episcopal Bishop once asked one of his gay priests if he would wear his collar into a gay bar. The priest responded that he would not as he felt it might bring scandal to the Church. The bishop replied "Well, that's what separates you from Jesus".

Its pretty clear that St. Paul and the other epistle writers were unclear in what they meant when we translated it to mean homosexual relationships. They had no idea that there was any other category than heterosexual orientation. We ignore much of scriptures "irrational passages"....but take as Gospel truth those that do not effect us, but another class.

I know Christianity has a great deal to offer the gay community and vice versa. I just fear that neither will have the chance to truly know and love each other.

I Was Homeless and you Gave Me Shelter

2009-02-17T07:25:00.003-05:00

For the last few weeks my parish has opened its parish hall on Friday evenings for those who need shelter from the nights we have had with temperatures dipping into the teens and twenties. It was a risk for this parish, a world they had only known from a distance as they always helped other parishes and institutions in serving food and volunteering at Food Pantries. And while this was good, it also didn't impact the parish as a whole, but mainly individuals.

At first we did it with an idealistic zeal as a good thing to do, not as a responsibility. Most of the volunteers were green in dealing with the homeless. Many of them expected the "humble poor" dressed in rags who would be grateful for a place to stay. They didn't expect them to show up in down parkas, most with varying degrees of mental illness and/or addiction, some perfectly sane, some are angry, some are not.

When I was at the Catholic Worker in New York City in the early 1980's I learned a great deal about living with the homeless of the Bowery and St. Mark's area. Living with the homeless was an eye opening experience. Most at the Catholic Worker had some form of mental or developmental disability. They formed a community that was held together by faith and hope and love. Did it change them? Well, it didn't change their mental issues and it didn' change their highly idiosyncratic personalities. While we didn't try and change them directly, we ask everyone to act with respect and in a non-violent manner. There were consequences for violent behavior and disrespect (usually "time out" from the shelter for a time until repentance could take hold).

While there Dorothy Day had posted a quote from St. Vincent DePaul which I never forgot:

You will find out that Charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not enough to give soup and bread. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting master you will see. And the uglier and the dirtier they will be, the more unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them. It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them.

This quote is a mystery (and a tad offensive, maybe) to those who are giving up their time to help someone in need, but its true. One thing that I find is that most people want to be independant. We get angry and grouchy when our life depends on the good will or cooperation of another. Human Beings are mostly wired to take care of themselves when they reach adulthood. It's a self-esteem issue. When we can't it upsets us. Many of our guests resent being homeless for they are there for a variety of reasons: rejection by family and friends, health reasons as one of the guys had cancer and was rendered asset-less from the treatments with no medical insurance, others are on that first step to recovery from addiction to alcohol or drugs, others had economic disasters beyond their control visited upon them.

When we serve the poor to make us feel good we will soon run out of steam. They don't respond the way we want often. They make us nervous, feel vulnerable, sometimes take us for granted. I always go back to St. Vincent's quote when I have times like this.

One must have some sense of a higher power who asks us to be love in the world. Its hard as hell, but it is requested nonetheless. As I have studied all major world religions there is not one that says God doesn't require inconvenient love of us. So there must be truth there.

I learn about myself--I am pushed up against my selfishness, pride and limited ability to love when I actually live with the poor for an evening. Instead of interacting with them, I resist. I notice spending all my time in the kitchen with people "like me" rather than our guests as a shelter from these truths.

Its a process to love the poor. We must see ourselves in them. We must listen to their yearnings, desires and hopes and hear the echo's of that in our own heart and life. Its not hard but it is an act of the will to be exposed to the humanity of the poor.

Keith Olberman on Prop 8 (watch!)

2008-11-11T10:01:00.003-05:00

This Happened Because of You

2008-11-05T01:13:00.006-05:00

It was 11 o'clock when David Gregory announced that Barak Obama was the President-elect of the United States. I was on the bed with my dog after coming in from spending most of the evening at a friend's house. I think we will all use this as a defining moment such as where were you when Kennedy was assassinated or when the World Trade Center Towers came down. The difference of course is that this evening will be one of those positive events that gets embedded in our memory and consciousness.

It is a watershed moment in American history no doubt. Barak Obama will become the 44th President of the United States and live in a house that was originally built by slaves. Its not all about race, but race is not inconsequential. Blacks and Hispanics could not have elected Barak Obama President alone. White, Asian, Jewish, Native American, and Middle Eastern Americans were part of this amazing election. And this goes a long way to heal wounds that have been too long open between us as Americans. That is my hope and my confidence in this event.

But now this newly elected President and Congress has to govern. In the midst of a predicted 1 year Recession ahead of us, the pressing issues on the international scene and domestic issues that seem insurmountable, the new Administration will have to govern to clear the high bar many of us have set. Ideals now will have the tedious task of being put into practice and the hope is that the new Administration can build on the broad based coalition put together for this remarkable run to the White House---Republicans, Independents, and the rainbow of races, economic groups, ages, sexual orientations and genders that make up our great nation.

While I will revel in this moment, I have no illusions about the job we have placed in the hands of this Senator from Illinois. Many of those of us who contributed, volunteered and worked for the campaign received the following note just after the announcement by the networks that Obama had prevailed. I think it conveys the humility and truth of where we go from here:

I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first. We just made history. And I don't want you to forget how we did it. You made history every single day during this campaign -- every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it's time for change. I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign. We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next. But I want to be very clear about one thing... All of this happened because of you. Thank you, Barack

Thank you, Barak, for bringing this diverse country together this evening and help us support you through our own commitment to address the many needs of our beloved nation.

World Series Champions!

2008-10-30T08:03:00.002-05:00

It's PHANTASTIC!

Martini is not shy about her World Series choice

2008-10-26T18:19:00.003-05:00

Go Phils! ARF!

Gay priest is true to his faith, at odds with his church

2008-10-26T12:59:00.002-05:00

Father Geoffrey Farrow is a longtime Catholic priest who revealed recently that he is gay and opposed to Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that would overturn the California Supreme Court's decision earlier this year allowing same-sex marriage. As a result, Farrow has been stripped of his job as a parish priest in Fresno, including his salary and health benefits.

Read it all in the LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez26-2008oct26,0,6908782.column?track=rss

Tina and Will at it Again!

2008-10-24T07:31:00.001-05:00

Phillies 3 Tampa Bay 2

2008-10-22T23:23:00.003-05:00

Elwyn Tinklenberg, step to the front of the line!

2008-10-21T20:12:00.009-05:00

Elwyn Tinlenberg

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) recently told Chris Matthew's on Hardball that many in congress (including Barak Obama) were "anti-American" because either they were "liberals" or "leftist". Not long afterwards Elwyn Tinklenberg http://www.tinklenberg08.com/ (her opponent) who was out-spent by Bachman and behind in the polls raised over $800,000 after this interview and now its a statistical dead heat. Look at what got Ms. Bachmann in such a precarious position:

Michelle Bachman (R-MN)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJIQm_7YAUI

Someone should tell her how to pronounce Saul Alinsky's name.....

Xenophobia, Racism, and the healing of White America

2008-10-16T22:32:00.006-05:00

The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women's group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.

The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

The GOP newsletter, which was sent to about 200 members and associates of the group by e-mail and regular mail last week, is drawing harsh criticism from members of the political group, elected leaders, party officials and others as racist.

An Inland Republican women’s group sent out a newsletter showing this fake $10 “food stamp” with Barack Obama’s face on it.

The group's president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club's meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

"It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don't want to go into it any further," Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn't my attempt."

Fedele said she got the illustration in a number of chain e-mails and decided to reprint it for her members in the Trumpeter newsletter because she was offended that Obama would draw attention to his own race. She declined to say who sent her the e-mails with the illustration.

She said she doesn't think in racist terms, pointing out she once supported Republican Alan Keyes, an African-American who previously ran for president.

"I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else."

She said she also wasn't trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: "Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!"

Today I had a particularly revealing conversation with my brother who used Barrack Hussein Obama when referring to the Democratic Presidential candidate. It’s no secret that he is fully in the Neocon camp of Carl Rove and company. When I asked him why he felt compelled to use Barack Obama’s middle name he said something lame like “This is the United States of America…our enemy was Saddam Hussein….” and so on.

I find it fascinating that we don't hear Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. , John Sidney McCain, or Sarah Louise Heath Palen. No. Only Senator Obama gets that singular treatment by his opponents. Why do you think that is? It is naive to play dumb here. Ms.Fedele (see above) says she had no idea it would be percieved as racist. Really? Lets see, a black person with fried chicken, watermelon, a rack of ribs and some kool-aid is not racist? Would a person of Asian descent find rice bowls, sushi, slide rules and glasses with buck teeth on the character non-offensive? Or a Jew with money, dreidels, yellow stars and bagels floating around be amused? No. While we all have ethnic characteristics, they are a point of identity, not for use by or to be satirized by persons of other origins for ridicule.

I informed my brother that American citizens had first, middle and last names like Adolph, Benito, Hirohito, Juan, Fidel, Miguel and so on. They were born here, they don’t look like Western Europeans, but where born and grew up in places like Honolulu, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. They are Americans. Perhaps only second or third generation, but Americans nonetheless.

We are told that this is the last election where the majority of electorate will be white. So be it. The America I believe in (and love, and am quite proud of) has welcomed those of non-white and non-European immigrants for 232 years. It has honored the words of the Declaration of Independence and those carved on a statue in New York harbor. If you welcome all people, all people (eventually) are going to get the idea that democracy is for everyone and maybe run for public office.

This might be America’s chance to really put racism behind us, to open all avenues to all races which would be a water shed for our nation so racked with racism and xenophobia in many quarters all these years. The`formerly white Wesetrn European majority can learn that being in the minority may not be the worst thing in the world. It would be a shining moment for our country and yet another reason to embrace and hold dear “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.

Maverick Unpacked

2008-09-23T21:28:00.006-05:00

A maverick is an unbranded, feral range animal, especially a motherless calf; it can also mean a person who shows independence of thought or action; a lone dissenter; a non-conformist or rebel.

A feral organism is one that has escaped from domestication and returned, partly or wholly, to its wild state. The introduction of feral animals or plants, like any introduced species, can disrupt ecosystems and may, in some cases, contribute to extinction of indigenous species. From the Wikipedia

OK, I (like you) have always thought that the image of a maverick was inspiring---a horse that ruins free, unfettered by human notions and desires, escaping captivity and able to do the unpredictable. I used to think of it as positive when it came to politicians. I no longer think it’s a flattering image in that a President has to be steady, dependable, thoughtful, taking into accounts many sides of complex issues---able to work within the structures and cultures in which a President is always called to work. To be unpredictable, idiosyncratic, without loyalties or webs of relationships seems like a bad place to start. How do I know this? Lets see….

We have had a Texas cowboy as President, who might also qualify as an independent thinker, often ignoring the counsel of his closest advisors, acting unilaterally and free of party or relational bias, ignoring the warnings and cautions of Congress. It is what got us into Iraq which we need to remember was based on a tissue of lies told by a true cowboy rearing on his horse and brandishing a Colt 45.

It dawned on me, thanks to a news commentator that the last few times Congress was told that they MUST act in a short time frame was the Iraq War and the “Patriot Act”. They still remember that—thank God—which may explain their anger, frustration and resistance to be rushed by this new Bush crisis. For all the complaining I believe the House and Senate are trying to be thoughtful, responsible and accountable to the American tax payer.

Brett Maverick is a fictitious character based on a TV series by Warner Brothers in the 50s. His name originally means being independent and nonconformist with wandering from place to place. He and his brother Bart are gamblers who migrate from town to town always looking for a good game in order to make lots of money. They prefer playing poker or any other gambles and often get into trouble with law. Instead of fighting they prefer leaving town.

http://www.linguakonzept.de/Praxis/Wild%20West%20Heroes/heroes/maverick.htm

While the above description of James Garner’s original role (which my family watched religiously when I was a child) is a great TV role, I am not sure it describes the desirable characteristics of a President of the United States. I've had enough Westerns for a decade.

The Big Bail

2008-09-23T08:08:00.003-05:00

Perhaps you, like me, were somewhat anxious when the news of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG were announced with all the anxiety and language of impending Depression and world-wide economic melt down. The Treasurer of the United States, Hank Paulson, was on TV saying that the only way to prevent this was to hand a blank check of $700 billion to the genius's on Wall Street who began this process by selling money to folks who were bad risks or who were over-extended as it was. Mortgage backed securities, derivatives as they are referred to, have begun a domino collapse in our economy. The solution is to saddle each man,woman and child in America with $2,300 of debt.

Immediately the Presidential campaign's reacted to this news/crisis. John McCain's solution was to "fire" the head of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and Barak Obama's response was more cautious, reflective and thoughtful with no immediate action recommended. What one was better?

I believe we have come through eight years of knee-jerk reaction with a President who reacts with his "gut" when advisers recommend otherwise. The time for Mavericks and Cowboys is over for a while I hope. A quick decisive action which may be completely wrong headed, may convey leadership to some people. Not me.

I believe that Obama's reaction was the correct one---this is a complex, detailed and highly volatile situation. No one seems to have a handle on the whole picture. While a reaction may save Wall Street, it may also encourage bad behavior on the part of Wall Street. If we don't act in some way, the regular guy on the street will surely suffer untold financial disaster.

What needs to happen is to help Wall Street enough to make sure the local homeowner and credit card consumer is protected. The multi-million dollar salaries of Wall Street corporate execs should be their problem. Not ours. Telling Boards of Directors how they should pay their staff is micromanaging an issue the government is not equipped to micromanage.

And that's the point. A knee jerk solution usually ends up micromanaging a "piece" of a crisis without the time needed to truly do a systemic analysis of a rotten system and to make it healthier and better not only for the economy but also the average person who is not (and never will be) a millionaire.

Now is a time for clear and level headed people to prevail. Quick fixes will yield quick and short term results. Its time we take stock of how free the "free market" should be allowed to run. What is the appropriate role of regulation without throwing the baby out with the bath water. I hope that Congress will act in this manner and help us all learn that greed, short-term quick yields and unfettered capitalism is not the answer to a healthy and productive economy to work for everybody.

Tina Fey Rocks

2008-09-16T18:56:00.001-05:00

If anyone can outdo Tina Fey doing Governor Sarah Palin I say "Bring it On!"

Half Truths and Total Lies They Tell

2008-09-13T11:44:00.006-05:00

1) Sarah Palin stopped the “Bridge to No Where”

2) Barak Obama sponsored a bill to promote sex education for kindergartners in Illinois.

3) Barak Obama will raise taxes

4) Barak Obama called Sarah Palin a “pig”

5) Sarah Palin sold the Governor’s jet on E-bay for profit.

Now the facts:

1) Sarah Palin was for the “Bridge to No Where” until CONGRESS pulled the plug on it and it became so unpopular in Alaska that it was prudent to put the final nail in its coffin.

(This from “their” own “Heritage Foundation”—a conservative think tank-- notice the absence of Sarah Palin’s name.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm889.cfm )

And from St. Petersburg Times:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.politifact.com/media/img/tom-halftrue.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/personalities/sarah-palin/&h=75&w=84&sz=4&hl=en&start=54&um=1&usg=__kKldvkAElFMrHb7YGah3xJZ8ljk=&tbnid=MLIEIwLSil69HM:&tbnh=68&tbnw=76&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbridge%2Bto%2Bnowhere%2Balaska%2BSarah%2BPalin%2BT%2BShirt%26start%3D36%26ndsp%3D18%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

2) Barak Obama introduced legislation in the Illinois Legislature to protect Kindergartner’s from sexual predators. The legislation allowed local school boards to teach "age-appropriate" sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/155/story/52169.html

3) Both candidates seem to ignore the spiraling national debt but both will cut taxes for those making under $200,000, but Obama’s plan provides more tax relief for the lower, more middle class brackets, while raising taxes to Clinton levels for the far upper reaches of the income bracket. The Washington Post provides a good “snapshot” of tax proposals here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/09/ST2008060900950.html

4) See my last post….

5) The truth is that Palin couldn't find a buyer last year when she tried to peddle to plane on eBay - and lost the state money when she did sell it.

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/09/05/2008-09-05_story_that_sarah_palin_sold_alaska_state.html

So now, when are we going to call these half-truths and lies what they are and start talking about the gloomy economy, the war on terrorism (which never was the war in Iraq), energy policy, health care and public education?

And what are "they" hiding with all of this distraction?

And a final video if you aren't convinced yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH0xzsogzAk

And We Talked about Lipstick....

2008-09-11T07:05:00.008-05:00

In the last week we have heard that unemployment hit 6% which is an 8 year high. We also heard that the Wall Street firm of Lehman Brothers lost 3.9 billion dollars last quarter. OPEC is lowering production which will undoubtedly drive the price of oil up due to the onset of heating season in the Northern Hemisphere. Health care is at a crisis with 50 million Americans flying without a net health care wise. Our educational systems are performing at rates lower than most other industrialized countries with whom we are engaged in global competition. Today we also remember the tragedy of the attack on the World Trade Center seven years ago ushering in a two front war in which we are still engaged and in which our young people in the military and civilians in the theater of operations are still dying daily.

Enter all of this the Presidential Election process. Yesterday the media swarmed onto a comment made by Barak Obama about the McCain/Palin ticket that besides their Energy Policy, Foreign Policy, Educational Policy, Economic Policy and Carl Rove politics they were “change” agents. “Its like putting lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.” The McCain campaign immediately accused the Obama campaign with sexism and calling the Republican Vice Presidential candidate a pig. The stretch was predicated upon a comment made by Sarah Palin in her acceptance speech about hockey Moms as “Pit Bulls with lipstick”.

Really? Enough! The press went into a feeding frenzy yesterday morning like “cats after catnip”. Asking every surrogate (on both sides) what they thought about this accusation and almost implying legitimacy to this tool of distraction from issues which will affect us and our children for years to come. Like drunken sailors they imbibed the Carl Rove-esque liquor with abandon on the morning political shows like “Morning Joe”. By yesterday evening they had gotten a grip and reported that this was certainly a trumped-up accusations and “fake outrage” designed to make their Vice Presidential candidate elicit sympathy from naive voters.

Its was crass, it was calculated and it is typical of a ticket that has opted for the cult of War Hero/Hockey Mom personality than offering any solutions to the massive problems created and sustained by the last eight years of Republican Administration. Especially when you consider that Torie Clarke,one of the Bush/McCain/Rumsfeld press advisers, wrote a book by the same title as a way to “cut through spin”.

We have tough problems ahead of us with complicated and difficult solutions. Madeline Albright said on a talk show last year that she felt sorry for whoever won the election as they had a major challenge on every front. This being true why are we talking about lipstick?

Hello Dolly Redux

2008-07-22T21:46:00.005-05:00

Well, mercies of mercies a friend called me on Sunday asked if I wanted to see the Dalai Lama lecture on Monday afternoon at 2pm. I said that since I had Vacation Bible School at my Church and a Christian Ed meeting at 12: 45pm it would be tight but I’d take ‘em. After all, only a few people can tell their grandchildren they heard and saw the Dalai Lama LIVE.

I drove into the lot at Stabler Arena of Lehigh University at 1:55pm and had to park in the back gravel lot. As I trudged through what seemed like miles of parking lot, passing very few license plates from Pennsylvania, I saw New York state well represented, New Jersey next then Vermont, Maryland, Virginia, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Ohio. Wow! I had no idea I was at such a regional enclave!

Approaching my entrance I saw the “protestors” on one side of the driveway, safely barricaded and surrounded by police chanting and waving signs. Geesh, I thought, even the Dalai Lama has detractors.

Inside I had to pass through a metal detector and reminiscent of airline travel I had to empty my pockets into yellow dog food bowls and pass through. They confiscated my Carolina Blue cigarette lighter saying it was a “potential weapon”. That was somewhat daunting when I realized I could potentially fend off an attacker with it. Ok, lighters are cheap, and I asked if I could have it back after the lecture and they said yes, if I stopped back to pick it up.

Since it was 1:59 by this point I hurriedly rushed to my section after being pointed in that direction after showing a nice security man my ticket.

I found my seat and sat down next to a very nice lady who said she had purchased her tickets with my benefactor and had to sit in the seat with my number on it due to some handicap or condition and since beggars can’t be choosers, I acquiesced and sat nearer the stage. They were great tickets –on the side, but right up front.

At 2:15pm there was a rustling of the crowd and I looked to my left and there was the Dalai Lama surrounded by security agents in black suits, sunglasses and ear wires. I assume these were assigned by our government since the Dalai Lama is a head of state as well as a religious leader. We all placed our hands together in the traditional Asian posture for greeting and bowed profoundly (OK, that’s Church liturgy talk!) as he returned the gesture. He ascended the stage which was covered with burgundy and saffron-robed devotees and up the four steps to take his place on an elevated pillow where he sat down.

Much of his teaching escaped me as this was a fourth lecture on a specific holy book which I had not read and many of the foundational concepts had been dealt with in previous lectures. Having studied Buddhism some, I could follow a little bit of it. But what was important is that I was THERE.

The stage on which he sat was spectacular to the eye---a giant fabric icon of the Buddha which towered over the heads of those on stage which was set off well by the black curtain which ran the whole length of the front. The flowers, the smell of incense, the small actions and gestures of Buddhist ritual all fascinated me.

The Dalai Lama was indeed a holy man who gave in easily to laughter and jokes on himself and others. He was flanked by two huge “jumbo TV’s” on either side which usually had a split screen which always showed him and sometimes his translator who was clearly Asian, but wore a business suit as he sat on the floor under the Dalai Lama with a microphone in front of him. His manner was easy, he was devoid of self-consciousness, and yawned, rubbed his eyes and did whatever he needed to do while lecturing.

After the lecture the holy book he was reading from (which looked to be the width of a large file card but about 3 feet long and unbound) was carefully folded into a saffron cloth and handed to what I can only guess is the Buddhist equivalent of the “deacon” who carried them out behind the Dalai Lama.

On the way out I stopped by the “Dalai Lama Gift Shop” which said he knew his audience well. Although I have to admit that I was a little disappointed in this as I have much higher expectations of Eastern Religions being better at staying away from commerce than Christianity---alas! Another assumption blown to bits!

There, one could buy Dalai Lama posters, lanyards, coffee mugs, pens and books—lots of books. It reminded me of a phrase we used to use at Yale Divinity School about one of my professors, Henri Nouwen, who “didn’t have an unpublished thought!” It must be the occupational hazard of religious “gurus”.

I stopped by security to reclaim my lighter---remember that Carolina blue one I told you about earlier? The man had a box of about 10 of them but none were Carolina blue! I told him mine wasn’t there and he just shrugged and said “Someone must have traded up”. The nerve! So I grabbed a green one and stuffed it into my pocket and left.

As I lit up outside I thought I’d wander over and speak to the “protesters” to find out why they were protesting this man. These protesters worship the Buddhist deity called Dorje Shugden---a powerful 17^th century monk who was murdered in his palace in Tibet (for reasons unknown to me at this writing). The Dalai Lama has made devotion to him mutually exclusive with Shugden worship—even though the Dalai Lama admitted to being a devotee of Shugden in his youth.

A driveway and a line of policemen separated me from them and I really didn’t feel like making a fuss. I just stood there and read their signs---“Dalai Lama Stop Lying!” and “Dalai Lama give Religious Freedom!”. They were chanting in some language other than English, so I stopped two of the burgundy and saffron robed devotees of the Dalai Lama and asked what language the protesters were using—Tibetan? They looked at me and very sweetly said,” It’s the language of discontent”. For the first time in my life I felt like throttling a Buddhist monk! I said, I understood that part, but what’s the language they chant in? They didn’t respond. As I walked away I quipped, “Well, if your signs are in English, you should at least come up with a protest chant that people here understand!”.

I was thinking something more like “Hey Hey Ho Ho the Dalai Lama has to go!”

As I got back in my car and joined the long wait of cars leaving on the little country lanes that surround Stabler Arena, I was glad I went. The pure spectacle of the scene was well worth it and I got to hear and see one of the world’s great religious leaders whose life has been full of challenge and controversy, but somehow seems to remain peaceful, centered and serene. I felt somehow moved by being in his presence. As a public religious figure of sorts myself, I realize the unrealistic expectations that people sometimes project onto you, and caught myself doing the same with the Dalai Lama. I’m sure that if we ever had the time and place to sit and talk, we’d have quite a bit in common.

Karen Armstrong on Belief and Practice

2008-05-18T00:15:00.003-05:00

Karen Armstrong

I gleaned this from the National Public Radio website after hearing a remarkable interview with Karen Armstron on the "Speaking of Faith" radio program. I found the following quote downstream from the original site and thought it said quite a bit for our current time and historical place in Anglicanism. You can listen to teh whole interview here http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/armstrong/index.shtml

"I found some astonishing things in the course of my study that had never occurred to me. Frankly, in the days that when I thought I’d had it with religion, I just found the whole thing absolutely incredible. These doctrines seemed unproven, abstract, and, to my astonishment, when I began seriously studying other traditions, I began to realize that belief, which we make such a fuss about today, is only a very recent religious enthusiasm. It surfaced only in the West, in about the 17th century. The word ‘belief’ itself originally meant to love, to prize, to hold dear. In the 17th century it narrowed its focus, for reasons that I’m exploring in a book I’m writing at the moment, to mean an intellectual ascent to a set of propositions — a credo. ‘I believe’ did not mean ‘I accept certain creedal articles of faith.’ It meant, ‘I commit myself. I engage myself.’ Indeed, some of the world traditions think very little of religious orthodoxy. In the Qur’an, religious opinion — religious orthodoxy — is dismissed as zanna — self-indulgent guesswork about matters that nobody can be certain of one way or the other but which makes people quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian.

So, if religion is not about believing things, what is it about? What I’ve found is that, across the board, religion is about behaving differently. Instead of deciding whether or not you believe in God, first you do something, you behave in a committed way, and then you begin to understand the truths of religion. And religious doctrines are meant to be summons to action: you only understand them when you put them into practice."

A Luta Continua (the Struggle Continues)

2008-04-30T21:57:00.003-05:00

The Rev. Glen Michaels from Trinity Church, Plattsburg, has provided us with an interesting exchange of emails regarding his inquiry to the Diocese of Albany about a possible candidate for ordination. The candidate happened to be a partnered gay man. Michaels+ was mistakenly copied on an exchange of emails between the Rev. Peter Schofield and The Rev. Robert Haskell (both of the Diocesan Commission on Ministry) relative to his inquiry. The Rev. Michaels has given us permission to post his notes and the related email exchange:

Dr. Bones & Openly Episcopal,
Our AM readers may want to see how the Diocese treats certain of those in this Diocese who believe they may be called to Holy Orders. Canon Haskell's response to Fr. Schofield below was inadvertently sent to me after I had inquired regarding a member of my parish.Canon Haskell's is an interesting approach. Perhaps it can be used by "really historically orthodox" bishops who don't want to ordain women: "We don't discriminate against Christians because they ARE women. No... we discriminate against them because they TEACH that women are called to ordained ministry in the Church. Say... it might even work to exclude people of color and all other heterodox undesirable who hold the radical notion that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or canfree, male or female....

(The Rev.) Glen Michaels, Priest Associate,
Trinity Church, Plattsburgh, NY

....................The email exchange alluded to is given below:
March 21, 2008Holy Orders Question
Dear Fr. Schofield,

I have an individual in my parish who I believe has a call to Holy Orders and have met with him to discuss his vocation. He is interested in further discernment. Does the Commission on Ministry have a blanket rule, either by formal rule or de facto, against accepting gay men in civil unions? If not, does the Commission have a working arrangement with another diocese to whom it will refer such persons?
Sincerely,(The Rev.) Glen Michaels

....................March 21, 2008
Re: Holy Orders Question

Peter-We cannot state we have a rule against accepting gay men or women, because the canons of the Episcopal Church say that we cannot discriminate against people in the ordination process based on their sexual orientation.What we can do is discriminate against people who teach that sex outside the marriage of one man and one woman is acceptable. We want people who have historically orthodox views on sex and marriage.However, I would ask you not to reply to Fr. Michaels yet. I think Bishop Love should have a chance to think about how we handle this. I am copying him with this email.

-Bob

....................April 14, 2008
Bishop Love, Fr. Schofield,

I am disappointed that you have chosen not to respond - other than accidentally (see Canon Haskell's remarks) to my query, made more than 3 weeks ago, about a member of my parish whom I believe has a call to Holy Orders. I sent a follow-up email to Fr. Schofield on March 31. The meeting on Holy Orders is this Saturday. But still no reply. I will communicate Canon Haskell's responses to my parishioner and others.

(The Rev.) Glen Michaels

....................Subsequent to this, Michaels+ did receive a reply from the Bishop. His reply is printed below:

Dear Glen+,

Thank you for your email concerning a parishioner at Trinity Church, Plattsburgh, who is interested in Holy Orders. The policy in the Diocese of Albany is that for a person to be eligible to be considered for the ordination process, he or she must live within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, or be celibate and abstinent.If the individual you are counseling is living in a lifestyle other than that mentioned above, he may pursue the ordination process through another diocese that has different standards. It is important for him to realize that the same standards mentioned above apply for clergy seeking to come into the Diocese of Albany from another diocese. We do not have a working arangement with any other diocese to assist individuals outside of the standards mentioned above.

Faithfully Yours in Christ,
+Bill

....................I leave the last word to The Rev. Glen Michaels:

As much as I disagree with Bishop Love's theological stance on homosexuality, I believe that he does have the right to reject candidates for Holy Orders who hold theological positions which he believes to be outside the bounds of acceptability within the Episcopal Church. However, it is an act of hubris for the Bishop to deny that there are many other bishops in good standing within the Episcopal Church who find such positions acceptable, and would welcome otherwise qualified candidates for ordained ministry. As a pastoral matter, I believe we need to assist such persons in their discernment by connecting them with other Episcopal mentors. Bishop Love's non-response to my suggestion is unfortunately indicative of his pastoral care toward such persons.

Blessings,
Glen Michaels (who prefers to follow Jesus' injunction to call no man father except our Father in Heaven)

The Web Site address is http://drbones.typepad.com/openly_episcopal_in_alban/2008/04/diocese-says-we.html#more

The Heavy Burden of Charity

2008-04-29T17:36:00.001-05:00

"You will find that charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the bowl of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not enough to give bread and soup. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor... They are your masters, and the more difficult they will be, the unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them. It is for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give them."
St. Vincent de Paul

Proud Dad--Women's Political and Legal Status in the Post Revolutionary Era

2008-04-29T06:48:00.004-05:00

Excuse me if I engage in some parental hubris, but Olivia has yet another kudo on her resume...
She told me her essay was about how the American Revolution gave rise to discontent among some women (who were also part of the Revolutionary effort) to gain voting rights and equal legal status. Read it all:

http://www.elon.edu/e-net/Note.aspx?id=928943

Bustin my buttons! You go , girl!

Take Me Home, Country Roads....

2008-04-27T07:09:00.017-05:00

The State Capitol building in Charleston

This week I returned to my native West Virginia after an absence of a few years. I hadn't really been back since my Mother's funeral (2002). As I drove over the border from Maryland into West Virginia I had my MP3 Player cued to John Denver's "Country Roads" to mark my passage from the "world" into my state of origin. I stopped to get gas in Flatwoods (the traditional stop between Morgantown and Charleston) and the air was heavy with the scent of spring perfume. It was warm and the the sun shone the whole way. The lady at the cash register called me "honey" and for a moment I paused to take that in, wondering if I should say "I'm not your "honey"!" But this impulse gave rise to the realization that the culture that had formed and nurtured me was unique and wonderful in its own way. Honey was her way to make a connection, to offer friendship,to extend a familiarity and a caring. I sank into it like a pair of old comfortable shoes.

Going home again is always a challenge (for anyone). Some things you can pick up where you last left off, other things you can't. I am a different person than I was when I left in 1988. Some of those differences may put me at odds with some in the Mountain State, while others reconnect me to something primal and unique to my personhood.

Unless you grew up there, you don't understand the fierce pride that lurks in liberal and conservative alike. I am proud to be from here, yet when I claim that heritage outside the state I always get some joke about incest or ignorance or lack of teeth (I remind them that "Deliverance" took place in Georgia!). We can call each other hillbillies, but if you are not from here, you better not call us that! We are Mountaineers. Its the State that gave the world "the right stuff" in Chuck Yeager, gymnast Mary Lou Retton, opera singer Phyllis Curtin, Cyrus Vance, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, "Barnie Fife" (Don Knotts), and Pearl S. Buck. The diversity of that list probably conveys the diversity in the people.

Part of the charm of its people is their fierce Independence and commitment to democratic structures which are best described in the State Motto "Montani Semper Liberi" (Mountaineers Are Always Free). Driving around my home town of St. Albans (where I grew up and where my brother and his family live still), I visited the schools which gave me my basic education. They are in order from primary to secondary and all stand on the same street from Central Elementary, to St. Albans Junior High (which now stands abandoned and shabby looking 1920's edifice with broken windows from vandals, and tall weeds in the front lawn) to the shining new St. Albans High as the last stop on Kanawha Terrace.

My schools:

Central Elementary

St. Alban's Junior High

St. Albans High School

I drove past the Baptist Church where I grew up. I stopped and parked and tried to go inside but found that the door was locked and I had to ring a bell and talk to a box in order to gain entrance. I decided that I didn't want to have to 'splain who I was and what I was doing there to people who didn't know me from Adam. So I snapped a picture and walked back to my car. They might have considered me misguided, not only to have left the American Baptist Church, but to have become an Episcopal priest to boot! I would be far less the priest I am had I not had a great foundation in scripture which was my inheritance for growing up in that Church.The Baptist Church I grew up in...

While going home can be complicated I felt a resonance that I can't really define. Its the feeling that you are in the presence of something eternal to your life---a place, a location of memory and formation that you can't deny or replace. A place called "Remembrance" which has power over you whether you want it or not---a power you can willingly succumb to or resist. For me it was a pleasure to be seduced by it. To let it wrap me in its ancient arms and hold me, if only for a moment, to remind me of who I am.

Edalat Square

2008-04-12T19:10:00.003-05:00

Darkness and despair, disguised as piety and righteousness, descend from atop the minarets of the mosques, consuming those who seek hope through the Light of God. On July 19, 2005 in Edalat Square, Iran, Mahmoud Asgari (17) and Ayaz Marhoni (16) were hanged for the crime of lavat (sex between two men in Shari’a or Islamic Law). Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, an estimated 4,000 people have been executed for lavat. Haunted by the circumstances surrounding the execution of Mahmoud and Ayaz, the soul of Edalat Square emerges from the poetic essence of the Sufi mystics—emerging from silence and meditation, melody and prayer. Disturbed by a crisis in Islam, the soul awakens…

Soulbird Music Project was founded in 2007 by New York-based composer and social activist R. Timothy Brady, and Toronto-based film producer and human rights activist Paul Lee. Both Brady and Lee saw the need for art to leave its insular circles, and begin to amplify the causes of organizations that work directly with the struggling and marginalized people around the world. The forums and dialogues that Soulbird facilitates are a significant chance for leading change-agents to brainstorm, to problem-solve, and to figure out ways to support each other, in our fight and struggle for justice.

Edalat Square: Opera in One Act
Music by R. Timothy BradyLibretto by R. Timothy Brady, A. R. Madabushi, and Lou Rodriguez
Copyright © 2007 The Emory Wheel.

When the believer looks with the Light of God, he sees all things:the first and the last, the present and the absent. For how can anything be hidden from the Light of God?

—Jalal al-Din Rumi, Fihi ma fihi (13th c. CE)

For more information: http://soulbird.org/

Congrats Kansas---My Brackets are officially "toast"

2008-04-08T08:52:00.003-05:00

Let Us Now Praise Caustic Christians

2008-04-08T07:21:00.002-05:00

[This poem was sent to me by Louie Crew and I liked it very much as I believe its the ministry to which all the Baptised are called and animated]

Let us now praise caustic Christians,
the champions of justice in all generations,
through whom God has restored the flow of mercy.

Some have nailed theses to the church door with prophetic power.
Some have started new universities to challenge the prevailing notions.
Some have overturned tables at the temple, demanding alms for the poor, the sick, and the destitute before we buy organs and stained glass.
Some have worn dresses to be priested for gender justice.
Some have yanked off masks to proclaim their loving gay unions.
Some have demanded of the white authorities, "Let My People Go!"
Some have marched through tear gas and police dogs, defying orders from prelates and judges. Some have destroyed draft files and burned plans for nuclear destruction. Some have organized unions and cooperatives.
Some have fought to redistribute God's bounty justly.

All these won notoriety in their own generation
and were the scandal of their times.
Many have sat in jails rather than to recant
or to say that the earth as we know it
is at the center of the universe.

Others have died.

Many there are who have left behind them no name,
but a legacy of hope restored, conflict resolved,
injustice rectified, lives redeemed.
Their victories are the inheritance of future generations.
Their line will endure for all times.

-- Louie Crew, 1982

Proclaim, Fashion, Love, Serve, Care, Preach, Declare Forgiveness, Bless, Baptize, Celebrate, Nourish, Strengthen, Believe, Called.

2008-04-07T08:16:00.008-05:00

As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you. In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come. My brother, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to this priesthood? (Book of Common Prayer Page 531)

The Title of this reflection are the action-words from the “Examination” portion of the Ordination Service as prescribed in the Book Of Common Prayer, just before a Bishop lays hands on a deacon making him or her a priest.

Twenty-three years ago today I was ordained to the priesthood by The Rt. Rev. Robert Poland Atkinson in Trinity Church Parkersburg, West Virginia. I remember well the day. I had borrowed a chasuble made for the Institution of The Rev. Jim Bradley as Rector of St. Paul’s Church New Haven, CT (my seminary field placement) by Gretchen Wolf Pritchard (of Sunday Paper fame). Jim was the preacher and gave a sermon I remember to this day---or at least one part of it. He said that an architect friend had told him that his job was to create space for people to live and grow in. To design a space for human beings to live, learn, work and play in. To create enough boundaries to make people feel safe, and to create enough open and creative space to facilitate people becoming who/what they were called to become. I thought that was an apt description of priesthood at the time and still do.

Today is my ordination anniversary (thank you Louie Crew for reminding me first thing this morning with a kind note) I know that I have become a priest in my soul. It happened slowly almost imperceptibly over time, but I cannot disengage being a priest from my personhood. Its who I have become fully. Not that I have arrived in any sense of the word, but I know who I am in the matter of the daily living out of my life. It enters into every decision (good and bad) that I make. It needles me at times when I am not living up to my understanding of who I am in this matter. "It" causes me to take risks which the world would not require me to take. I know that I use a different language to create and describe my life.

It has sometimes caused me great pain working in the Church. It has given me my greatest joys. Its difficult work at times. And other times I don’t notice the difficulty. After serving on the local Commission on Ministry for six years, and presently serving on the Standing Committee of my diocese, I have seen many ‘aspirants’ for Holy Orders and joined with them in their discernment. There is a quality I look for in the way they speak of their lives. Its often an intuition I have and sometimes hard to express. That quality is perhaps a willingness to not know the answers. To leave some things up to our often mysterious God. To have that dose of mysticism which confounds, confuses, makes us let go of the steering wheel for a few moments and be at the disposal of the Holy. To have a non-anxious understanding and articulation of their own wounds and how those wounds can help them tell stories about a God who loves and heals.

To create the space which makes people feel safe, yet challenges them is often a tall order. In the current American religious environment is maybe extra difficult (see earlier reflection on Pew Trust report “Sea of Vagueness” in this blog). Yet it is truly my vocation now, not something I dabble in during working hours, but possesses me in many different ways during my non-working hours. Its probably what they mean when they speak of “formation”. I can’t imagine being or doing anything else.

[Caveat Emptor --- The phrase in the above charge from the Ordination Rite "..and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you." will get you every time!]

A Funny Kind of Christian

2008-03-21T22:38:00.005-05:00

The following essay was sent to me by my friend and former colleague, The Rev. Dr. Lydia Agnew Speller, who is a priest in St. Louis in the Diocese of Missouri (and former priest of the Diocese of Bethlehem). It is by Giles Fraser listed as the Vicar of Putney (in the UK). This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday March 22 2008 on p41 of the Comment & debate section. www.guardian.co.uk:80/commentisfree/2008/mar/22/religion.usa

I post this on Good Friday and think it has everything to do with the meaning and gravity of this day.

Somewhere in the Middle East, Jesus Christ is strapped to a bench, his head wrapped in clingfilm. He furiously sucks against the plastic. A hole is pierced, but only so that a filthy rag can be stuffed back into his mouth. He is turned upside down and water slowly poured into the rag. The torturer whispers religious abuse. If you are God, save yourself you fucking idiot. Fighting to pull in oxygen through the increasingly saturated rag, his lungs start to fill up with water. Someone punches him in the stomach.

Perhaps this is how we ought to be re-telling the story of Christ's passion. For ever since the cross became a piece of jewellery, it has been drained of its power to sicken. Even before this the Romans had taken their hated instrument of torture and turned it into the logo of a new religion. Few makeovers can have been so historically significant. The very secular cross was transformed into a sort of club badge for Christians, something to be proud of.

Two weeks ago, the most powerful Christian in the world vetoed a bill that would have made it illegal for the CIA to use water boarding on detainees. "We need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," said George Bush in a passable impersonation of Pontius Pilate. "This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe."

Throughout his time in office, the president has frequently been photographed in front of the cross. Yet as his support for torture demonstrates, he has understood little of its meaning. For the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is supremely a moral story about God's identification with victims.

The French anthropologist René Girard is the modern voice that has done most to explain the nature of this moral change. Human societies, he argues, are often held together by scapegoating. From the playground to the boardroom, we pick on the weak, the weird or the different as a way of securing communal solidarity. At times of tension or division, there is nothing quite as uniting as the "discovery" of someone to blame - often someone perfectly innocent. For generations of Europeans, the Jews were cast in the role; in the same way women have been accused of being witches, homosexuals derided as unnatural, and Muslims dismissed as terrorists.

The crucifixion turns this world on its head. For it is the story of a God who deliberately takes the place of the despised and rejected so as to expose the moral degeneracy of a society that purchases its own togetherness at the cost of innocent suffering. The new society he called forth - something he dubbed the kingdom of God - was to be a society without scapegoating, without the blood of the victim. The task of all Christians is to further this kingdom, "on earth as it is in heaven".

Yet, for all his years in office, it is hard to think that President Bush has done anything much to make this kingdom more of a reality. Instead he has given us rendition, so-called specialised interrogation procedures, and the blood of many thousand innocent Iraqis. Given all this, what can it possibly mean for George Bush to call himself a Christian?

Easter is not all about going to heaven. Still less some nasty evangelical death cult where a blood sacrifice must be paid to appease an angry God. The crucifixion reveals human death-dealing at its worst. In contrast, the resurrection offers a new start, the foundation of a very different sort of community that refuses the logic of scapegoating. The kingdom is a place of shocking, almost amoral, inclusion. All are welcome, especially the rejected. At least, that's the theory. Unfortunately, very few of us Christians are any good at it.

"We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf"

---From the Confession found in Enriching Our Worship I page 56

The Sea of Vagueness

2008-03-20T07:58:00.003-05:00

A recent editorial on the recent Pew survey of religious life and behavior in the U.S. religious landscape said the following provocative things:

Recently, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released the first set of findings from its massive U.S. Religious Landscape Survey 2008. As I studied the report and tracked its initial coverage in the mainstream media, I took special note of the provocative phrases employed to catch the public’s attention: “many Americans switch faith identity,” “faith identity fluctuates,” “constant membership turnover,” “a quantum leap in the rate of change,” “Churn. Churn. Churn.”

For those who read beyond the headlines and initial paragraphs of these news stories there was important information. Based on a sample of more than 30,000 adults and done with a methodological rigor that will make this survey a benchmark for future attempts to map the religious life of Americans, the Landscape Survey offered much to ponder. First, America remains stunningly Christian, at least in terms of religious self-identification. Of those polled, 78.4 percent identified themselves that way. After more than a century of modernity, secularism, higher education, enlightenment, and new religions, the vast majority still see themselves as in some way Christian.

[snip]

What do all these statistics mean for those who lead American congregations? Interestingly, the survey does not focus on congregations at all. Yet the local churches, synagogues, and temples of the land are the places where all this switching, fluidity, and vagueness manifest themselves week after week. In every worship service, board meeting, Sunday school class, social event, and rite of passage, all the churn that the Landscape Survey points to “out there” in the national environment is going on “in here”—in the lives of individual members and the small faith communities they belong to. Once upon a time religious leaders represented very distinct religious communities that were clearly differentiated from the ones down the street or across town. Now our leaders work in a sea of religious vagueness and search for ways to help people surrounded by a growing tide of “nothing in particular” find something in particular to build a life upon. Stay tuned.

James P. Wind “Crunching the Numbers” Alban Institute http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=5818

Churn. That was the evocative word for me as a pastor and priest. Churn. By that I understand him to mean that the individual American who participates in a faith community by-in-large approaches religious institutions as basically a consumer enterprise. Like cell phone service, Internet provider or cable company, Americans appear to gravitate to the faith community that meets their need at the time. Some will form a bond and identity with that congregation, others won’t. No longer is there a cultural expectation that people will have some denominational affiliation which is internalized to the point of being part of their identity, but religion appears to function much more on surface level of “What serves me and my family most?”

Sometimes this churn manifests itself in changing churches because of some conflict with the leadership (lay or ordained), sometimes it’s a program (like programs for children and youth), and sometimes it’s a geographical consideration (a move across town), and sometimes its none of the above, but convenience of location and worship time.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I always feel sad, somewhat sold down the river and bemused at parishioners when they change Churches. Perhaps for me in my early life as a pastor, I assumed I was about building community, people to people connections that would transcend program or pastor. I had the mistaken impression that people joined the Episcopal Church for the same reasons I did---liturgy, polity and comprehensiveness. But that doesn’t appear to be the case for generations behind me.

Another compelling sentence was his conclusion in the above article:

Now our leaders work in a sea of religious vagueness and search for ways to help people surrounded by a growing tide of “nothing in particular” find something in particular to build a life upon. Stay tuned.

To preach into that vacuum on a weekly basis is a challenge. The “sea of vagueness” is daunting. Perhaps that vagueness has to do with Protestantism’s fear of taking stands, of its love affair with accommodation. We have made a good peace with war, state execution, economic promiscuity (Walter Bruggeman’s term which I love), sexism, racism and (for the most part) homophobia just to mention a few. When a preacher approaches these subjects directly in sermons, there are always comments at the door about “being too political” or “I come here for spiritual nurture, not politics”. Indeed the highest ethic one can perceive is “don’t upset anyone” and the hidden message is “or we will lose their pledge”.

Here in Holy Week when do we ask the questions that go beyond “Jesus loves you”? What does embracing Jesus as my savior have to do with my life in the world? What distinguishes me ethically from my non-practicing neighbor? Perhaps the vagueness has been conditioned by financial needs of the institution which is the epitome of the church selling out its most precious commodity---faith in a God who shows us that the way to peace and salvation is through the cross. Do we actually preach with power and authority that its not about winning, domination, individual salvation, but transformation of the world in incarnational ways.. How does one get to transformation if one is always trying to blend into this “sea of vagueness”? It seems to me a good question to take into Holy Week.

It's (one of) the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

2008-03-14T08:23:00.005-05:00

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for those of us who watch college basketball with relish and delight. The “Big Dance” , which means the NCAA championship series, is the time of year when basketball games on streaming video are in task bars in office cubicles all over the world. My friend who works for Boeing admitted that she had a score ticker on during a meeting yesterday during the WVU-Connecticut game at Madison Square Garden. The Big East championship is going on now. But Sunday the big bracket bingo will begin. Sports radio and TV are abuzz with “who will be in and out of the Big Dance?”

Who’s in or out is fun, but the game is what’s great. Big schools can lose to small schools. Major conferences can lose to “mid-majors”. Top seeds can lose to bottom seeds. Hero’s emerge who stayed in the shadows all season long when single elimination is on the line. It’s a most delicious banquet for those who love college sports. “My” team, the West Virginia University Mountaineers, most likely sealed up their bid and lowered their seed number (lower is better in bracketology) yesterday. Their OK season has given rise to great hope on the shoulders of Joe Alexander.

As a gay man I get accused of not being truly gay by my friends. Last night I had my usual Thursday night drinks and dinner with friends at my favorite gay establishment in Allentown, The Stonewall. I actually got control of the T.V. remote and was able to watch the Pittsburgh-Louisville game (sound off of course) while vintage disco music blared in the background.

My bemused friends just sat and talked to each other---undoubtedly debating whether my “gay card” should be suspended---but I was in heaven. Finally, one of my friends, Russell, looked at the screen and looking at one of the Louisville players exclaimed “He’s hot!”. After that the rest of my “posse” started watching this game with nothing more than the young athletic male bodies thrashing against each other as their interest. It wasn’t exactly a conversion to the sport of the game I would hope for, but it was a start.

Happy bracketing to all. May your brackets be true and your watching sublime!

Take A Bishop Like Him....

2008-03-05T07:57:00.004-05:00

On Sundays and feast days, he became a giant in resplendent brocades lifting his arms as he preached. Or on Easter as a child, I am bedecked in my new finery, and there he is, dressed in white, accompanied by vested acolytes, sweeping along the dusty street on his way to the church; I get not a kiss but a blessing--his hand raised, fingers poised and moving through the air in the shape of a cross. At my father's first parish, the church was right next door; going to church was not a duty but a chance to be with the deepest part of him, to be inside his imagination. In the darkness at the altar rail, I would hold the wafer in my mouth, allowing it to become wet with the wine that burned down my throat. Take, eat, this is my body, my father would say. Just as I came to understand his splendid vestments were not ordinary clothes, I learned that during the Eucharist, the bread and wine were shot through with something otherworldly, something alive that vibrated and trembled, and when I watched my father, enormously tall, the color of his vestments blurry through all the incense in all the candlelight, it seemed to me he brought all this about, up there at the altar, enswirled in the fragrant smoke, the organ thundering, his voice carried by the King James language. It therefore made sense that when he sang Gregorian chant his voice would break and falter. He was being transported by what he called "the presence of God," a force much more powerful than his physical body. What happened to him seemed also to happen in me, behind my eyes, on the surface of my skin, and when it happened, I didn't think of how my mother looked with a baby on her hip, how my younger brothers and sisters screamed, or how awkward I felt at school. Instead, everything became comprehensible--simple, safe, and beautiful.

From the Prologue of "The Bishop's Daughter" by Honor Moore

I can't wait to read this book when it published. Not because of the apparent scandal it is supposed to bring to light, but because Honor Moore writes so eloquently for the secular media about things like the Eucharist, Easter, the mystery of Episcopal worship that draws us in and keeps us coming back.

No doubt Paul Moore (who's stature alone was formidable) had clay feet. So what? What is maybe most compelling about the promise of this book is that we will get to see a human being in all his brokenness and in all his magnificence. The Church is awash in "Tsk Tsk's" about his apparent affair with a young man with whom he had a pastoral relationship and I do not want to seem like I condone that, but I also know that good human beings do bad things sometimes---one only need crack the pages of scripture to see Moses' murderous act, David's infidelity, and Peter's denial. Redeemed humans do bad things for which we mourn, but it should not eclipse the good and shining moments where they transformed their world with redemption.

Paul Moore was/is a hero for me. His untiring placing himself on the line for justice and peace, his work to alleviate poverty and injustice, his votes for progressive policies in the House of Bishop's, his courageous ordination of Ellen Barrett (the first openly gay person ordained amid widespread publicity), starting the Urban Bishop's Coalition which gave birth to the Urban Caucus, and others too numerous to count. Paul Moore above all else did the work Jesus called us to do. Even through his woundedness the Light could shine through the cracks and gaps.

As a parent, a clergy person and a gay man I will want to read this book and give a copy to my daughter who undoubtedly has her own story to tell of her parent's brokenness and their transformative work. I am in line line already to read the whole story.

Olivia's Blog

2008-03-04T12:31:00.003-05:00

Here is my daugther's Blog (which I think is pretty cool) but I can't figure out how to get it to the "Links" column to your right!

http://oliviamindsthegap.blogspot.com/

Hello Dolly

2008-03-04T11:32:00.002-05:00

Night before last I received an E-mail from Steve which said that tickets to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s visit to the Lehigh Valley went on sale the next day and he would treat me if I would get the tickets. Since Steve would be on a commuter bus into Manhattan at that hour he needed me to do the dirty work of ticket procurement. Startled that the Dalai Lama would actually be in our area I went to his web site---yes even the Dalai Lama has a web site http://www.dalailama.com// (I wonder if he is on My Space too?). There’s something not right about a “Dalai Lama.Com” isn’t there? I said I would and went to sleep.

Well yesterday we had a 9:30am appointment at the Second Harvest Food Bank to get food for the After School program I direct in center city Allentown but the tickets didn’t go on sale by (and get this) Ticketmaster until 10:00am. Ticketmaster is where you get your tickets for Mettalica, Rolling Stones, the Phillies, and so on---AND the Dalai Lama! So I figured I’d pick up our food order, get back to The Church of the Mediator, unload them and I would be at St. Andrew’s by 10:30am and I would go online and get tickets—no sweat right?

I got all my early morning chores done, got to the office, plugged in my lap top and was at the Ticketmaster web page in no time flat—it was about 10 minutes of 11 when I got to this. The Ticketmaster web page wouldn’t sell me the tickets. So I called Stabler Arena which told me that I could call three different Ticketmaster numbers for Arena Events. They also said that there was a ticket outlet in a Department Store at a Mall near St. Andrew’s. I figured that the Ticketmaster web page had a glitch, so I called all three of the numbers they gave me for phone tickets only to get a busy signal---for the next two hours I tried on and off.

Finally I thought I would just drive over to the Mall and go to the Ticketmaster outlet about 1:30pm when I left St. Andrew’s. I got to the place in the store and asked a nice older woman if I could buy tickets. She said “Honey, it sold out 20 minutes after they went on sale! I could have sold a thousand tickets here today!” On of her co-workers at the customer service desk ask “For whom?” And she said “The DOLLY Lama”.

I was amazed that the tickets sold so quickly. As I went back through the store back to my car (where my dog, Martini was patiently waiting) I had to walk through a maze of goods in what seemed like a retail fantasy—Godiva Chocolates, Crystal, China, Appliances, Oriental Rugs were displayed for a consumer orgy. As I was looking at all of this I thought about how the Dalai Lama sold out in 20 minutes. And how there was such a spiritual hunger in this nation that all these goods couldn’t fill as hard as they tried and as hard as their purchasers tried to fill a spiritual void with them. I thought about the Church and Jesus, I thought about how the Church somehow doesn’t get a message of peace and centeredness through to the culture---but chooses rather to fight about trifles. With a war raging what has the Church done to stop it? What has it done to raise the possibility of a balm in the Prince of Peace?

You gotta hand it to the Dolly Lama; at least he stays on message. Buddhists don’t seem to have the difficulties that the children of Abraham (Islam, Judaism and Christianity) seem to have. Christianity has been a source of strength, centeredness and a connection to the Divine for me. Albeit I have to have a constant filter on to eliminate the BS that much of Christianity constantly doles out. It’s clear we are not always good at witnessing to that experience to others. I wonder when we will get it?

For the Love of Frida

2008-02-21T23:04:00.010-05:00

Frida Kahlo with her parrots (self portrait)

I don’t know why I never really knew of Frida Kahlo until seeing the 2002 movie Frida starring Salma Hayek. I have always loved the painting of Diego Rivera, but never knew of his artist lover & wife until seeing the movie.

I can’t wait to get some free time to wander down to Philadelphia and take in the exhibit of her art work, photo’s and writings. In many ways I relate to her in that she suffered for an institution and art form which she loved.

Having survived polio, she did not move around as easily as most of us, yet she lived her life with a passion, zeal and purpose that is at once remarkable and inspiring. She was the “real deal” and did not shrink away from the tough stuff of life, but embraced it and lived through it with grace and love.

Would that we all would imitate her love and passion for life and for those who life is not so kind to. Anyone who could date Trotsky and marry Diego Rivera has to be a special and remarkable woman!

Frida with self portrait of Diego Rivera

Frida felt both love and pain at a deep existential level which found its way into her art and passions. Loving Rivera so that she is smaller and more rustically girly in her wedding portrait and depicting herself in male attire and with a short cut hair style after their divorce, she felt deeply all the passions of being human---both good and not-so-good.

Portrait of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

“Eleven days before dying from a pulmonary embolism or a suicidal overdose, Kahlo sat in a wheelchair during a protest against the CIA overthrow of Guatemala’s president. In her last finished work, a still life, she painted her epitaph. She carved “Viva La Vida (Long Live Life)” on a watermelon tombstone.”1

Viva Frida Kahlo!

1 Geoff Gehlman. The Allentown Morning Call

The Bible as Weapon

2008-02-20T00:09:00.005-05:00

Just home from the first gathering of an Adult educational series I am leading for Lent called “Bible 101” (which I concocted in another parish where it was called The Bible for Dummies which my current parish thought un-genteel and degrading.). I told them that the Bible was full of wonderful stories, wisdom, history, poetry, drama, some comedy, a lot of tragedy, social teaching, economic teaching and so on, to use it for any other ultimate purpose than to bring ourselves and others into a relationship with the Living God was a misuse of it. In other words to teach history, social norms, poetry, economics, or any other thing solely from it was to degrade it.

Growing up in a somewhat conservative area in a somewhat conservative evangelical Anabaptist protestant denomination I learned at a young age that the Bible was the “inerrant, changeless Word of God” and while the true meaning of this was lost on me as a teenager, I accepted it in some flat-footed way which made me more afraid of it than supported and inspired by it. We would have “sword drills” at Youth Group to see who could find a certain verse or a certain book the fastest. What genius, to turn Bible study into a competition! I later found out that it was (naturally) St. Paul (yeah the same guy who brought us women keep silent, homo’s stay out and slaves to be obedient) who coined this phrase.

It wasn’t until I was older and somewhat better grounded in things biblical that I realized how bad calling this wonderful book a “sword” actually was. It became the handmaiden of the military-industrial complex and worse, was used to gore people right and left.

This is probably why many Americans don’t see any problem using scripture to justify war, oppression, violence, and all other kinds of activities which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. A recent blogger posed the question “Why Would Jesus Puke?” I think there could be tons of reasons but many of them are the way those who claim to follow him use and appropriate scripture. I hope someday to invite people into this question and see how long a list we could come up with!

Indeed the current controversies in the Anglican Communion boil down to how you read, interpret and use scripture. If Paul had said nothing about homosexuality perhaps this would be an easier time for L/G/B/T persons in the Christian Church. But he did and for those of us who take scripture seriously enough he was speaking of certain cultic practices which involved straight people engaging in homosexual acts in order to receive a pagan God’s blessing. Lets also be clear, in Paul’s world there was no such concept as sexual orientation. Indeed ALL humans were assumed to be heterosexual. End of debate. So if everyone was assumed straight, then engaging in homosexual behavior was indeed a distortion of their “true nature”.

Even Freud thought homosexuality “disordered”.

It was until the early 18th century that the idea of any other God-given orientation was conceivable. At that time there was the “discovery” that a small percentage of humans may actually be biologically, psychologically and sexually attracted to their same gender! So while I will cut Paul a break (“But I had no idea!”) I do not cut current Christians a break who continue to harass, marginalize and reject their “other oriented” bro’s and sis’s as being exceptionally evil or perverse when they have better science and psychology at their beckon call.

I was a deputy at the last General Convention of the Episcopal Church and voted against Resolution B033 which effectively caused the Episcopal Church USA to take two steps back from openly gay clergy. Much to my deputation’s credit we did not vote for it. We can at least sleep at night now that we have witnessed how this legislation has been used against our own people. Many talented gay people are shut out of consideration of any positions which may bring influence, fame and a nomination for bishop. Many of my colleagues in the House of Deputies now express regret for voting for it. The pink ceiling has been put in place.

So back to the scriptures. My deepest desire and prayer for all Christians is to take the Bible more seriously than being a rule book for excluding others. To stop thinking of it as a sword to sink into people who differ from them and to work for justice, equality and normalization of gay relationships and stop all this hand-wringing being orchestrated by off-shore homophobes who are financed by on-shore homophobes. Groups like the Institute for Religion and Democracy need to be exposed for what they are and not responded to as if they are a legitimate voice in the Church.

Yes. To take the Bible seriously might mean that one gets at the meaning and use of scripture and that the final Word of God is Jesus, not some idol made of paper with a binding we call Holy Scripture. And as I recall Jesus had quite a bit to say to his pious detractors about rejecting others as “impure”. (cf. Matthew 21:31)

It's NOT the Robins

2008-02-16T13:07:00.003-05:00

I was standing out in front of St. Andrew’s a couple of days ago on a sunny and cold day after our recent “icing” and noticed that the small cherry tree near the from entrance was covered with Robins. A mother and child were coming up the walk and I pointed them out to the child. “It’s kind of early for them isn’t it?”, the Mom quipped. And I informed her that Robins are here all winter, they don’t migrate. And I told her it wasn’t her fault as many songs we learned which were “spring” songs gave us the impression that Robins were the true ensign of spring. Wrong. I had been set straight a few ago by an avid bird watcher on this matter and never forgot it. So when I see Robins in the winter I am glad, but I don’t make too much of their presence as a biological sign of the imminence of Primavera.

That evening I was watching the news and the sportscaster reported that the Philadelphia Phillies were to report to spring training in Clearwater, Florida the next day. Now THAT my friends is a with-a-doubt, sure and certain, beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt ensign of the approach of Spring! The Boys of Summer do not start too early or too late to shake out the late fall and early winter cob webs, get those joints moving again and practice their batting, pitching and catching.

I don’t expect Spring anytime soon on seeing a Robin. I DO expect Spring’s return when I hear the Phillies are migrating to Clearwater! Yesiree, Spring is most certainly near!

Why I Have Decided to Give Barak My Vote

2008-02-13T22:56:00.002-05:00

I began my distant relationship with Barak Obama when he gave the nomination speech for John Kerry 4 years ago. I thought his speech was electrifying, inspiring and motivational. I actually worked door to door for the Kerry/Edwards ticket as a result.

I like Hillary too. I have always thought that she had a lot on the ball and was very disappointed at the lack of cooperation she received for trying to come up with a solution for the Health Care Crisis in our country. I felt that she handled her husband’s sexual infidelities as a woman who was committed to working out the hard stuff of marriage. She tried. Many women criticize her for that. I don’t.

Through the last two months I have watched debates, stump speeches, interviews and primary results. I rode the fence as to which one I was for in the Pennsylvania primary coming up on April 22. I was ambivalent; I liked both Hillary and Barak for different reasons. I was proud that a woman and an African-American man were the leading candidates. Wow, have things really changed???

But in the last month I have grown weary of the feeding frenzy which the political process produces in having one candidate attack another. I thought the competition was initially healthy for the party, the political process and our national dialogue on issues that are critical. But lately I am ready to get behind one candidate and move forward to November.

Barak Obama has shown me that he has the right stuff. He is not another Ivy League patrician seducing the Democratic Party with big talk. He has not taken PAC money from drug companies, medical organizations and military contractors. Barak seems to attract a wider diversity of people than Hillary which will be critical to the campaign against John McCain if we are to win. And in politics, winning counts, indeed it may be the only thing that counts in the big picture (take that Ralph Nadar and keep your butt at home this time!).

Recently I have seen Obama surge ahead and think that is a sign for all of us who were undecided to this point. A “brokered” nomination at the Democratic Convention would not unite us. In fact it may be a disaster. A clear and undisputable front runner going into that Convention would be healthy for the party and the country.

We have a candidate who has a broad appeal to Independents, the young, moderate Republicans. I still like Hillary but will pull the lever (yes, we will re-institute voting machines in Pennsylvania this election!) for Barak in order to unite the party and to get us focused for November.

Where The Mind is Without Fear

2008-02-09T09:47:00.000-05:00

A good frind reminded me of this giant of poetry and Nobel Laureate. As a child in India I read his poems for school and am glad my friend Katie-Did reminded me of his genious...

For more : http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/4637/Rabita.htm

Where The Mind is Without Fear

Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

From Rabindranath Tagore's GeetanjaliMahfuj, Stockholm

Barak, Hillary or John

2008-01-23T23:11:00.000-05:00

My eldest child called me from her car and told me she was "so close to Barak Obama I could touch his face!" I asked what precipitated this close proximity and she explained that she was driving from Columbia, SC to Myrtle Beach to cover the South Carolina Democratic primary for her college newspaper---of which I proudly say SHE is the editor! (parental hubris is allowed on one's own blog I think!). She told me she was heading for Myrtle Beach to be in teh audience for the Democratic debate which I watched with great interest that night not only to hear the candidates, but also, perhaps, to catch a glimpse of my offspring by virtue of some stray camera shot. No offspring, but plenty to take in (I am told this debate had the highest audience in all of US Political history).

The Woods Are Lovely Dark and Deep

2008-01-18T01:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday on the way home from the “Just For Kids” after school program (which I try and direct) it was snowing. I came my usual “back road” which was backed up and I sat on Susquehanna Street looking up into the deep woods which line one side of that road. It was breath taking in the filigree of snow which clung to the tree branches as far as the eye could see. I rolled down the window, felt the snow flakes hit my face and melt, the cool wind putting my skin on edge.

Normally I am impatient in traffic back-ups, but I was struck by the gift that was being given to me at this dusk time to appreciate the woods—the trees, the silent snow drifting down.

In school in India we had to memorize poems and I recall having Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” as a memory poem I had to stand and recite. It comes back to me on occasion and it did this evening. The "darkest evening of the year" is the 21st of December (the Winter Solstice) and the next day is my birthday---which I have always relished as the day the sun starts to return! Here it is for your joy in the midst of snowy weather which at face value looks like an inconvenience, but in reality may be a gift if you are able to receive it…

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I thought about my life so far, and anticipated (with some joy, I might add) the miles ahead of me. May you be blessed with some snowy woods if you are so graced.

Strangers at the Gym

2008-01-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

It never fails, every January I go to my gym (the YMCA in Bethlehem) and see “strangers” taking up all the machines and filling the locker rooms. Those of us who go year round on a regular basis do a “wink wink, nudge nudge” among ourselves as we witness the yearly influx of New Year’s resolution-makers and will suffer the crowded conditions until about the first of February when the population drops to normal. They will thin out, they will soon realize that a gym discipline is just that---a discipline, not fun always, the results will not be immediate and you have to be in it for the long haul. Like I resolved to write more on my blog and here it is mid January!
Church is much like that. Anyone that has done anything for the Church knows that it is a spiritual discipline to be part of a faith community and contribute to its life with one’s presence, time, substance and talents. For Church to mean anything it has to move from being a hobby to being a discipline, a way of life that will yield its rewards in time, not usually immediately. Just like you can’t lose that 20 pounds of ugly fat by going to the gym three times in one week and expecting your body to reward you with weight loss in just a week.
I write this as much to "seekers" as to myself. So often when talking to "unchurched" folks (Episcopalians call those who don't go to Church by a far more genteel name than our protestant siblings who would call them "unsaved") I hear about one or two bad experiences that made them give up the discipline some of us call Church. It is understandable, just as it is understandable that someone gives up the gym after working out for a week and losing one pound.

Peace and Joy in the New Year!

If ever I would leave you...

2007-10-31T18:02:00.000-05:00

Robert Goulet 1933-2007

The first Broadway musical I recall hearing was Camelot. My Dad played it on the family stereo which was this huge piece of furniture in our basement family room. The pop and crack of a needle-to-vinyl disc didn't delute the awe and wonder I felt at hearing Robert Goulet belt out "C'est Moi" or "If Ever I Should Leave You". Had I been more astute as an 8 year old I would have realized that I had a man-crush on Robert Goulet as Lancelot. I think my interest in music began with my introduction to this musical as odd as it may sound. All of the actors--Burton, Andrews and Goulet were well defined in their vocal styles and persona's. My childhood would have been far poorer had my Dad not laid this platter on the turntable.

So I didn't buy Robert Goulet albums after Camelot and didn't follow his career and become a groupie. Mr. Goulet was a fomative figure in my love of music and my interest in music that tells stories---be it liturgical, operatic or Broadway. I shall miss knowing he is still in the world and I am sorry he didn't get his lung transplant that he was awaiting. In checking the box for "organ donor" on my driver's license card (if I am ever dragged dead from a car accident), I think his death is a reminder that we all need to consider the life we may enhance and save if we become organ donors.

Godspeed to you, Mr. Goulet. We shall remember the story of the "Once and Future Kingdom" because of your vocal passion. Into paradise may the angels lead you. At your coming may the martyrs receive you, and bring you into the holy city Jerusalem!

Sacramental Inclusion

2007-10-17T14:30:00.001-05:00

I have to say that I thought ++Katherine did a good job in her conversation with the Church yesterday. While I know that she is on the side of LGBT folks I also know that she is trying to straddle a wide chasm of opinion on the inclusion of everyone in all aspects of ministry. I also think the fact that she says "gay and lesbian brothers and sisters" is commendable as this is an acknowledgement that LGBT people are at least party to the conversation. Many bishops and theologians speak in "code" and that is never very helpful as to clarifying their position.

What was probably the most painful (but true) phrase was "those not sacramentally included" in the the ministry of the Church. This can mean both ordination and any sort of sacramental acknowledgement of the relative holiness and wholesomeness of a same gender partnership. In a way I appreciated ++Katherine speaking in truthful words about this because the truth is that LGBT people are not included yet. LGBT clergy are "problems" in deployment as one bishop once told me. So where do we go from here? What hope is there that things will move a little more in the direction of equality and justice as far as LGBT persons are concerned.

At the ground level in some dioceses same-gender blessings occur. This is a typical Anglican fudge which allows for a broad diversity of practice while not making it an official rite of the Prayer Book. Yet some bishops have backed off from unofficial permission for this pastoral rite by their clergy in the name of Bo33 http://gc2006.org/legislation/view_leg_detail.aspx?id=433&type=CURRENT Those bishops must live with that decision, but unfortunately so do their dioceses and more unfortunately so do those LGBT clergy and laity who live in them. BO33 seems to have become the new 'golden calf' of unity---warding off hostile outside forces, calming hostile inside forces and letting the liberal bishop's feel smug that they have left the door cracked for future justice to enter from.

The election in the Diocese of Chicago with The Rev. Tracy Linde's presence on the ballot as a partnered lesbian will surely raise anxiety around the Church. Its a shame. Tracy is a very gifted priest as Dean of the Cathedral in Cleveland (go Indians!) and has a congregational development expertise added to an advanced degree in urban planning. Some will vote for Tracy because she's gay and others won't for fear of causing a stir in the "wider Communion". Either side is effectively barred from voting for Tracy because she is the most qualified candidate. I pray for the day that Tracy (and those who follow her) will be "just another candidate" ---- a truly level playing field for the God-given gifts and charisms for ministry may be considered alone. But this is most likely not the day. Even if elected, most bishops have already committed to not consent to the election and consecration of a partnered gay person.

And while we are on that topic, the truth is that I doubt whether they would allow an unpartnered gay person either!

The solutions? 1) Lots of prayer, lots of prayerful discernment on what God is calling all of us to in this "season of fasting" 2) Come out! If you are closeted, you are the missing person to change some one's heart on this whole matter. The more "out" LGBT persons can be, the better for the health of the Church. 3) Get involved locally, at the Diocesan level and nationally---these conversations and decisions are made at various level of the Church structure---do them a favor if you are a LGBT person and be present to speak up for yourself and your brothers and sisters.

4) The possible reversal of BO33 is a possibility given how we have seen it used this triennium. Ask your Deputies about this, and if you are a Deputy think about that.

And in all things be generous, loving and truthful. Our passions, angers and disappointments are no excuse to ridicule and shut down others. If I remember my old non-violent rules ---which actually comes from the work of Martin Luther King,Jr.---your witness is always an invitation for others to join you.

Institutional Inertia Rooted in Homophobia

2007-06-26T15:48:00.000-05:00

Anglican Bishop Michael Ingham on blessing same-sex unions

Globe and Mail Update
June 26, 2007 at 12:16 PM EDT

Canada's only Anglican bishop to authorize the blessing of homosexual unions says the refusal by his fellow bishops to approve the rite for the national church is the product of institutional inertia rooted in homophobia, The Globe's Michael Valpy wrote today in his article Homophobia accepted in church, bishop says.

Bishop Michael Ingham of the Vancouver-area diocese of New Westminster says homophobia, hiding behind interpretations of scripture, remains an acceptable prejudice in Canadian Anglicanism.
"There are members of our church who staunchly defend that. In my view, [it] is a total misreading of scripture and a misuse of the Bible to oppress people. But they clearly want to continue to do that."
A recent motion before the church's triennial general synod — or governing body — to allow individual dioceses to permit blessings of same-sex unions was approved by clergy and laity, but vetoed by a slim majority of bishops, who voted 21-19 against it.

Earlier, however, the bishops had voted by the same margin in favour of a resolution stating that the blessings were not in conflict with the church's "core doctrine."

http://http//www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070626.wanglicanQA/BNStory/specialComment/home

Truth and Myth

2007-06-26T08:33:00.000-05:00

The story previously posted is most likely apocryphal--(these are embroidered and unverifiable stories which make up most of our world religious literature). Many good friends have written me about it and, suspecting this, I deleted the "This is a true story" from the end of the original E-mail.

Growing up in Appalachia my childhood was spent listening to stories--stories about family, stories about past history such as The Depression and World War II, stories about people in the town, stories about why things were they way they were. My conservative "Missionary Baptist" grandparents told me the stories of their conversion where one day they were one way and the next they were another.

I have always liked the Zen approach to objective truth---things happen, and immediately we make up a story about it to have power over it, control it, make it fit into our world view. The Zen masters loved stories and told many, but the truth behind them was the key element. They had no illusion that the stories were ever objective.

Jesus spoke in parables--he knew the power of myth and story to change lives. It doesn't matter one whit that he made them up. It doesn't matter one whit that the writers of the Old and New Testaments embroidered on an event in which they saw Divine power and working. I believe all of the stories because they contain deeply objective truth for my subjective life. Do I say they all have to have happened just the way they were written? No. Does this mean they are any less valid if they are embellished? No. Do I need to choose between Noah and Darwin? No.

Human beings are Meaning Mills, creating meaning out of almost nothing sometimes. Its what we do, we are hard wired for it. Its not bad or good---its just what we do. And we learn best that way--to hear a well worn story is truly the Balm of Gilead for the illusion of our seemingly objective and quantifiable lives.

Small Steps Achieve Freedom for us All

2007-06-20T10:50:00.000-05:00

This was sent to me by a friend. Its a very good parable!

This scene took place on a British Airways flight betweenJohannesburg, South Africa & London.
A white woman, about 50 years old, was seated next to a black man.
Very disturbed by this, she called the air hostess. "Youobviously do not see it then?" she asked. "You placed menext to a black man.
I did not agree to sit next to someone from such a repugnant group. Give me an alternative seat."
"Be calm please," the hostess replied.
"Almost all the places on this flight are taken. I will go to see if another place is available."
The hostess went away & then came back a few minutes later.
"Madam, just as I thought, there are no other available seats in
Economy Class.
I spoke to the captain & he informed me that there is also no seat in Business Class. All the same, we still have one place in First Class."
Before the woman could say anything, the hostess continued."It is not usual for our company to permit someone from EconomyClass to sit in First Class. However, given the circumstances, the captain feels that it would be scandalous to make someone sit next to someone so disgusting."
She turned to the black man, & said, "Therefore, Sir, if you would like to, please collect your hand luggage, a seat awaits you in First Class."

At that moment, the other passengers, who'd been shocked bywhat they had just witnessed, stood up & applauded.
WELL DONE, British Airways

The Christ at the Gym

2007-06-15T13:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was doing my usual work out on the orbital running machine and I noticed a woman and a little old person (who's back was to me) in one of the corners. She was doing some light exercises and the older person was making a feeble attempt at imitating her. From the back the older person looked to be in his/her 70's had a very small form and narrow shoulders which made it unclear to me as whether this was a man or woman with the younger woman. To add to the mystery of the gender of the person he/she wore a baseball cap. Now in the real world usually only men wear baseball caps, but in "gymworld" its a unisex fashion accessory.

Eventually the older person turned around and was sporting a very bushy mustache. So now that this mystery was solved I looked at the old man---he was smiling the sweetest smile and had the body movements and demeanor of someone who had been developmentally challenged for quite some time. He patiently watched his teacher and made feeble attempts to imitate her but never with much passion or success. And she was very patient with him moving him along to different areas of the track room to try a new exercise.

At one point he looked at me and smiled. His face was purely without guile or malice and there was a compassion and wisdom about it. It was a worn face, yet full of joy and wonder. He had a kind of shuffle in the way he walked and followed his companion dutifully and without complaint.

As I watched him, I thought about images of Jesus. The images of Jesus whom the Orthodox say walks among us disguised as the poor and marginalized of this world. I thought of this man as an image of God in my pathway that day. An initially pitiful figure that radiated a simple joy, compassion and understanding. Unexpected, initially rejected, and who's absolution of my unwitting rejection drew me to him.

I imagined him at the Last Day standing before the nations of the world as Matthew 25 suggests. Looking at us sheep and goats. I imagined the surprise and shock of many who want a muscle man Jesus at seeing this man in his frailty and seeming mental defectiveness passing judgement on us (the so-called healthy who have all of our faculties). And in that typical way in which religious epiphanies occur it blessed me as I trudged on to complete my 40 minute sentence on the orbital runner.

I watched as the woman when to the stationary bicycle area and started peddling. He sat on the bike next to her and started pressing the buttons---seeming to delight in the "beep" the buttons made. My workout ended I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I passed them giving them one last look as the young woman caught my eye and gave me a knowing smile as if she knew that I knew who she was with.

Paul's Barber Shop---The Hair of the Dog of Memory

2007-06-07T05:31:00.001-05:00

BEFORE

Recently I woke up and decided to cut my hair radically short from my past length. I am not sure what prompted such a rash decision, but I made it with all of the resolve of a Caesar on the banks of the Rubicon. I knew my usual hair stylist (a woman) loved my long hair and never cut it short enough, so I would have to go to another practitioner of the hair arts. I knew where I had to go.

Being gay, I usually avoided those barbershops with twisting barber poles out front with names like Hank’s, Joe’s and (name the town) Barbershop as they always seemed like bastions of heterosexual male culture. I gathered this from my experience as a child when my Mom took me to Mr. Blaker at the St. Albans Barbershop in West Virginia.

It was a stark white room with a geometrical mosaic tile floor which made it seem almost surgical to me. It had three chairs that had ironwork with fancy foot rests on them which reminded me of a New Orleans balcony. My memory includes barbers in white smocks, hair tonics and cologne’s of different colors in long necked glass bottles, combs soaking in blue solution, a price-list which included only two procedures “Haircut” and “Shave” (no highlights or shampooing) and the distinct scent of Pinaud talc and cologne. Leather seats (some with black tape repair on the leather) with chrome arms and legs which surrounded the vast open area between these waiting area seats and the barber chairs. Mismatched coffee tables were between these chairs with copies of the Charleston Gazette (the local daily paper) and The Sporting News piled onto them. Old guys (at least they seemed old to me) were seated in these chairs and in the corner a black and white TV with a snowy picture with an aluminum foil antenna and the current Cincinnati Reds game playing.

Mr. Blaker was somewhat sullen and after placing a board across the seat to elevate my young head higher invited me to scamper up and sit. He gave my head the once over walking around the chair working a big chaw of tobacco which made his cheek protrude. He then proceeded to wrap a piece of paper around my neck so tight I could feel the pulse of the blood in my jugular vein and secured it. A large cape came next and I, the hapless victim with mother looking on, was ready for the procedure. It took forever it seemed considering I was having a crew cut. But Mr. Blaker carefully clipped and sheared and clipped again. Hair always was down my shirt and he would slap the back of my neck with a horsehair brush full of talc every so often (I assume to whisk away some of the hair which thankfully did not get through the tight paper collar and cape and find its way down my shirt. After it was over Mr. Blaker always gave me a “cake” (we call it a “stick” now) of Juicy Fruit chewing gum for being a good boy. And I left in glee that this was over---scratching my torso on the way out due to all the hair which made it into my shirt.

In June of 2007 I decided to go into “Paul’s” Barber Shop which has been here in an almost imperceptible location on 4th Street near Five Points since I moved here in 1989. I also fugured that "Paul's" was a sign from God for an Episcopal Priest like me to patronize this barber shop. I walked into the same stark shop I remember from my childhood, stark white, mosaic tile floor and fancy ironwork on two Barber Chairs. Paul was a shorter man than Mr. Blaker and didn’t chew. He was friendly and put down his newspaper and greeted me when I walked in (no appointments, walk-ins only). This time he motioned me to the first chair and I sat down without the benefit of an elevation board. He asked me what I wanted.

Hmmm. I had not considered what kind of hair I wanted until that moment. Visions of South Pacific and Flying Leathernecks appeared in my mind and I blurted out “A Flattop”. “Do you like it high and tight on the sides?” he queried. And knowing what “high and tight” meant from gay hair cultures I said yes. At that moment I thanked God for my friendships and conversations with leather men, uniform fetishists and other over masculinized groups in gay society. They taught me “butch” hair slang.

Paul then proceeded to wrap that same piece of paper around my neck as tight as ever and securing it. A cloth cape went over me and away we went.
Paul was amazing. With scissors, an electric clipper and a razor he transformed my head from the haircut I have had since I was in High School to a new and bold military look. The hair flew and at my age I always wonder which dark ones will be replaced by lighter ones. There is a certain nostalgia that some of us with hair have when getting it cut at the half century mark. But I always sigh and secretly thank God that I still have a full head of hair and don’t have to fret over “Hair Club for Men” ads. At least I am saved that from that aspect of male vanity.

Paul whacked my neck with the horsehair brush and the full line of the green packaged Pinaud products lined his work-shelf. I reflected to him that Pinaud men’s grooming products had been around as long as I could recall and he chuckled and said something about it being “French”. Paul asked if I was from here and I said I lived only a few blocks away. I asked him about his life and career (which began in Allentown at a Hair Salon after he graduated from Beauty School in Philadelphia after returning from World War II) but decided to just do men’s hair which he has been doing for 40 years. A couple of other “older” gentlemen came in and proceeded to bury their noses in newspapers. Paul introduced me to them as two guys that have been coming to him for decades. He also told me his delight when four generations of males came in for haircuts bringing in a toddler grandson for his first haircut in this obviously patriarchal initiation into the masculine traditions of the family.

When he was nearing completion he filled his hand with hot shave cream from a little stainless steel machine and dabbed from behind one ear, down around my back hairline and up behind the opposite ear. Out came a sinister looking straight razor which he scraped back and forth across the leather “strop” which hung from the side of the chair. And in quick, surgical “chips” he made a perfect line using the razor around the base of my hair and up behind my ears. He spun the chair around and “Voila!” I seemed to be peering at a new person! Paul had given me a killer (and classic) flattop.

I gave Paul his $9.50 for the haircut and some extra for a tip and asked “You don’t have a stick of Juicy Fruit gum do you?” He smiled and said he didn’t. I said goodbye to Paul and his customers and stepped back into the reality of my own life with shorter hair but with a nostalgic flashback to my childhood to warm the journey.

AFTER>>>>>>>>>>

Its Time To Let Gay Men Give Blood

2007-06-07T05:08:00.000-05:00

June 06, 2006

It's Time to Let Gay Men Give Blood
Art Caplan writes on MSNBC:
If you are in a car crash or have a C-section and need a blood transfusion, will the hospital be able to supply the blood you need? Maybe not. If you are a hemophiliac, have certain genetic diseases or are a child with an immune disease and use treatments made from blood to survive, can you get the life-saving products you need? Don't count on it.
Yet, despite the fact that there is a simple change in public policy that could help solve these problems, old fears about AIDS are standing in the way.
At different times during the year, blood banks and hospitals find themselves unable to meet the demand for blood. And the shortage is growing worse. Demand for blood continues to skyrocket as more Americans undergo bypass operations, organ transplants, C-sections, hip and joint replacements and other treatments that require the use of blood. And as more and more people live with immune disorders or diseases that hamper their ability to make blood, the demand escalates.
We also need blood for other reasons. Sadly, the reality of terrorism and violence has become all too real in American life. This means that the chance of not having enough blood on hand in a particular city on any given day is a risk that each one of us faces.
So what is one simple way to get more blood? Let gay men donate it.
A primary source of blood donation that is currently not being used are men who have had sexual relations with other men. After the AIDS epidemic exploded in 1985, the Food and Drug Administration banned blood donations from any man who had sex with another man even once since 1977.
At one time, that policy made sense. But it no longer does. Testing for HIV and other infectious diseases has improved enormously since 1985. We don’t worry about heterosexuals who engage in risky behavior and might acquire HIV because we know the strict testing of today will screen out their blood if it is infected with the virus. Yet the FDA has not changed its policy about gay men despite the fact that there are people who will die in the United States or have to postpone elective surgery because of periodic shortages of rare blood types and blood products.
Current technology, which screens for the presence of viral DNA, can detect the presence of HIV at the very earliest stages of infection with uncanny accuracy. Admittedly there is a "window period" during which someone can be infected with HIV and not test positive even with the best of tests. But this window can be measured in terms of days not years and certainly not the decades that are currently reflected in the FDA policy.
The policy of forever excluding people who had male-to-male sex at some point during the past 30 years should have been changed a long time ago. The accuracy of the latest technology for screening blood means that there is no reason to exclude anyone as a donor in any risk group for more than a month.
The question now is whether the FDA and Congress will act or simply let old prejudices, biases and fears stand in the way of supplying the nation with more badly needed blood.
The AIDS epidemic has been with us for 25 years. The policy currently governing blood donation in the United States has been with us for 22 years. Given our ability to guarantee an exceedingly safe blood supply, it is time to revisit the policy and accept blood from all Americans willing to donate. Fear and prejudice should not be allowed to kill people.

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

2007-04-17T06:40:00.000-05:00

The news came yesterday that 32 people, students and faculty, had been killed and many more wounded at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. It was surreal to grasp that a man could just walk into college dorms and classrooms and kill people at random. A news commentator opined that it would be days and weeks before we start to "understand" this tragedy. I wonder if violence in any form can/should be understood. To understand means it becomes logical, rational, the end product of a human thought processes. This is beyond comprehension.

It falls in the same category as ethnic cleansings in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan, like the Nazi holocaust, the random shootings that occur in Philadelphia and other cities as a result of teen gang violence, terrorists who kill innocent people one bright September morning. It is the human stain, the original sin that moves us toward violence and destruction. Some biologists have said that simians are at their root a destructive species, they seem to enjoy ripping and tearing things up. One need only look at aspects of human history to wonder if our link to our evolutionary predecessors is not this aspect of primates.

As a Christian I stand at the end of Holy Week and Easter where the story of human destructiveness and violence is writ large. Yet it is clear that this is not what the God we claim calls us to. In fact its just the opposite. In Easter God says no to violence and killing, in the Paschal Mystery God allows violence and destructiveness to take its best shot and then shows us another more life-giving and authentic way.

Make sense of this? No. I refuse. What I can do is stand before this massacre in silence with my broken heart lifted to God. To stand in that awe-full silence which is God, to be still enough to hear Divine weeping. To say with all my being Kyrie Elieson, Lord have mercy on us! Its what I experience when I visit the Holocaust museums in Washington and Paris, its what I feel when a man who was shaving in his bathroom getting ready for work is killed by a stray bullet from the street where children have guns, its what I feel when we feel perfectly justified putting people to death in our society for "good" reasons.

I just finished an E-mail to my daughter who is a college student in North Carolina and who is in England studying this semester. I told her about the event and told her that it reminded me of how much I loved her and how unspeakable it would be to me had she been one of the vicitims. Its the natural human response to events like these. To grab and hold those precious to us, to speak our love for them in the midst of our grief for the victims of human violence. To let them know that this is not what life is about and that this is not the way the world is meant to be. It is a call to us to create a better world where the wounds of potential shooters are dealt with.

Its hard to understand the shooter as someone's child who somewhere along the way didn't learn all the life lessons that would equip him to deal responsibly and creatively with disappointment, failure and sadness which is part of all our lives. The wounded usually wound others. The walking dead want others to join them. And shouldn't we once again ask why we allow the walking dead to have access to instruments of destruction?

In the aftermath of this we should all hug our children, our partners, our friends, our family. Let them know how much you love them and how committed you are to their safety and how you would be diminished were they not in your life. If nothing else, perhaps this tragedy can produce an equal and opposite reaction of love. Too often we seek revenge. As a Christian I am called to something quite different.

2007-03-31T18:42:00.000-05:00

Martini (Dickens' successor) loves her pink bone!

My Kids and their Life

2007-03-31T18:02:00.000-05:00

The Fairport Frenzy soccer team on which Zach was a member (last year). Zach is the in the second row, second in from the left.

Olivia jumps for joy by a lake in Switzerland

No Towels, No Keys

2007-03-31T17:34:00.000-05:00

Today was the last day at the Bethlehem YMCA of what was known as the "Men's Fitness Center" which served those willing to pay an extra $200 a year with a towel and a key to a locker on signing in at the desk. A keypad with a secret code known only to members allowed access to what I can only say was a paradise for those who like that sort of thing. Steamroom, sauna, whirlpool, and being able to read the newspaper naked gave a certain "boys club" feel to it. There was another locker room for men's "regular" members which had just lockers and a shower room.

Tomorrow we will only have one men's locker room. The towels can be purchased for $75 a year (or bring your own) and no keys will be given out. You bring your own lock and towel. New faces are already visible as the lockers from the old regular means locker room have been moved into the Fitness Center. As I left today the maintenance folks were ripping the old sign "Men's Fitness Center, Members Only" off the door I have gone through hundreds of times.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. A cosmic change made 2000 years ago will be remembered and renacted. It will change the rules and swing wide the doors of heaven forever. The former "members only" policy of Israel will be expanded to include all. ANd this begins its annual cycle tomorrow. Its also called "Passion Sunday" as we read the story about teh execution of Jesus. While tomorrow is a heavey day for us as Christians, it also reminds us that cosmic shifts come at great price and are not easy.

As I adjust at my gym, we will need to revisit that annual adjustment to understanding ourselves as undeserving recipients of a loving God who submits to death in order that we all receive teh saving embrace of divine love. Getting the keys to the kingdom is better than keys to a locker and the towel of service given to us by Our Lord is a happy alternative to the anything we can recieve from the world.

Dickens

2005-05-16T10:28:00.001-05:00

It's hard to describe how a puppy comes into your life, grows up, then gets old and comes a time when you have to end that dog's life in the name of love and compassion. Its a terrible moment and that moment came on Friday May 13 at about 4:00pm. Dickens was born on February 6, 1993 at an Amish puppy breeder near Womelsdorf, PA.

When we got Dickens he was actually placed in the name of my daughter, Olivia, who picked him out from all of his litter mates (Dickens had 10 brothers and sisters---one brother died shortly after his birth, however). Olivia was 4 at the time and her brother was not born until she was 6! So in her words--"I knew Dickens longer than my brother!"

When we were leaving the breeder the day we picked him up he was so small and vivacious and cute and Olivia wanted to sit in the front seat with him. Not knowing how he would react to automobile travel he sat on Deven's (my wife at the time) lap in the back seat. As we drove out he threw his little head back and howled for a few miles.

He worked his way into our lives and hearts in no time. He loved stealing stuffed animals out of then kid's rooms and when he was young we'd catch him tearing out of the kid's room with his "kill" sometimes twice his size dragging along.

He loved to drive in the car and he attended many meetings with me such as Bible Study, Vestry, Bishop's Bible Study and Commission on Ministry. He loved people and would bark at them as a greeting--rarely as an aggressive behavior. He also was very interested in other dogs and would whine from the car when he saw one walking along the street. He hated me when I would leave him in the car and register his protests by barking incessantly until he could no longer see me. This was often embarrassing to me when in a parking lot full of people. He worked with Lynne Wert (the secretary at St. Elizabeth's) most Tuesdays to help put together the worship material for our next Sunday liturgy.

He raised a kitten named "Mischief" who came to our home as an abandoned kitten when we lived in North Carolina. He and Mischief would lay in the floor chewing on each other and play hide and seek around the house. When Mischief would disappear, all we would have to do was walk Dickens around the neighborhood and Mischief would charge out to greet him---he liked Dickens far better than humans.

Dickens liked his "puppy biscuits" and would sit, shake, "high five", lay down and jump up on command when that was the reward. He was not the best house broken dog (he was unuetered) and we would have to confine him to the kitchen when leaving the house without him. A "puppy biscuit" would get him in the kitchen---although he walked VERY SLOWLY to the kitchen knowing that he would be alone at the end of eating his biscuit!

When I moved back from North Carolina I was alone and in a major life transition. He was a comfort and joy to me and never left my side the 5 years we have been back. He was starting to show pain in the last few months which I attributed to arthritis. But it was discovered that he had a malignant mass in his abdominal area which began on his spleen and had matasicized to his liver. It was the hardest decision I have ever made to end his life. But he was already under anesthesia and he would slip quietly and painlessly away from us.

When I die I hope that he is there waiting for me at the end of the proverbial "rainbow bridge" when he will undoubtedly give that shrill bark of welcome he always gave me when I came home after being gone a long while and will do his "welcome home" dance to welcome me to heaven.

2005-05-14T07:56:00.000-05:00

Our little Dickens
February 6, 1993-May 13, 2005

2005-05-03T14:22:00.000-05:00

Olivia and Sam ready for Prom 4/2005
Isn't she beautiful? Then, again, I'm prejudiced!

Easter 5 A RCL

2005-05-03T13:08:00.000-05:00

Easter 5A RCL

In the name of God who forms us into living stones of a heavenly building. AMEN

Stones have gotten bad press in our English vernacular it seems to me. Stone cold sober, deaf as a stone, dead as a stone, dumb as a rock, stoned (inebriated), stoners (those who are often inebriated), kidney stones, all betray a somewhat negative understanding of stones.

The scriptures are a bit more complimentary of stones....Jesus says that the religious leaders should not try and quiet the crowd because if they tried, even the stones would cry out Hosanna! Not one stone will be left on another of the temple in Jerusalem Jesus predicts and indeed was rightexcept for that stony remnant we now call the wailing wall, which was the foundation.

As many of you know, I completely re-landscaped my yard three years ago, building retaining walls and shoring up the fences as to stop them from being used as a Thruway for the many feral cats that roam my urban neighborhood. To do this I needed stones---lots of em. And as luck would have it I had a parishioner (Mary Sue) who just happened to have some stones she was in need of getting rid of. In addition she lived next to a stone mason's shop where they piled up the stones which, for whatever reason, were rejected and were fine with neighbors and their neighbor's friends lifting a few for personal use.

I got a great deal of pleasure knowing that I was using stones that were destined for the landfill and using them in such a way that made them useful and showed off their grain and function.

If you wanted to build something that would endure a desert climate for generations, you built it of stone. Resistant to sun damage, virtually indestructible by insects and water and cool in the hot months.
So when Peter uses the image of stones he is intentionally using a building material meant for the ages rather than a temporary structure. Peter's cultural context of Palestine and the Mediterranean Sea basin dictated that stone was the building material of choice. Yet he adds an important caveat. He talks about the stones which the builders rejected. Who are the builders and who are the rejected stones may be the next question you probably have in this allegorical description of this poetic spiritual building.

Of course the builders are those in power, those who have authority (or think they do) in deciding religious piety and how God works. We should take note here that we take on a builder's persona when we decide who is spiritual enough and who isn't. When we confine God to acting in one predictable way and not another. The builders in Jesus' and Peter's time were the Jewish religious elite. Those who laid terrible burdens on the people in the way they were to be religious. The ones who rejected Jesus as God could never come to them in THAT way. Jesus was the stone that the builders rejected in building their beautiful idea of what God's kingdom would be like. An idea solely conceived by them and oblivious to what God was actually doing around them.

So Peter calls us to become living stones around the cornerstone. The cornerstone of course in this allegory is Jesus. If you've ever seen a gothic arch you know that the top stone, or keystone is the critical stone as it transfers the stress throughout the whole arch, yet is the point where the pressure is constantly exerted. What is important to note however, the stones that form either side of the arch are critical as well, working with the keystone to hold the arch firmly in place. The Romans knew that and developed the arch as a central part of their architectural design. It was able to hold up a great deal of weight without adding a great deal of bulk.

Peter says a radical thing today ---he speaks to you and me in the apostolic community when he says that we are living stones, grafted onto Christ in Baptism and by virtue of that we join in holding up the building of which Christ is the main stone. Without us there would be no building ---just the potential in the cornerstone.
You are rejected for many reasons by the culture---you believe in this invisible God, you are part of this small, storefront congregation, you stake your life on something that has no visible guarantee, you believe in a God who you have not seen exactly; you give your time and money to something that does not give you a monetary return. You are quite odd really, in the eyes of the culture. You believe in a person, and claim a relationship with him who was purported to have been raised from the dead. An event that is either unbelievable to many, or a fond story and can easily be explained away in biology that he really didn't die, but fainted or went into a coma from which he recovered.

SO the next time you think going to Church and being part of a faith community is normal, consider that.

But Peter goes on. Because Christ dwells in you by virtue of your faith and baptism, you are now part of a community and an invisible priesthood that before now didn't exist. You are a holy priesthood. What is a priest? In the traditional Jewish understanding a priest was a person who performed a unique and important function in Israel's early life. They were the ones who were allowed to approach God on behalf of the people made intercession for them--performed sacrifice on their behalf to eradicate sin or for thanksgiving.

Now, according to Peter, you have direct access through Jesus who lives in you. Because of the Holy Spirit's presence in you given at Baptism, you are participating in God yourself and can have direct access by virtue of your faith. Therefore you are a royal priesthood who intercedes on behalf of the world. I don't think we often understand that. Perhaps we don't want to understand that as it may give us too much of a sense of responsibility. You are a priest for everyone with whom you have contact, God will hear your message to God about them. And then God will decide what to do with your spoken, or unspoken request/intercession/condemnation regarding them.

Its an awesome place to be this priesthood of which you partake whether you acknowledge it or not.

The responsibility then is to heal and reconcile those who are far off to the living God. You are a shepherd. You make intercession for all you come in contact with.

You are also responsible for justice. To see that the weak and powerless get a fair shake. You are to understand and get in with those who the society rejects, as that is precisely where God can do God's best work.

As we progress toward the dream of a new and more permanent home. Let us not be distracted from our priesthood. Our job is not to make St. E's more financially solvent, or more permanent or more anything except out there reconciling the world to God. If we keep the main the main thing then the rest will come.

Our mission statement "All are welcome, none are judged, a community of reconciliation in Christ" needs to be on the forefront of all we do and say. Peter explains our own mission statement in the end of this passage when he says "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy."

To live this will make us truly a light in this culture of judgment and rejection. To live this out will be the outward sign of our priesthood as believers.

AMEN

George Bernard Shaw on "Joy and Service"

2005-03-28T12:15:00.000-05:00

This is the true joy in life --- the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being a force of nature instead of a feverish,
selfish little clod of ailments and grievances,
complaining that the world will not devote itself
to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life
belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live,
it is my priviledge to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die,
for the harder I work the more I live.
I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Life is no "brief candle" to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch
which I've got to hold up for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible
before handing it on to future generations,

Two of My Favorites by John Ciardi (1916-1986)

2005-03-28T11:49:00.000-05:00

Palaver's No prayer

PALAVER'S no prayer.

There's a nice-ninny priest

at tea in everyone,

all cozy and chatty as auntie,

but a saint comes

and throws rocks through the window.

In Place of a Curse

At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected,

I shall forgive last the delicately wounded

who, having been slugged no harder than anyone else,

never got up again, neither to fight back,

nor finger their jaws in painful admiration.

They who are wholly broken, and they in whom

mercy is understanding, I shall embrace at once

and lead to pillows in heaven. But they who are

the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters

with the extortions of a mock-helplessness

I shall take last to love, and never wholly.

Let them all into Heaven--I abolish Hell--

but let it be read over them as they enter:

"Beware the calculations of the meek, who gambled nothing,

gave nothing, and who could never receive enough."

(From 39 Poems --1959)

Easter Vigil Sermon 2005

2005-03-28T10:41:00.000-05:00

Easter Vigil 2005

Alleluia! Let us praise with our lips and in our lives the God of Life and Resurrection.

As a child I never had an Easter Vigil to attend. Being raised a very Protestant child we had Palm Sunday and then Easter the next. Never did I attend a Good Friday service. Never could I partake of communion as a non-baptized member of the community. You see, children couldn’t be baptized in my tradition. You had to wait til you were a teenager.
So for me tonight is a special treat. It is a way to be present to the tomb, to be present to the high points of God’s working and promises to humankind and to see what happens to them and how God makes good on those promises. To enter the mystery of God’s love in a way which no other service of the Church year allows for.
We have just heard the lessons which form the core of our belief system—which shape our understanding of God. A God who creates good things, a God who makes agreements with humans and honors them when humans don't, a God who desires faith over idolatry, a God who delivers slaves, who makes dry, long -dead bones live and rise and walk. A God who finally conquers death forever.
This, our final day of the Triduum marks one more place of identity for us as Christians and reminds us of who we are and what we are about.
We are first a people of a story, a book, a tale so outrageous that one can only accept it in faith. Like the ancients we sat in darkness around a sacred fire and told the stories of our spiritual ancestors. We are shaped by story. And it begs the question “what story are you shaped by”?
If you ponder it, your life is shaped by some primal story about yourself. Who you are and who you become depends largely on what story you have accepted about yourself and decided to make true. Sometimes others create that story and hand it to us for our acceptance or rejection. Sometimes we live out stories that are other's about us without knowing we can edit this story at any time--add large blocks of copy of remove them.
As Christians, we stake a claim on the story of Jesus is also our story. It is who we are in the world. It is embellished and expanded upon by all the stories we just heard.
These are also stories of a people, a community and not just individuals. We must feed on these stories as a community, ferreting out new meanings and new understandings of ourselves as a community. And allowing them to shape how we approach our common life. In our leadership we must see them and hold fast to them and claim them even when its tough to do so, even if it seems irrational or ridiculous to do so.
So in the Triduum we discover we are people shaped by a story.
Secondly we are people who struggle to believe. Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zephaniah and the Mary Magdalene all struggled with what it meant to live in the power of a relationship with the living and unpredictable God.
Here in former darkness we have the opportunity to see the light, to grasp God’s great love for us and God’s great desire to be in an authentic relationship with him.
If we get nothing else from the last three days we should understand that God will go to great lengths to be connected to us and to have us love God back with but a small percentage of the love with which God loves us.
I am always humbled by that fact--- knowing full well how imperfect my love can be, knowing how often I love conditionally and knowing how incompletely I give myself over to God most of the time.
Yet, tonight we celebrate a God who loves us still—in spite of these imperfections in loving God back. A God who reaches for us always only to have us (more often than not,sometimes) not reach back. Who after telling us to love each other, who after suffering abuse and death, can forgive us without exhaustion and forever.
We saw last night how ugly we can be, tonight we may be able to grasp how beautiful we are to God. And maybe we can look upon God and grasp, like a lover looking into the face of the beloved, the intense beauty of God.
AMEN

2005-03-28T10:32:00.000-05:00

Rowan (Archbishop of Canterbury), my daughter Olivia and Me.