A Revolting Christian

Emmaeus and Osama

2011-05-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

The image of journeying down a road has long been an important one in prose, poetry, music, and film. The meaning of the metaphor, of course changes over time and circumstance, but we seem to return to it, perhaps because it is such a common experience. Roads, in particular, are built with the express purpose of making it easier for us to get from one place to another. It is no wonder that the story of the Disciples meeting the resurrected Jesus on the Road to Emmaeus is such a powerful one for us.

One way we imagine roads is as a symbol of our attempt to discover something, particularly something about ourselves. Jack Kerouac's, On the Road comes to mind. Under this metaphor, the destination fades in importance and it is the trip itself that becomes most valuable.

Long before Kerouac came along, though, the Church had encouraged pilgrimages. While Christians have holy sites that we encourage people to go to, there is no one place that is required. Some go to Jerusalem or Rome, others head to Iona, the Taize community in France, or a hundred other places around the world. It is the idea of taking extended periods of time out of our lives to reflect and learn about ourselves and our relationship with God that becomes most important, not the destination.

When it became clear that many would not be able to make such a pilgrimage, we adopted the labyrinth as an alternative. In a labyrinth, unlike a maze, there is only one path that you follow to the center. There is no need for decision making, and there is no great city waiting at the end, so the pilgrim has nothing to focus upon other than making the journey, which becomes more of a journey into the soul than a physical event.

There is a second way in which the road is used, however, one that contrasts significantly with this one: it is the idea of the road as the place we go to get away from something. When someone says, "It's time to hit the road." they mean that they have stayed too long. The reference may be to a relationship that has come to an end, or to a life that has become complacent. We may hit the road when we are angry, frustrated, or feel trapped. When one takes to the road in this meaning, it quite often is a literal leaving town, but not always.

It is this second image of the road that seems to be behind the story of the Emmaeus road. After the empty tomb is found in Luke, the women meet angels who tell them that Jesus is alive. They run to the apostles and repeat the story. However, the apostles have trouble believing their tale.

Thus, we find two disciples on the road. Suddenly Jesus appears to them, though not in a way they recognize. When he appears to not know what has happened in Jerusalem, they make clear that they believe the body has been stolen. They also tell their walking companion that they had thought Jesus would restore Israel--i.e., lead a rebellion to overthrow the Romans. With his death, though, comes despair. And so, they apparently abandon this failed venture and hit the road.

However, Jesus takes this journey and redirects it from 'hitting the road' to a 'journey of discovery.' He teaches them about himself and reveals himself in the bread. In the end, they never make it to Emmaeus, but return to Jerusalem to tell the story of their encounter.

At this point, it is probably important to mention that archeologists have never positively identified the location of Emmaeus. Luke tells us it was about seven miles from Jerusalem, but does not say which direction. Today, there are several sites that have been identified as possibly being Emmaeus, but not definitively. In a certain sense then, the trip's destination really is not the point.

There is one more road metaphor worth mentioning here, that of coming to the end of a road. We use that image when we want to talk about something running out of energy or steam. People talk about a romance coming to the end of the road, but this metaphor is just as easily used to talk about a failing business venture such as a restaurant or a plan that has failed to produce the desired results.

For almost ten years, the United States has hunted Osama bin Laden. It was part of the strategy had led us into two wars, increased our security budgets exponentially, and brought many attempts to curb freedoms in America in the name of security. This kill, however, was long seen as an important step towards making the U.S. safe from terrorists.

Did it? Do you feel safer now?

The reality is that little changed last week when we raided that compound. Don't get me wrong. I wanted to see justice done for 9/11. I'm not sure that is what we got exactly, but I did not think bin Laden should go unpunished, just that a trial would have been better. That was not to be, apparently.

But I maintain that little changed. We are still in two wars--and no, we cannot just go home now after tearing up two countries for all these years--and al Qaeda is still out there too. And declaring plans to retaliate. No one is safer.

The fact is, we are at the end of the road. We have pursued this policy of righteous indignation since 2001, and there is no sign of it working yet. And why is that?

For one thing, it is because we have chosen to hide behind labels of evil and insane to justify any action we take towards the perpetrators without regard for the reasons they might have had for what they did. We never stopped to ask why they hated us so much because we assumed our complete innocence.

Don't get me wrong. The 9/11 acts were never justified. They were wrong pure and simple. But when people organize and spend millions to plot acts of terror like the ones of that day, there is clearly some sense of desperation involved. And for every extremist willing to blow him or her self up, there are a hundred or a thousand other people just as angry, but more restrained, feeling the same anger. And so far, we have not explored why.

We never mention the economic poverty, the propped up dictators, the exploitation of their natural resources. We never mention the way they see us benefiting from their cheap labor or our failure to respond to human rights violations by their governments. We never mention being the ones who buy the drugs that are grown instead of food plants.

At some point we have to stop and ask ourselves why they hate us so much. And we never have asked it in part because we have some pretty good ideas about what the answers would be. So now we find ourselves down this road which is ending right before us. It should never have been this long.

For Christians at least, this does not have to be a dead end. The other road has always been there for us to take should we choose to do so. It is a lot less traveled, and will require more work on our part to traverse. But it is not a road of death. It is the road that Jesus walks and calls us to walk as well, the road of discovery we so desperately need to walk if we ever wish to find reconciliation and life.

Which way are you going? Which road will you be on?

Young People in Church?

2011-03-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

This moment is being given to one Tamie Fields Harkins a blogger at owlrainfeathers.blogspot.com. In a posting last November, she had this to say. i can't say it better.

When I was an Episcopal chaplain--for four years--all the time people in the church would ask me, "Why don't young people come to church?" or "How do we get young people to come to church?" I have some suggestions now, so listen up.

Here is a step-by-step plan for how to get more young people into the church:

1. Be genuine. Do not under any circumstances try to be trendy or hip, if you are not already intrinsically trendy or hip. If you are a 90-year-old woman who enjoys crocheting and listens to Beethoven, by God be proud of it.

2. Stop pretending you have a rock band.

3. Stop arguing about whether gay people are okay, fully human, or whatever else. Seriously. Stop it.

4. Stop arguing about whether women are okay, fully human, or are capable of being in a position of leadership.

5. Stop looking for the "objective truth" in Scripture.

6. Start looking for the beautiful truth in Scripture.

7. Actually read the Scriptures. If you are Episcopalian, go buy a Bible and read it. Start in Genesis, it's pretty cool. You can skip some of the other boring parts in the Bible. Remember though that almost every book of the Bible has some really funky stuff in it. Remember to keep #5 and #6 in mind though. If you are evangelical, you may need to stop reading the Bible for about 10 years. Don't worry: during those ten years you can work on putting these other steps into practice.

8. Start worrying about extreme poverty, violence against women, racism, consumerism, and the rate at which children are dying worldwide of preventable, treatable diseases. Put all the energy you formerly spent worrying about the legit-ness of gay people into figuring out ways to do some good in these areas.

9. Do not shy away from lighting candles, silence, incense, laughter, really good food, and extraordinary music. By "extraordinary music" I mean genuine music. Soulful music. Well-written, well-composed music. Original music. Four-part harmony music. Funky retro organ music. Hymns. Taize chants. Bluegrass. Steel guitar. Humming. Gospel. We are the church; we have a uber-rich history of amazing music. Remember this.

10. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

11. Learn how to sit with people who are dying.

12. Feast as much as possible. Cardboard communion wafers are a feast in symbol only. Humans can not live on symbols alone. Remember this.

13. Notice visitors, smile genuinely at them, include them in conversations, but do not overwhelm them.

14. Be vulnerable.

15. Stop worrying about getting young people into the church. Stop worrying about marketing strategies. Take a deep breath. If there is a God, that God isn't going to die even if there are no more Christians at all.

16. Figure out who is suffering in your community. Go be with them.

17. Remind yourself that you don't have to take God to anyone. God is already with everyone. So, rather than taking the approach that you need to take the truth out to people who need it, adopt the approach that you need to go find the truth that others have and you are missing. Go be evangelized.

18. Put some time and care and energy into creating a beautiful space for worship and being-together. But shy away from building campaigns, parking lot expansions, and what-have-you.

19. Make some part of the church building accessible for people to pray in 24/7. Put some blankets there too, in case someone has nowhere else to go for the night.

20. Listen to God (to Wisdom, to Love) more than you speak your opinions.

This is a fool-proof plan. If you do it, I guarantee that you will attract young people to your church. And lots of other kinds of people too. The end.

Does Sarcasm Become Jesus?

2011-02-15T10:15:00.000-08:00

Being as I am wholly associated with a denomination that can be incredibly unforgiving of rudeness (or of choosing the wrong fork at dinner), the title question seems to be a no-brainer. Surely Jesus would never want to condone a form of humor that calls attention to the foibles of its audience. Why even ask the question? Except....

Like many preachers, I began last week's sermon by reading the lessons. For those of you in non-lectionary churches, you need to know that we have assigned sets of lessons for each week, last week being the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. The value of this is that we do not get to pass over those biblical passages that are difficult for us. Sooner or later, they come around, and we are forced to wrestle with the difficult areas of our own understanding.

Last week was one of those weeks. The passage was Matthew 5:21-37. Besides including the stuff about looking at women with lust in our hearts, there is that piece, smack in the middle of the reading, about cutting out your eye or cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin.

Now, conservative evangelicals love this passage. It actually uses the words lust, adultery, sin, and hell. What could be better? Just take out that floppy Bible to wave around and go to town! Today is the day for that altar call you wanted to have to make sure everyone gets saved from the depravity of lust leading them to hell. Never mind the fact that the passage has nothing to do with being saved, and the hell reference is for not being reconciled with your brother or sister.

Liberals do everything in their power to say that Jesus' words were not to be take literally. Of course Jesus does not want you to cut off your hand. No, Jesus is merely trying to point out how important this is. And, by the way, in this version, the whole passage is really about how obedience to God is impossible without God's unearned grace, which, we receive in baptism.

Did you notice how both sides just ended up at essentially the same place? Whether it is an altar call or a declaration of the saving effects of baptism, they have diverted from Jesus' point, which was about a faithful life.

Just prior to this passage, Jesus was talking about how he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. What we have here is his take on a few of the laws and what they were intended to do. It's not enough to not commit murder; you need to treat your brother and sister well and repair any enmity between you when it occurs. It is not enough to tell the truth; you should keep any vows you make (including wedding vows), and you should be so trustworthy that you do not need to swear oaths because people will know that you will do what you say you will do.

And in between those two is the one about not lusting in your heart, followed by the cutting of body parts. Here's the thing. Most of the time, people who refer to the eye and hand passage remove it from the lust passage (Let's face it; either one of those gives you plenty to work with, right?). But they really should be looked at together. Why would Jesus (or at least Matthew) put them back to back?

Have you ever really thought about what it means to say "If your eye causes you to sin..." Really? Your eye causes you to sin. Your eye or your hand is some independent agent committing atrocities apart from the rest of you? I don't think so!
Don't try telling the judge "My hand stole the money, not me." Does Jesus suddenly sound a bit sarcastic? You betcha!

Surely at least part of Jesus' point was to remind us that we have agency over what our various body parts do (apart from an occasional unplanned belch, or...well, you get the idea!). Your hand does not cause you to sin. If anything, you cause your hand to sin. The eye does not commit lust in your heart. It sees the object of lust, and you take it from there.

In other words, take some responsibility for what you do, and begin to take steps to change your life. Now, the liberal theologians can come in and remind us of Paul's understanding of sin and grace. And the conservatives can remind us that what we do has real consequences (I'll leave the bumpy road to a theology of hell for another day.). In the meantime, I'll take Jesus' words to remind me that the letter of the law is not even hardly the point.

Note: All of you trying to get the 10 commandments placed on the courtroom walls, please stop it. You are reinforcing the opposite of what Jesus tried to teach. And the fact that you don't even realize it should tell you to rethink this one.

And me? Well, I have reconciled with an old friend already this week, so I am trying my best to live Jesus' words. But mostly, I am laughing at Jesus' joke. Now, if my mouth would just stop eating fattening foods....

Tucson, Ourselves, and Violence

2011-01-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

Yes, I have been away a long time. Just have not much felt like writing. That is coming to an end, and I will return soon with much more.

In the meantime, here is something that I penned in response to a challenge from Diana Butler Bass, adapted from my sermon yesterday. I have included her words because they provide the context.

With remarkable clarity, Dianna Butler Bass, Church historian and frequent Internet writer summed up the situation surrounding the violence in Tucson on Saturday. Within hours, she posted this note:

“The Sunday after Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, my husband's family attended their Presbyterian church. They went with heavy hearts, expecting the pastor to help make sense of the tragedy. The minister rose to preach. The congregation held its breath. But he said nothing of the events in Memphis. He preached as if nothing had happened.

“My husband's family left church that day disappointed; eventually, they left that church altogether.

“This Sunday, many Americans will go to church. A sizeable number of those people may be hoping to hear something that helps them make sense of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the others who had gathered at her sidewalk townhall in Tucson. Some pastors may note the event in prayer and some may say something during announcements or add a sentence to their sermons. But others might say nothing, sticking instead to prepared texts and liturgies. Many will eschew speaking of politics.

“That would be a mistake.

“Much of American public commentary takes place on television, via the Internet, and through social networks. We already know what form the analysis of the assassination attempt will be. Everyone will say what a tragedy it is. Then commentators will take sides. Those on the left will blame the Tea Party's violent rhetoric and "Second Amendment solutions." Those on the right will blame irresponsible individuals and Socialism. Progressives will call for more gun control; conservatives will say more people should carry guns. Everyone will have some sort of spin that benefits their party, their platform, and their policies.

“But who will speak of the soul?

“Since President Obama has taken office, many ministers have told me that they have feared addressing public issues from the pulpit lest "someone get hurt." Well, someone is hurt--and people have died--most likely because bitterly partisan lies have filled the air and most certainly because some unhinged individual killed people.

“At their best, American pulpits are not about taking sides and blaming. Those pulpits should be places to reflect on theology and life, on the Word and our words. I hope that sermons tomorrow will go beyond expressions of sympathy or calls for civility and niceness. Right now, we need some sustained spiritual reflection on how badly we have behaved in recent years as Americans--how much we've allowed fear to motivate our politics, how cruel we've allowed our discourse to become, how little we've listened, how much we've dehumanized public servants, how much we hate.

“Sunday January 9 is the day on which many Christians celebrate the Baptism of Jesus: "When Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.'" Jesus' baptism in water symbolizes life, the newness that comes of cleansing. But there is a darker symbol of baptism in American history: that of blood. In 1862, Episcopal bishop Stephen Elliot of Georgia said, "All nations which come into existence . . . must be born amid the storm of revolution and must win their way to a place in history through the baptism of blood." Baptism as water? Baptism as blood? Baptism accompanied by a dove or baptism accompanied by the storm of revolution?

“American Christianity is deeply conflicted, caught between two powerful symbols of baptism, symbols that haunt our political sub-consciousness. To which baptism are we called? Which baptism does the world most need today? Which baptism truly heals? Do we need the water of God, or the blood of a nine-year old laying on a street in Tucson? The answer is profoundly and simply obvious. We need redemption gushing from the rivers of God's love, not that of blood-soaked sidewalks.
“If we don't speak for the soul, our silence will surely aid evil.”

(http://blog.beliefnet.com/christianityfortherestofus/2011/01/congresswoman-gabrielle-giffords-speaking-for-the-soul.html)

So let’s speak for the soul today. Let’s be reminded that Jesus’ life and ministry were all about not doing things the normal way. Let’s remember that, when the people were looking for a powerful military hero as the Messiah, one who would bring that baptism of blood, John and Jesus held to a different way of change, one that started within and spread out. Let’s remember that violence—even the violence of hate-filled speech—has never been the way of the Christ.

In just a few minutes, we will recite the words of our Baptismal covenant. Now, the Baptismal Covenant in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer was unique in the Anglican Communion when it came out. Back in the 1970s, the Episcopal Church was still referred to by many as the Republican Party at prayer. We had more members in Congress than any other religious group at the time, and, despite being 3% of the population then, we had produced more presidents. We had the highest level of education and income in the land.

What made our Baptismal Covenant suddenly unique from those of the rest of the Church—and not just the rest of Anglicanism, by the way—was our addition of five questions in the end that were not about what we believed but about how we intended to live out the Christian faith.

People outside of faith communities often think that liturgy is just the repetition of words for some kind of comfort that has little or no meaning. Nothing could be further from the truth. Liturgy done well shapes meaning and understanding in our lives, gives context and purpose to our behavior.

Bishop Curry of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina believes, and, upon reflection, I have come to agree with him, that those five questions about our behavior have been transformative, not only for individuals in the Episcopal Church, but for our Church as a whole. Preachers quote them all the time. “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?” “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” And we as people respond, “I will, with God’s help.”

If Bishop Curry is right, the repetition of those vows, the teaching of them, and preaching about them have changed us. And those questions are largely behind what has put us at odds with much of the rest of Anglicanism. Those words have pushed us from merely thinking about what we believe to attempting to live what we believe.
When I tell students—even students who have been raised in the Episcopal Church—the line about us being the Republican Party at prayer, they are shocked. That Church is not the Church they know. Even those who have been raised in fairly conservative Episcopal churches wonder how that appellation could have ever been applied to what is now seen as the left wing of Anglicanism and of American Christianity. It’s not that conservative thought has disappeared by any means. But we have become a much broader church, open to exploring a lot of new ideas of what it means to live our faith.

So what are we to do now? We celebrate and remember our baptism. In January, the first month of the year, we also frequently on who we are and what changes we wish to make.

Now, Church critics are right if that Covenant ever becomes merely comfortable words for us. If we are not the Republican Party at prayer, then we are not the Democratic Party at prayer either. Or the conservatives or progressives or the Tea Party or the birthers. We are the body of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring a different way of living into the world.

And, in the wake of yesterday’s tragedy, that means refusing to accept a place in business as usual, upholding one set of talking head commentators as it blasts another set for what is exactly the same behavior. It means turning off the 24 hour news media, that—have you noticed—almost never broadcasts news shows anymore.
Most of all, it means seeing one another, including those we have come to see as our enemies, as human beings, even when they cannot see us in the same way. Jesus never said do unto others as they do unto you. He said do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It means refusing to accept soundbite theology as being any way for Christians to think or express ourselves. And it means the renunciation of violence as a destructive rather than constructive force for change—and I mean the language of violence in which we destroy our opponents with our arguments.
We Americans are amazing in our desire to see the Israelis and the Palestinians sit down and talk through a settlement rather than go to war. We said the same thing in South Africa, in Northern Ireland, in other global hotspots. Yet our language towards one another is death and destruction. And, occasionally, it erupts in actual violence.

The Unibomber. The Oklahoma City massacre. The recent Post Office bombings in Maryland. And now, the death of a nine-year-old girl and five others, along with a Congresswoman fighting for her life. That language eats at our souls. Is that who we Christian Americans really want to be?

Notice the order I place those words. Christian Americans, not the other way around. In so doing, I remind us of the proper order of those two commitments. Peter reminds us in the tenth chapter of the book of Acts that God shows no partiality based on nationality or class, and calls us to do the same. Let us vow to make the language of our mouths reflect the language of our Savior.

So we begin again today. With the words of the Baptismal Covenant. With the commitment to changed lives. With not just the denunciation of violence but the renunciation of it. With our vow to live differently, according to the will of God.
And then, slowly, surely, we might begin to reclaim our souls. Then we can truly transform this country from hatred. Then we can see the Shalom that God calls us to as we live out the Kingdom of God. Then we will understand, finally, the meaning of death and resurrection that is our baptism. Let us begin.

Radical Welcome for Lefties

2010-01-27T08:12:00.000-08:00

I've done something with worship for Epiphany that I have never done before. For five weeks, we are using the sermon time to discuss a book that we are all reading. I am doing this at our morning service and also in the evening with the students.

Okay, I know what you are thinking; he's discovered a way to get out of preaching for five weeks. Actually, it was a sacrifice, especially the first week, where the gospel lesson was the wedding in Cana. The NRSV has a particularly blunt translation of the passage that refers to the guests getting drunk on the wine, and it would have been interesting to see what I would do with that with my students.

So what book inspired me to do this? The title is Radical Welcome, and it is written by Stephanie Spellers, an Episcopal priest who studied 8 congregations that were reaching out beyond their traditional constituencies to welcome the Other in their midst. Sometime back, my bishop sent a copy to each of his clergy and asked us to read it. Like many things, it sat on my desk, but it never left it and eventually I picked the book up and realized it had something to say to us.

Now, my small congregation is largely made up of people who do not feel particularly welcome at other churches for various reasons, mostly because they are too left thinking, too gay, too young, too--well, you get the idea. They would certainly like to see other congregations read this book too because they all know what it is like not to feel welcome. They may get their wish; the bishop is holding workshops on the book, has invited the author to come this year, and is urging every parish to read it. He did this at the recent diocesan convention in his address, so he is serious about it. We just happened to jump the gun on him by a week without knowing it.

What have we learned so far? First of all, that churches that are radically welcoming have to make themselves vulnerable because welcoming on this scale is not assimilation. We are not trying to grow the church by bringing in a bunch of people who look like us or who we reprogram to make them act like us. Radical welcoming means opening ourselves up to the possibility that it is we who will be changed, not the newcomer.

And guess what. That means our folks got a little nervous about this idea. What happens if someone joins who wants to put an American flag on the altar or sing Onward Christian Soldiers? Is there really space for the Christian Right here? When does openness become losing identity?

In other words, we are, in very many ways, just like every other congregation out there--ackk, it pains me to admit that. Change does not come easy for us, and we are pretty convinced of the basic rightness of what we are doing.

That admission of course does not mean we are wrong, only that we think in the manner of most groups. In a community that values uniqueness and a willingness to go against the crowds, that may be the most fearful learning so far.

Truthfully, there is a level of discerning one's identity that must be maintained in a congregation in order to keep some coherence; a mission statement is not a bad thing to have. But most congregations probably go way beyond that, mostly unofficially, in their expectations of how people who join are supposed to look, act, and think. And maybe, just maybe, we are one with them. We prefer to look at who has felt welcome in our community and marvel at the diversity, not at who hasn't felt welcome.

We got snowed out last Sunday, so this is going to spill over into Lent by a week, when we will be talking about the practical nature of how this applies to our congregation/campus ministry. That may just work because repentance could be a theme we need to face. I have some ideas of what we will need to look at along, but I don't want to pollute the process by printing those ideas here (a member might actually be reading my blog!). So stay tuned; I will publish some thoughts on what comes from this process. In the meantime, get a copy of the book. The ideas are accessible by lay folk without dumbing down the presentation like so many books do.

A Pact with the Devil

2010-01-16T18:27:00.000-08:00

So let's see. We have a disaster of near biblical proportions. So what do we do in the Church? Should we pray for the victims? Should we ask God to comfort those who mourn? Nahhhh, let's blame the victims instead! This week, Pat Robertson claimed that Haiti was cursed because the people made a pact with the devil in order to get freed from slavery.

Apparently Pat Robertson is the Deuteronomic writer of the Old Testament. For those of you who skipped seminary, Old Testament Scholars divide up the major sources in the Torah and the histories into four major groups generally identified by the letters J, E, P, and D. They even tend to talk about them as if they were single writers, though no one actually believes that. I'll spare you the boring details (Actually, it's kind of interesting, but if you get an O.T. scholar talking, they'll never shut up, so let's just skip it shall we?).

The important part here is that the D or Deuteronomic writer is the major source in the Old Testament of the notion that people who are faithful prosper and people who are not find their lives falling apart. And yes, a major place to find this kind of thinking is in the book of Deuteronomy--and, by the way, yes, I am suggesting that Moses did not actually write that book.

The D writer's thinking also permeates the histories. Just look at those kings: 'Then Schlmiel came to the throne. And because he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, his rule ended after 78 years.' No, you won't find this line anywhere; it's an example. Notice how Schlmiel does not die of old age after ruling for 78 years but because of his unfaithfulness. That's the kind of writing D does.

But wait, you say. You have actually read past this part of the Bible. Someone forced you to look at the story of Job at some point. And doesn't that story tell us about a man who did absolutely nothing wrong in God's eyes but still suffered? You bet it does. It is said to be a part of the Wisdom literature (no, there is no W writer), and it comes later. In part it is a direct refutation of the ideas of the D writer. Believe it or not, there is more than one theological view in the Bible. Now you know why you've been so confused all this time!

The book of Job's climactic scene has Job demanding of God a reason for his suffering. God's response? I can do what I want because I am God (and you're not!). It is a little more complicated than that, but God does have to remind Job who is who here. "Where were you when I created, oh, EVERYTHING, bucko? So knock it off!"

To be fair God does then reward Job with twice what he has lost, so things do work out in the end. Hollywood should get a hold of this one; it even has the happy ending they so love.

But I digress. Job apparently is not in Pat Robertson's Bible. So, in order for him to feel satisfied, he has to come up with a plausible explanation for why things are to horrible in Haiti, time after time. Of course, that means a pact with the devil, apparently taken 200 years ago is the logical reason, not sitting in the middle of hurricane alley on top of a fault line.

There are so many problems with Robertson's argument that it is hard to keep on top of them. But let me try, just in case you were not quite prepared to do the research on all of it.

First of all, one should read the statement on his web page. There is a press release that attempts to explain what Robertson meant. Mind you, I thought he was pretty clear. Insane, but clear. Here's a quote from the press release; "His comments were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French. This history, combined with the horrible state of the country, has led countless scholars and religious figures over the centuries to believe the country is cursed." (http://www.patrobertson.com/pressreleases/haiti.asp)

I particularly love the way the statement makes clear that Robertson never says the earthquake is due to the curse. But wait a minute. Wasn't Robertson talking about Haiti in light of the newest disaster when he decided to go on this diatribe? Yes, he was. But we were not supposed to get the implication that the earthquake was a result? Come on!

So here's the problem. Dutty Boukman, so called in French because his nickname was "Book Man" was more likely a Muslim (The people of the Book, i.e., the Koran). In 1791, he did lead a service involving the sacrifice of a pig, considered an untamable spirit of the forest. And he did lead people in a prayer. Here it is:

"The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light.The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer. The white man's god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It's He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It's He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men's god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that sings in all our hearts."

Notice, there is no pact with the devil. Significantly, in exhorting the people to cast aside the image of God of the White people who held them in slavery, he became an early liberation theologian.

The ceremony is largely considered to be the spark of the Haitian rebellion, and Boukman is revered in Haiti. Angry White Christians turned this story into a pact with the devil. Real Haitian scholars disagree, but they are not attempting to explain away why thousands of angry Haitians were able to win despite inferior weapons and they also are not trying to suggest the revolution was a bad idea (evil) like those so-called Christian scholars were.

And that, finally, is what makes Robertson's comments so evil. By claiming a pact with the devil, he ties himself to the rest of the history. He suggests the Haitians would not have been capable of winning their freedom. Worse than that, he accepts the notion that they should have accepted being slaves and that the Whites had a right to continue the oppression.

But you know, if you look at the video of Robertson speaking, what you really get a picture of is a man who is standing with one foot in the grave. The young woman beside him practically has to hold him up. Increasingly, the statements that come from him are becoming more and more bizarre. It's time to call it quits, Pat, before you actually start drooling on the stage.

Which is why I ultimately think what Rush Limbaugh had to say was far more evil. Robertson is a doddering old fool. Limbaugh is not (unless, of course, he's back on the pills. We never did hear how he manages his pain these days, did we?). Limbaugh suggesting that he was not giving money for Haitian relief because he pays taxes was just straight out crude, racist, and evil. He is ultimately without compassion for the poorest among us.

Yes, some of your taxes are going to Haiti. Clearly not enough to solve the problems, as it is still the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. And yes, the president has promised aid to the country after the earthquake; can you imagine what Limbaugh would have said it Obama had not done so? But every creature with half a brain knows this will not be enough money, and those with the slightest empathy wants to reach out. That statement apparently leaves Rush out.

So I'll go out on my own limb: Neither of these men has the slightest idea what Christianity is really about. Robertson is fighting a war against demons instead of embracing the New Jerusalem as an event that we are called to bring into being here on earth, while Limbaugh is holding on to American capitalism (i.e., Greed) as his religion. So yes, we have twin evils here; resist them, firm in your faith.

Because We All Should Listen to Rock Musicians when They Stop Singing

2010-01-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

Okay. Bono apparently got himself in trouble again. Actually, it took one of my students to tell me about this one; I wasn't reading the right stuff.

In this case, the right stuff is Bono's editorial column in the New York Times. If you have missed it, he has one. He writes regularly, and they print it. That says about as much as anything, doesn't it?

Now, I am not a Bono basher (see earlier U2 blogs). I have heard all the stuff about how they use tax shelters and encourage people to buy overpriced Red items rather than just giving the money to charities. So what? Bono knows his audience and what works with them. More power to him. And he never claims to be anything more than he is. And, anyway, he does his homework a lot better than some members of Congress. But, no, he is not my source of knowledge on global warming or poverty. On the other hand, his information is usually correct according to the places I do follow.

So why is he in trouble now? Because he defended artists against illegal downloading and suggested using the same techniques that China does to block information. It's that last part that got him so much grief, although some people seem to think they can justify illegal downloading despite knowing that the artist loses money on it, whether you are talking about U2 or your local starving folk artist who self published a CD.

So let's set a little context here. First of all, Bono wrote his editorial as a top ten list of things he hoped to see in 2010. The first item was something about American cars getting back to being sexy again. For most people, that should have been a signal that this was not the deadly earnest Bono preaching about unrest in southeast nations. He was having a bit of fun, at least for part of the column. Some peoplemissed that.

Second, he was talking largely about the film industry and said that he hoped they took steps to stop illegal downloading before downloading movies became as fast as music. He pointed out that the download services are getting very rich from this activity while the musicians are the primary ones being hurt. And then he added this self aware line: "Note to self: Don’t get over-rewarded rock stars on this bully pulpit, or famous actors; find the next Cole Porter, if he/she hasn’t already left to write jingles."

In other words, he knows he is not the person to sell this issue. Is it just possible that he might not be as self serving as the naysayers want to make him out to be? At least give him credit for the self awareness. Besides, the sad reality is that he is the one who does have the NY Times column. Joe folk guitarist does not; he can scream until he's blue and not be heard.

As for the China business, what Bono really said is that the way China censors information simply proves that the technology to stop illegal downloads already exists. he did not suggest that the U.S. start censoring information, only that we use our ability to stop illegal activity. Notice how many times I have used the word illegal so far.

The justifications people use for stealing intellectual property boggle my mind. Just buy the damn music people. We got along for generations buying it, and the cost of music, despite all the bitching out there, has gone up far less than inflation. If you don't want to deal with all that ITunes authorization stuff (they got rid of it recently anyway) do something novel like buy a CD. Then you never have to worry about which machines you authorized to play it.

Now, I am not going to pretend to hold the high road here. I used Napster a lot when it first came out. Mostly I was downloading copies of music I have in vinyl for because that was cleaner than copying to records to my computer and took a lot less time. But I did see things out there that I did not have and downloaded them as well.

But that was the past, and anyway, I have since either deleted that stuff or bought a licensed copy. My conscience got to me. And so did the ten commandments. The only things left are those things I cannot find a way to buy.

Stealing is stealing, and doubly so when it is for something that would not even slightly count as a necessity. We're not talking food for starving orphans folks. We're talking about music and movies.

Even if the artists are stinking rich, that does not give me the right to steal from them. Try using that argument to steal a painting from one of the Wyeths. "They're rich, so I'll just take this landscape." Sounds stupid doesn't it.

The argument that most of the money goes to the downloading service (see solution above) or the record company doesn't wash either. It's still stealing. But, I suppose, when students can buy papers on line from established companies and don't know how to avoid plagiarism because they apparently don't understand the concept, the idea of intellectual ownership simply sounds archaic. Just wait until someone takes credit for their work and see how they react. Until the, I'm with Bono on this one.

Why I Like Christmas Music

2009-12-17T08:24:00.000-08:00

There is probably some version of "Why I Hate Christmas Music" back in my blog around this time last year. I have been saying that for a long time. I particularly hate listening to it during Advent, I've been prone to say. We never get to celebrate the Christmas season because they play all the music early and then stop playing it on December 26, which makes no sense.

But this year, something clicked for me differently. Perhaps it was the absolute absurdity of Bob Dylan's Christmas CD. (No, I'm not making that up. Go to Amazon if you don't believe me!) Yes, it's as bad as you could imagine it to be. Some genres--and I think Dylan is actually his own genre--were never meant to cross. Especially the current Dylan, whose voice is now so hoarse that it is almost unbearable even singing his own stuff. Just try to imagine the Little Drummer boy in your head.

Anyway, I digress. I think I finally get why people need Christmas music this early, and not just because the stores want you to buy stuff. I was in the dentist's chair right after Thanksgiving and noticed they were piping Christmas music in. I made a comment to the Hygenist about how awful it must be to know you would have to listen to this for a sold month. Her response? "Oh no, I love it. I could listen to it all year long."

She went on to talk about how excited she gets about Christmas, how much she loves shopping for family and friends, decorating the tree, etc. There are a whole lot of endorphines being cranked out by this season.

That's when it hit me. People need Christmas music early to help them get into the season. All of us bitching about playing Christmas music during Advent need to realize, that this is, in fact, a form of preparation too. Would you expect the choir to go out and sing the Christmas oratorio without rehearsing? This is just another form of rehearsing for the real thing.

That can be applied to all the shopping too, when you think about it. Personally, I want more time in Advent for stillness and calm, reflection and mindfulness. But I'm not everyone. Not everyone prepares the same way I do. We ease into the Christmas season, just as Lent carries us into Easter.

Now, I would happily have the Christmas music interspersed with regular music, increasingly taking over as we get closer to Christmas Day. Fortunately, thanks to the magic of certain unnamed electronics (you know, the fruit people), I can get my wish with just a couple of minutes work each day. And I can happily dispense with the barking dogs, chipmunks, reindeer assaulted grandmas, and I'm-sorry-I-won't-be-with-you songs, by playing what I own instead of turning on a radio, at least as long as I am not out there shopping. Which I almost never do this time of year. The Internet is so much more sane, frankly.

So, this year, I vow not to say the same old tired lines about music being played too early. It's not a case of giving in, but of learning that I can control my environment a lot more if I put my mind to it. Besides, we have war, economic collapse, hatred and other real things to worry about. To put even a small amount of energy into this is rather stupid, don't you think?

Tell the Archbishop of Canterbury What You Think!

2009-12-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

Well, good luck with that. If you go to his web page, it is not just that you cannot email ++Rowan. No one on his staff has a public email either.

I suppose I understand that. If those email addresses were public, they would need a whole staff to weed through them. Still, I notice that the White House page has a public response page that invites you to offer comments to the President, staff members, or the White House in general. Yes, I know he won't be reading them, but at least they are inviting you to share your thoughts. And you can bet someone is at least taking note of the subject matter.

Canterbury's public site goes out of the way to tell you that ++Rowan won't be reading the comments and that no one will be responding to them. If you want any hope of response, you have to use snail mail. No wonder the Church of England is dying. Obviously, they don't want to actually hear what the public thinks about anything.

But so what. I still bet that if that website starts getting flooded with emails about ++Rowan's failure to condemn Ugandan legislation authorizing the death penalty for gays or to repudiate publicly the Rt. Rev. Joseph Abura for supporting that legislation, eventually he will at least fell pushed to give a response.

So, if you want to register your complaint, I am officially starting a movement, "Say No to Ugandan Death Penalty for Gays". Yes, you can include your feelings about his public comments over Mary Glasspool's election, but the simplest message is to hit him for the moral failure to stand up for people whose lives are being threatened. He's had weeks to say something about Uganda and has failed to do so.

On this website, you will find the box where you can leave a comment: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/102

If you want to write a snail mail letter or phone, here is the information:
Lambeth Palace
London
SE1 7JU

Tel: 020 7898 1200 (switchboard)
Fax: 020 7401 9886

Tell your friends. You do not have to be an Anglican to express your displeasure.

Here We Go Again

2009-12-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

Well, the Anglicans among you already know what happened on Saturday. Or, if you just read a Newspaper. Or Twitter. Or breathe. The Diocese of Los Angeles has elected The Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool to be its suffragen bishop. Mary is a partnered lesbian, in case you missed it.

I've only met her once and don't really have a position. Personally, I think they should have elected my friend Zelda Kennedy (she ran a distant third), but what do I know? I can say Mary ran ahead of her opponent, a Latino male, but it was a horse race. From what I can tell, Mary also speaks Spanish, though, as her name suggests, she is not herself a Latina.

I should also add that the diocese actually elected two people to fill two Episcopal positions. The Rev. Diane Jardine Bruce was elected bishop on Friday (She speaks Spanish and Cantonese). So if things go as planned, the diocese will have two female bishops. And just in case the language confuses you, a suffragen bishop is an assistant bishop who does not automatically become the diocesan (head) bishop of the diocese in the event of the death, resignation, or retirement of the current diocesan bishop. Last, you need to know that this election is only part of the process. Mother Glasspool must now be approved by a majority of the sitting diocesan bishops and of the Standing Committees of the 110 dioceses of the Episcopal Church. That will take a few months, and in this case, several will say no on the path to making that happen. She most likely will be approved, but it will take more time than is typical.

Whew! That's just the preliminaries. Officially, the Episcopal Church is under a moratorium from any more gay or lesbian bishop ordinations. However, at last summer's General Convention, we also said that we would not stop the ordination of someone who was duly elected through our exhaustive (my word) process, regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc.

Well, ++Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not pleased, and it did not take long for him to say so. "The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop-elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.... The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold."

It would be easy to take him seriously if not for one little thing. As fast as he was able to get this to the press, that's how slow he has been in responding to the Rt. Rev. Joseph Abura of Karamoja Diocese, Province of the Anglican Church of Uganda, who wrote an op ed piece for Spero News to show his support for a new bill in Uganda to allow the death penalty for homosexuality.

Let me say that again, just in case you missed it: ++Rowan Williams has said not a word about a bishop advocating death for gay people, but has the time to comment on an election that he admits is not even finished. Is there something wrong here?

You bet there is. And right now, Anglicans all over the world are starting to say to hell with you ++. Throw us out. See if we care. But that's the only way you're getting rid of us, because you are in serious need of reform and repentance, not us. You've missed the big picture here.

Yes, this is something new. But so was worshiping in English. And abolishing slavery. And allowing remarriage. And ordaining women (Britain was slow to move on that one too). And maybe, just maybe, if you'd get quiet when we talk for a change, you could hear the Holy Spirit blowing through, upsetting a few money tables, and creating something new.

But, in the meantime, don't go looking for our money. Or Canada's. We'll just find local partners who have some sanity in their thinking to work through. We're not going away buddy, but we'll be damned if we're going to sit around and support such hypocrisy through non-action. Are we all of one mind on this? Of course not. But, as an African American, I am glad we did not wait until we were of one mind on that slavery issue.

And those ACNA people? They'll be gone soon too. There really are not that many of them, and one of you bishops who have accepted them will soon find out you do not have the stamina to keep supporting this group of dissidents. After all, if they cannot find a suitable home in the Episcopal Church--about the biggest tent out there--what makes you think they will be happy when you decide to issue an order or two and expect them to obey it?

The bottom line is this ++Rowan: if you have nothing to say to Joseph Abura, then you have nothing to say to us either. Go away and pray for awhile. Then try to come back and actually be a leader instead of a piss poor reactionary. For now, though, we don't trust you.

Fruitcake and Other Deep Thoughts

2009-11-21T06:56:00.000-08:00

Been a little busy lately, but I will soon get back to blogging. In the meantime, just a few unrelated thoughts. If you are looking for something vaguely religious here, don't bother:

1) The world's best fruitcake recipe.

I'm actually one of those people who likes good fruitcake. Unfortunately, that is pretty much impossible to buy. You have to make it. I have a chocolate fruitcake recipe that takes a month and a half to fix that starts with "soak the fruit in a bottle of whiskey for a week." How could you go wrong after that?

But for the rest of you, here's a recipe you definitely want to try. Well, at least you definitely want to read it. I am not the origin of this one:

Classic Fruit Cake Recipe
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ingredients:
- One cup of water
- One cup of sugar
- four large brown eggs
- Two cups of mixed dried fruit
- One teaspoon salt
- One cup brown sugar
- Juice of one lemon
- One cup of coarsely chopped nuts
- One bottle of whiskey

Instructions:

Sample the whiskey to check for quality.

Take a large bowl. Check whiskey again. To be sure it's the highest
quality, pour one level cup and drink. Repeat.

Turn on the electric mixer, beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar and beat again.

Make sure the whiskey is still okay. Cry another tup. Turn off the mixer.
Beat two leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Mix
on the tuner. If the fired druit gets stuck in the beaterers, pry it loose
with a drewscriver.

Sample the whiskey to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt. Or something. Who cares? Check the whiskey, darn good whiskey. Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Spoon. Of sugar or something. Whatever you can find.

Grease the oven. Turn the cake tin to 350 degrees. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Throw the bowl out of the window. Whew, check that whiskey again and go to bed.

Who the hell likes fruitcake anyway?

2)Whatever happened to quality control?

The SIMS 3: World Adventures is an expansion pack to one of the best selling PC video games of all times. It came out this week. Word has it that the program freezes up on Windows 7 computers.

My question is,"How could anyone make such a big cluster**** as to release a game without testing it on Windows 7? I have to admit to being a SIMS fan (yes, I know that sounds bizaare) but even I have to jump ship on this!

3) H1N1 Redux

What else is there to say? The swine flu is apparently waning--though I would not be surprised if next week they told us it was coming back--and life goes on. Some people died, just as they do with the flue every year. A whole bunch of people were afraid of the vaccine. Congress bitched in August because they did not think the vaccine was getting properly tested, that it was being rushed. Congress bitched when it did not come out as fast as it was supposed to. Congress blamed the president for not being in the lab every day testing the vaccine. The liars bitched because Obama was not vaccinating his kids (A lie. They had already gotten shots before the rumor was even started). And now it's waning before millions could even get the shots.

I hope somebody is studying why this went the way it did. A milder than normal flu that was off season got more attention than the seasonal one that will probably kill more people world wide. At every step we second guessed ourselves. And still virtually nothing went right. There has to be a lesson here.

In the meantime, can we please put clergy on the list with health care professionals for people to get these vaccines in the future (and Mall Santas too). We work with sick people, and, let's face it, between the peace and communion, we are on the front lines.

Not that it matters if you are on the list. My doctors are still waiting for their shots, and I got one by being on a college campus. Hmmm....what's wrong with this picture?

4)Aren't we lucky?

My local newspaper has just informed us that we will be getting the Thanksgiving edition of the paper even if we do not normally get the weekday edition. As they put it, it is one of their largest editions of the year, with some carriers delivering it in two installments on Wednesday and Thursday.

Wrong. This is not a newspaper, but a circular. The paper is crammed with black Friday ads. The actual news is, as you would expect, almost non-existent (the normal state of my local paper lately). If you, like me, have no intention of entering a mall on Friday, this is nothing more than the most colossal waste of paper for the year. And you have to call them to let them know you do not wish to receive it. And we wonder why the newspaper business is dying....

5) The chief theologian in my house, my dog Andy, is lying on the sofa with the sun beaming down on him. At least one of us knows how to take sabbath time....

Heretics Here, Heretics There, Heretics Everywhere

2009-10-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

I just had another conversation with one of my heretical college students. At least he thinks he's a heretic. I'm not so sure. In fact, I would definitely say that what he is is a thinking person who looks at some of the most outrageous claims of Christianity with more than a bit of skepticism. In other words, he's a young man who is realizing that he is allowed to think about religion, not just accept it.

In this particular case, the issue was the divinity of Jesus. Right now, his working ideas are that there was nothing more divine about Jesus than the rest of us, but Jesus lived it more perfectly than we do. If you applied Occam's Razor to the question of Jesus' divinity, this is probably the answer you should get. Or maybe that the story has been written leaving out the parts that show Jesus was just another schmo. After all, how many people do you know who have trouble with the idea that Jesus pooped?

I pointed out to him that the problem with a statement like "fully God and fully human" is that anything that follows it will almost inevitably err by emphasizing one over the other. Before that, though, I asked about his understanding of the Trinity, since, without a divine Christ, that scheme rather falls apart.

It was a great conversation that took detours through the creeds, the Holy Spirit and ended up in the power of story telling (It all made sense. You had to be there.), which included a discussion of sacraments as essentially story telling events. If we had had time, I would have suggested that Christianity is essentially a life story that Christians are called to align their own stories with. There are, in fact, other life stories (e.g., other religious traditions, the American story, etc.) that people do the same thing with. What makes us Christians is that we believe Christ's story is one we should align our lives with. And obviously, other people have some thoughts about this too.

It was one of those wonderful conversations that inspire people to become college chaplains. So why am I pissed off?

Well, largely it has to do with the fact that this bright, clever student who is working with issues I never began to think about when I was his age is having to fight against everything he has been raised with just to say these things. And he was brought up in the Episcopal Church no less, a church that prides itself on offering space to explore what you believe. So instead of learning that it is perfectly okay to wrestle with these questions--that this is a part of developing a mature faith--he has learned that he has to declare himself a heretic to think these things. And instead of spending our time together with me helping him to look at his beliefs, I had to spend half the time giving him permission to believe these things.

I don't know what this student will end up believing about Christ's divinity. If I were forced to bet on it, I'd guess he will be fairly orthodox in his beliefs before it is all over. But that's not really all that important. The Christian faith can only be faith if we are allowed to hold it, mold it, question it, turn it inside out, and even spit on it now and then as we continually try to grasp it (which is, in itself, an impossible task). But we're too afraid to let that happen. So instead, we make the creeds into the door keepers of theology rather than the open doors that take us a whole myriad of places. And we scare our kids against exploration of anything that might mean they occasionally step off the narrow path.

Except the narrow path thus defined is actually reduced to the dividing line on a super highway. And it you step off the line, you will get hit by a speed demon ready to destroy your life. Sorry, but there should be a lot more wiggle room out there than that.

Why am I so angry about this? Because this is not the only student I have who thinks he's a heretic. And I have one who is afraid to read the Bible because of the problems she has with the things other people have told her it says.

What they are all saying is that they want a place where they can explore what they believe without getting beat up for believing the wrong things. Where I come from, that is what a church is supposed to be. But, oops, these folks all come out of churches and are seeing that they have to leave, at least for awhile, if they want the chance to explore.

These should be the leaders of my ministry. But only one of them is even coming. They will talk to me, but they have been too burned to be able to take leadership in a church where they think they are only recognized as believing or unbelieving. And that is just too sad for words.

Sad too is the fact the the above named 'heretic' is simultaneously wrestling with whether or not he is called to ordination. Talk about a straitjacket! How can he even begin to approach that issue when he is still looking to be accepted as is, questions and all? And, yes, for the record, I realize that some of the roadblocks might be self imposed as his unrecognized way of avoiding the call to ordination. Except he's not the only one, just the one I had lunch with today.

So why do so many young people leave the Church during college? We think it has to do with churches not knowing how to provide activities for them. But I think it is much deeper than that. We lose them because, at this time when they are questioning, there is no theological place for them. We can stop worrying about the young singles events; make space for a little heterodoxical thought. You know, it might just challenge the way we think too. But that's what we are really afraid of, isn't it?

Desperate Churchwives

2009-10-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, besides reading it in this morning's paper, I have now seen three Facebook links in reference to the statement by the Roman Catholic Church about their now having a regularized process for accepting Anglicans who wish to transfer their membership. First, a few facts:

1) No one leaving us and going to Rome is converting. Both groups claim to be Christians, so any transfers are just that, not conversions to another religion. Want proof? They will not be re-baptized. You see, the funny thing is, Romans, like Anglicans, believe that God baptizes people, and we both assume he does not occasionally just screw it up. Nor does he have two different bodies to be baptized into. There are a few fundys out there who need to get a coherent theology on this one.

2) Rome has been accepting married male Anglican clergy since shortly after we began ordaining women. Funny thing is that they do re-ordain. That alone would be enough of an insult to my orders that I would have to decline.

3) Laypeople wanting to join the Roman Church have been able to approach a parish and ask to do so for centuries. Basically ever since there was an Anglican Church, we could join. The Roman Catholic Church has never been a closed system, despite the peculiar ways people write about this so-called new event.

4) What is new is that these folks will be able to retain some pieces of liturgical life from Anglicanism. I have not seen exactly what the guidelines are, but this seems an odd capitulation to me. Just how many exceptions is Rome going to offer to Anglicans to (apparently) entice us? Me, I want a better paycheck before we can even begin the negotiations.

5) Most people who leave the Anglican communion would be hard pressed to join a denomination that demands obedience to many more doctrinal statements than Anglicanism ever gave them. After all, they are leaving us because they feel they are being forced to accept things they don't like. We'll see how much they are ready to practice the rhythm method of birth control.

6) If a congregation votes to leave the Episcopal Church and join Rome, they will have to do it without their property, which belongs to the diocese. With the current exception of Virginia (stay tuned) every time the taking of property has been sought in courts, eventually the courts have said the property belongs to us. So do not look for that beautiful Gothic Episcopal Church downtown to be flying a Roman flag too quickly, unless we choose to sell it to them.

7. All of the dioceses (4 at last count) that have voted to leave the Episcopal Church have chosen to go join other parts of the Anglican Communion. On a large scale, people are not interested in leaving Anglicanism, just a couple of things they disagree with in the American Church (which isn't entirely American--even in the broad sense--but we will leave that for another day).

8. The Episcopal Church did not actually say anything different last summer at its General Convention. We said we would follow our previously written rules about ordinations and we said we would study same-sex marriages, unions, etc. Oh, and we would allow for generous pastoral latitude around the marriage issue (including allowing more conservative bishops to do parish visitations if wanted). I have read several times how we are developing liturgies for same sex marriages; it simply is not true. If you want to complain, go read what the Lutherans did!

9. And by the way, the doors swing in both directions. Lots of folk coming our way because of our stances on women and gays, on divorce, and because we took steps two decades ago to stem the tide of child abuse and sexual predators.

So what did Rome actually do? They wrote a policy manual, apparently. Before, Anglicans who wanted to transfer were treated individually, so what one was required to do in Richmond could be completely different from what they had to do in Baltimore. Now, the bureaucracy has taken over. One small step for a (Ro)man, one giant leap for paperwork.

Do we like it? no, of course not, if for no other reason than the glee with which it sometimes seems a few Roman Catholic officials are doing these things. But will I lose much sleep over it? Not a chance. The reality is that we are both Christian denominations who happen to disagree on a few things, perhaps most importantly on how one offers dissent from official doctrine. And every person who leaves us for Rome makes it easier for us to go forward with the Gospel as we have received it.

But God bless those who stick around. The worst thing that could happen to us would be if we had no dissent. That is the easiest way to get off track. Differing understandings of God's Word demand that everyone become sharper theologically because we have to justify our stances. If we should ever lose that, it will be a sad day.

For Anglicans, worship is theology and vice versa. As long as we can come to the table together, we can co-exist. It is sad that is not to be for some right now, but one day, we will bring the kingdom fully into being through the grace of God, and all this foolishness will be over. And we will really come to understand that God loves all of us.

On Evangelism, U2 Style

2009-10-06T07:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, I went to the U2 concert Saturday night. I was a newbie, and now I am writing the required blog to gush about it. If you don't believe it is required, just go the Sojourners website and catch Jim Wallis' blog about taking his son. Of course, I did not have the lighting manager hear about me being there and seeking me out in the crowd. Ah well.... Oh, and good luck getting off of the Sojourners email list once you sign up.

Anyway, the really frustrating thing about writing about U2 concerts is that everything that all those other people have written about them is true. Yes, it is a fantastic concert. Yes, the sound system is amazing (for $25 million, it should be. And there are 3 of them floating around the country because they take so long to put up and take down.). Yes the visuals were spectacular. Yes, the political message was well handled; as an Episcopalian, I loved seeing Desmond Tutu talking about the One Campaign. Yes, I was moved when Bono brought the young boy up on the stage and ran around the outer circle before giving him his sunglasses (I admit, I would have been happy to be that boy, and even happier to be going to school on Monday wearing the glasses!).

And yes, without calling it this, they created church. Thousands of people all tuned to one wavelength and feeling both transformed and transformational. Not bad, especially since half of them don't even realize that that was what they were doing.

So what do I write, other than I get why people are willing to pay for the tickets and know I will do it again? Heck, I seriously toyed with cutting out of work and driving to Atlanta to see them tonight!

How about this? Can the rest of you so-called evangelists hitting us over the head with Jesus and the Bible take a cue from these guys? No, you don't have to be incredibly talented and the biggest band in the world to spread the gospel. But you also don't have to guilt people, shame them, or bore them to death to make your point. What might help is if you showed some genuine joy and enthusiasm about how your relationship with Jesus is changing your life rather than just telling us about it with stern or angry looks on your face.

I know Bono and friends are Christians. Only an idiot has missed that piece of information by now. I can read their lyrics or hear Bono's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. I recognize biblical quotes in the lyrics that show they really have read more of the Bible than a few pithy lines lifted from the Gospels. See where their money is going (e.g., carbon offsets for the eco-damage of the set). The thing that oozes out of them though is that there actually is some attempt to live as Christians going on here.

Are they perfect at it? Of course not. Could one argue that the extravagance of the rock star life is goes against the very idea? You could make that case, arguably. But then they have never set themselves up as model Christians. In fact, they do one of the evangelical no nos, which is to admit to their imperfections--without getting caught. (Have you listened to "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"? A great song about being believers but still struggling with what that means.)

More than anything, they present themselves as works in progress. They never claim to be saved; their salvation is being worked out, through the grace of God, every day in their lives; it's not some sort of static event.

Oddly enough a whole lot of people who will never enter our Churches are finding a lot in this that attracts them. If they got this same attitude from the Christians they meet, maybe they would be ready to explore faith with you. Too often, we ask, no, demand vulnerability from people joining the church ("Confess your sins!"), but show none of it in return, wearing the armor of salvation against the seekers as if they are the enemy.

Three years into this campus ministry business, I keep finding myself in a recurring conversation with students. It starts with a sentence like "I think I am called to ordination except I don't think the Church will accept some of my views. I think I am a heretic." What this usually means is that someone in their local parish (that is, some clergy or church school teacher) has manages to create a wonderful box for Jesus, and now the student is starting to see God outside of that box and getting afraid of the implicactions about what they thought they knew.

Now, if that is the message we are spreading to people feeling a spiritual pull towards God, what are the others getting? For the record, I have heard a few challenging statements, but only one that might even remotely qualify as heretical. You would be surprised at the relief these conversations offer to the students. People what are we doing??!!! No excommunications so far, much less burnings at the stake.

So, yes, I paid out my $100 for the show, and got no promises that my wealth would increase, my arthritis would be healed, or my soul mate would come to church next week and we would start a spiritually deep but chaste relationship. And for that money, I got a great musical show. And I also got an invitation to join something wonderful. For a couple of hours, I was able to go into my spiritual self, not pushed but given permission in the form of a very attractive invitation. And I did not have to pass the tests, learn the order of service, juggle the hymnals, or put fake contact information in the visitors book. Can your last visitors say the same thing?

And, yes, I'll do it again. And the left side of my brain will probably try to look at how they do it. But I'll bet the right side will take over and just let me experience the moment, rather than analyze it. Hope to see you there. And you will just have to live with the cheesy U2 quotes as updates on my Facebook page for awhile.

Why Civility Matters

2009-09-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, by now a thousand pundits have weighed in on the apparent loss of manners in our nation; their discussions go all the way back to the beginning of August with the shouting matches at town hall meetings on health care. It's good to know just how civil we were being up until that point.

Okay, maybe cynicism is not the chief stance to be taken here. Of course the crudeness in this country started way before the town hall meetings. And while there is clear evidence that some of the behavior was being pushed by people with strong interests in killing any health care reform, it must also be fairly stated that a lot of the anger is genuinely felt by people who are afraid they will lose some of what they have.

Nevertheless, we should stop and consider the consequences of all this rudeness, no matter where it comes from. What really matters is that, in almost every form of public life, we have somehow decided that this is okay. Heck, we almost expect it from our athletes instead of canceling their shoe endorsements and suspending them from play; at least Serena lost the match for her stupidity. How many stupid statements does Kanye West have to make before we stop buying his music, cancel his recording contract and tell him to go away somewhere and grow up? And when a congressman thinks that an interruption of an internationally televised speech by the head of state is only offending the president and not his colleagues (much less the American people), we should not be giving millions of dollars to his campaign; we should be ashamed.

But look, I would not be jumping on the civility bandwagon except for one thing, and sadly, it is something I predicted which has now come to pass in at least one instance. All of this indignation is coming from people who believe, on some level, that they are entitled to some privilege and that it is being disrespected or taken away from them. They are scared, and they are lashing out. I am sorry that you thought you deserved something that many in our nation were not getting in the first place. Maybe you did deserve it, but not as your exclusive right.

But back to the point. What this behavioral response to our national sense of privilege has done is to let everyone know that interruptions and verbal attacks are an okay response to anything we do not like. And the next step from that is, as I predicted, violence. There have already been reports of people being hurt at the town hall meetings (hope they already had health insurance!). But let me tell you what the next step is by mentioning a couple of incidents at Guilford College last week. This is quoted from a text sent out from the college:

On Monday, September 14 a student informed Residence Life and Public Safety that a note was left on his Bryan Hall room door the prior evening containing the following message: "Die you MF fag. Nobody wants your kind on campus.” On Thursday, September 17, at approximately 11:30 pm someone dropped a rock and a note in the same student’s open, residence hall room window. This note contained the following message: “I hope it hit you in the [f---ing] head faggot. You don’t deserve life like the rest of the world. It’s bad enough with out all the gay crap pulling people down. It’s sick, unnatural, and death is almost too good for you. Almost.”

This is what happens when we tell everyone that it is okay to say whatever you want, do whatever you want, and let everyone know how much you disagree with them in whatever fashion you deem appropriate. Needless to say, Guilford, a Quaker tradition school known for an activist student body and much tolerance and acceptance is shocked, especially given that it would have been almost impossible for an outsider to have committed these acts. But that is who we are becoming as a nation.

What is worse to me is that most of the people committing those earlier seemingly harmless verbal sparrings (unlike this particular incident, which is being treated as a criminal offense) would likely tell you they are Christian conservatives. So I have one thing to say to them. Go read the fourth and fifth chapters of the letter of James.

James has a lot to say about unbridled tongues, and it boils down to this: shut them! And then he has a lot to say about God's wisdom versus that of the world. God's wisdom is gentle and promotes unity. The world's wisdom is brutal, violent, divisive. Any of that sound familiar?

I could call the Guilford incident an unfortunate but rare occurrence, but I bet we will see a whole lot more of them around the country in the coming weeks and months. And why shouldn't we? This is exactly what we have been giving the okay to.

Right now, someone is about to go off about the first amendment and freedom of speech. Well besides the fact that there are limits even on that freedom, this is not about what is lawful, but what is right. And it is time we stopped confusing those two. An act being lawful does not equate with it being the right thing to do. There are times when shouting and interrupting is appropriate. But sorry, folks, Kanye West was not fighting Bull Connor for the right to vote; Taylor Swift was hardly denying him anything (By the way, to clear the record, Beyonce was not even nominated in the category that Swift won). And immature minds are learning from you.

Pray for our nation. Pray that we learn to bridle our tongues. And pray for the students, faculty, and staff of Guilford College, especially Wednesday night at 7:00pm, as they hold a vigil. And it you happen to live in Greensboro,....

Most especially, pray for whoever did this that they can get past their fear and learn a new way to deal with difference in their midst. Because, while I wish they would get past the homophobia, I'll settle right now for civility because those with whom we disagree still deserve to be treated like human beings.

Who Cares About Health Care?

2009-09-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know. Like you really need to read something else about health care right now. What more is there to say?

Well, how about this. There is no right to health care. That's it. Now, let me add a few things to that statement, so that you can see what I really mean.

One of the things the good Alasdair McIntyre's book After Virtue managed to instill in me while I was in graduate school was the reality that rights are arbitrary concepts, not intrinsic or even God given. We may wish they were, but the reality of our world is that most things that we call rights today were not only not rights that people had in past centuries but were in fact, explicitly not something people believed they could expect. Life belonged to the master or the Lord or the king. Liberty was something that slaves dreamed of, serfs could not imagine, and free men struggled with unless they had a trade or money. And the pursuit of happiness: forget about it. You were happy to survive.

No, most of the things we call rights only exist for us because we as a society declare them to be rights. And if we look beyond our won country, we can see that we often do not agree about what should be a right. The right to a multi-party system of voting? Ha! The right to keep property you own unless a legal process takes it for public necessity and even then pays fair market value for it? Even the citizens of Connecticut can tell you about that one. The right to an education? Ask girls in small Pakistan villages about that one (This is where I make a cheap plug for Greg Mortensen's book, Three Cups of Tea) .

So, no we do not have a right to health care. People in Canada or France or Switzerland might be able to claim they have a right to it, but we in the States do not. In fact, it is fair to say that we do not yet even believe it should be a right (though there is a growing consensus slowly starting to emerge). If we did, the only discussion we would be having is how to make it happen, not whether we should change what we have or not.

What we have now is a health care system based on capitalism, in which care is a commodity to be purchased. If you have money, you get better care than if you do not. We believe in the freedom to pursue health care, but we do believe in the right to actually have it.

So while we debate whether the Obama plan is a good one, we are missing the point. Until and unless we reach a national consensus that it is a good thing to make sure that we all have health care, we will tinker with a corrupt and over bloated system, in which your doctor has three people working to cover the insurance payment system (three people you are paying for in copayments and premiums), and enormous profits are being made by a very small group of people based on the idea that they deserve to get rich off of you being sick.

Sadly the biggest thing blocking us from doing something about all this is our own fears and selfishness. Let's face it: very few of us are holding up the torch for the insurance companies. Most of us detest these death dealers with as much passion as we love our partners or our favorite sports team. Just look at the faces of people as they go to make a co-payment and you will realize I am telling the truth. We do not go through this system willingly.

But evoke the notion of socialism and you can create hysteria on the level of McCarthyism. Why that works with Christians I do not know. Doesn't Acts describe the early Chrisitans as pooling their resources and giving to each as had need. Now that's socialism! All we want is one standard of care for everyone. Is that too much to ask?

But between the socialist bogeyman and the oft-repeated fear that somehow my personal insurance is going to get worse under health care reform, and we reject it out of hand. Throw in a few non-existent death panels, a near hysterical Sarah Palin (I can see her hospital from my back window), and a slow summer characterized mostly by Wacko Jacko's death, and you have a bit of insanity where we can't even agree in principle that some kind of health care reform is a good thing a right even.

Now, of course we need to continue crafting and refining the appropriate laws. For example, it should be clear that individuals who want to keep their current insurance should be able to. And there are certainly a hundred other things that must be tweaked in the bill. But really, folks, it is time to get this done. We blew it in 1993, and look how long it has taken to get it back on the table. We can't wait that long again.

And yes, McIntyre is right. Thank you Stanley Hauerwas for pointing that out to me. Rights, are, in fact arbitrary and can be changed at any time.

So I am declaring that I believe health care should be a right in this country and be treated as such, not as if it is a luxury, which is what we are doing now. Only when we are willing to make that bold claim will we stop being guided by the bottom line. Only then will the question be "How will we pay for it?", not "Will we pay for it?"

And it some insurance company stops making billions of profit and some other low level workers have go get new jobs (assuming we will, in fact, pull out of this recession), so be it. What we have now provides the worst care in the First World and costs twice as much. Think of how much good work for the environment that money could buy.

I'm Back - I Hope My Ministry Will Be Back Next Year

2009-08-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile, I know. After General Convention, I had a week to catch up before going on vacation. Since then, it has been preparing for the school year. Now, the students are back and it is time to start writing again.

The phrase for today is 'budget cuts'. Yep, the have hit the Church big time. Last month, we took a knife to the national budget of the Episcopal Church and slashed away whole pieces of program. The women's desk of the national church -- gone. Thirty staff people are axed as of the end of the year. Almost every program has been hit by some funding lost. In the meantime, of course, whole dioceses have been giving way less than their asking; it is amazing how many of these are the same dioceses that cry when the national church is not quick to respond to whatever crises comes along.

On the more local level, my diocese is making cuts too. Next year, our budget for campus ministry in the diocese will be 10% less than it was supposed to be this year, until we sustained a 5% cut in May. Unfortunately, once you take out the salaries of the chaplains, most of which are minimum or just above it, that actually translated into a 20% cut. Worse yet, my programs only diocesan money is for salaries, my assistant and my cleaning service. So despite our salaries being frozen two years in a row, my program will either have to find the money (as we did this year) or cut my assistant's hours.

You know, I could probably face that if this were a real crisis in the diocese. Reality is, however, that our budgets could all be made if certain parishes (you know who you are) would cough up the asking of the diocese. Now, before you starting thinking about small parishes scraping by, I need to say that I am not talking about them. Small parishes rarely fail to pay their asking unless they really do get into a jam, in which case they need the diocese to back them for a time.

No, it is larger parishes, notably those in the two largest cities in the diocese, who seem to have trouble coughing up. Yes, it is a lot of money in dollar terms. But they have it. What happens is that they develop big ideas for programs they want to do and fund them instead, forgetting that some of the work of the church is done corporately. So while they develop an outreach program to the local jail (the good scenario) or hire an assistant youth director or redecorate the parish hall (the more likely scenario) with their asking, real programs of the diocese get cut.

Do I sound frustrated? You bet. Is it because I work in one of those diocesan ministries? Not really. I've felt this way for a long time. It's arrogance, pure in simple, to assume that whatever you come up with is more important than our collective life.

The usual arguments are that the diocese has a bloated budget and spends money on all the wrong things. Perhaps, but before you say you want to keep your money local, try looking at what gets cut. It's never the things you are griping about because, funny thing, they are required. No matter how angry you are at him, you still gotta pay the bishop's salary and give him an administrative assistant. And in a diocese this large, that means more than one bishop, folks. Besides, if I asked five people what should get cut from the diocesan budget, they would not come to agreement. And that decision belongs to all of the diocese working together, not you.

So pony up to the bar and get back in. If you had made your fair asking, two things would have resulted. First, we would not be in this situation financially. Second, the diocese would not have had to make giving mandatory starting in 2011.

So here's an idea. Since you don't want to give it to the diocese, give it locally. Write a check to the Hispanic ministry, or the campus ministry, or to a small congregation, or to send a bunch of local kids to campy. All the stuff you apparently don't like your diocese doing for you.

And don't forget your local campus ministry. We're the ones teaching young adults not to behave like you are. But they don't have a lot of spare money to support our work. That's why we are called a mission of the diocese. And we crank out most of the young clergy of the church (Remember them? They are the people everyone keeps saying we need more of.). You could pitch in some funds for their seminary education because we can't help them out all that much, especially when our budgets are cut (See? The circle closes.).

Ok. Bitching session is over. Next time I will talk about something that doesn't cut quite so close to home. Like the death penalty. Or Teddy Kennedy (RIP). In the meantime, I have a dozen new students to contact before Sunday to make sure they know how to reach us. And several pounds of hamburgers to purchase. Ah, the joys of first week.

It's Over. Now the Work Begins

2009-07-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

Well, we did it. Over 300 resolutions acted upon in 10 days.

First, the big one. Yes we pass C056 on same sex blessings by more than two thirds in the laity and clergy. Yes it allows for local options, but no it does not direct the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to prepare liturgies, only to gather theological and liturgical resources. In other words, we have space to work with this, but no official action on preparing an official liturgy. And no one is forced to perform a same sex marriage, just as no one is forced to perform a heterosexual marriage.

Pauli Murray and Manteo & Virgina Dare (the first persons baptized in North America) and Thurgood Marshall and the first women priests in the EC were all referred to the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music (SCLM) for preparation of feast day materials. They will look at them over during the next three years and make recommendations to the next GC. Sadly, the alternative baptismal covenant did not get through the bishops, although now it is out there and will likely gather some steam and acceptance over the triennial.

Holy Women, Holy Men (the new Lesser Feasts and Fasts) was given trial use for the 3 years coming, with the SCLM being charged to gather feedback for a more final version next time. The early buzz is that John Muir's name will be struck, but who knows?The reason: Muir was not particularly a Christian and quite critical of the church; the reaon he was included in the first place is that his work inspired so many Christians to take on the environment. To include him definitely requires a shift in thinking about who should be on the calendar; you be the judge. Literally. There will opportunity to have your say on him and over 100 other new people.

Biggest surprise is C023 which would have added sexual identity and expression to the list of reasons that people could not be automatically disqualified from the ordination process. We voted to add them; the bishops voted to delete the entire laundry list and just say all persons. We with signals from the trans community voted to not concur with them, which reverts the canon back to the old language. The biggest issue was that we thought we needed to reflect a reality that not everyone actually does have equal access and to mention by name those who do don't always. The fact that some people we wished to add to the list did not get through should not be used as reason to removed all the other groups who were already identified.

Right at the end, we got word that the bishops prayed for +Gene (Robinson) who is sick. No word on what this is yet.

As of this post, no more for awhile, though I may respond if you make a comment. I am not reporting what happens in Oakland for the weekend. And if you are clergy and in the diocese of NC come see your deputation in Burlington on Wednesday.

General Convention, mid last day report

2009-07-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

Well, the deed is done. C056 has been voted on. The debate was interesting. No one even attempted an amendment. I think the opposition to it knew that would fail, so they decided instead to use as much microphone time as possible to state their concerns. Most of them were pretty calm about it. Thank you for that kind gift. It was noticed. We may not agree about this, but I will still pray for you and your ministries and call you brothers and sisters.

And even though we can pretty much guess the outcome, the vote is not in. We had a vote by orders, which means the lay deputies and the clergy deputies vote separately and must tally their diocesan groups. 3 or 4 votes means yes, 0 or 1 vote means no, and a 2-2 split means divided, which gets counted as a no. Since the earlier version was more definitive, this one may get more yes votes than it did.

The change is that instead of calling for the developing of liturgical forms, this one now talks of gathering liturgical resources. That means that when you read about us authorizing any texts, it will be inaccurate. And bishops are given authority to offer strong pastoral response, especially in those places where civil marriages or blessings are in place. Note that the pastoral response can just as easily be applied to those not in favor, as that term is not defined.

So watch integrity's site. They will be the first to have a report on the vote up.

More later...

General Convention, day heaven-knows-what

2009-07-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

Okay. I'm tired. What did we do today. Well, we passed the budget, a great exercise in frustration. An hour of people trying to make amendments only to be shot down because they never identified where the money would come from for their pet projects.

Oh wait. I forgot the L.A. night last night. What a wonderful example of what happens with too many cooks. We had folk musicians. We had rock musicians. We had drums. We had 3 screens of constant images. And people doing yoga. And a cross that changed color as it blocked our view of the stage. And glow sticks. And poetry. And Brian McLaren preaching using a Eucharistic image--but no Eucharist. That's like describing a banquet to a starving man and then not actually bringing him food. And a reaffirmation of baptism. And an artist working on a screen constantly changing his images.

This is what happens when you have too many cooks. In this case, it was two different emergent/emerging (somebody please make a decision on this one) pastors trying to merge two obviously very different ministries. Sensory overload. I appreciated the way it broke down out rational defenses to put us in the moment, but it was just too much--especially the moronic glowsticks. Guys, did you notice the lights were still on?

I don't think I will be able to talk about emergent for about six months now. Which is really sad because the image Brian used was actually really good. And the poetry was really good. And the band was solid. And the Bruce Cockburn song had me online getting a copy of it later. But c'mon.... Do some editing next time. We did not need every emergent idea for people who were mostly asking me "What is emergent?" all day.

Anyway, after the budget this morning, Brian got the chance to redeem himself in our daily Eucharist, where he was the preacher (To be fair, the sermon was fine the night before, but it really was incomplete without actually having Eucharist. That was not his to control.). Really good sermon about evangelism and Episcopalians. I did not know that he actually was once an aspirant for ordination in the Episcopal Church but felt we did not make space even in the ordination process for folk like him. Trust me, Brian, if you come to North Carolina, Michael Curry would make space! Anyway, check out Brian's sermon on the Episcopal Church's web page General Convention media hub. http://gchub.episcopalchurch.org/. And he kept it short too! Gonna be a lot of people stealing from that one for sermons on Sunday.

Now we are in the flurry of resolutions. We had two disappointments. The first was the deputies shooting down a resolution to give vote to the youth deputies; the worst part of this was one of two youth who are regular deputies getting up to speak against it. Obviously she has not been shut out of anything before; I wish I could meet her ten years from now.

The second was the bishops rejecting our call to change the baptismal covenant to a more active response. Right now, the priest describes the expectations and the candidate assents to them, rather than having the candidate declare what s/he will do in the active voice. They decided that this would amount to two covenants, and that could not be. So it is on to the next convention.

Tonight, we had a U2charist. A few of us went out to dinner first at an impossibly slow restaurant. We were an hour late and they were only up to the sermon. Listening to Mike Kinman try to pick our pockets in the sermon so turned me off that I left. The band was a pretty good U2 lookalike band, but even that seemed a little weird to me. I left. Now that i have done this a couple of times, I have decided it does not speak to me. I like their music--I am going to see them in Raleigh in October--but dragging out a Eucharist by looking for every place you can add a U2 song seems tedious, making both the Eucharist and the music less than they are separately.

So now I am in my room trying to pack to send my suitcase back to Greensboro via UPS in the morning. Tomorrow (today, actually) is the last day, so it will be crazy getting things done on the legislative floor. Tripp, I hope we can hook up and grab a brew. Otherwise it is another round of downtown Disney! Save me!

General Convention, day 10

2009-07-15T23:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, first there is a correction to be made. The full communion with the Moravians was on today's consent calender, not yesterdays. We get the calendar a day in advance so that we can read it over, and that is what I mixed up. So, we have now passed it; we are in full communion with the Moravians.

And that error pretty much sums up what is happening right now. When we started this, the house rules were that we would debate an issue for up to 30 minutes, and each speaker got three minutes to talk. That was taking forever. It went to 20 minutes per issue and only 2 minutes per speaker. Today it went to 1 minute per speaker, and then to 15 minutes per issue. What is happening is that we have many more resolutions than we have time. The consent calendar is also getting rather thick.

Our North Carolina resolutions on adding Pauli Murray (the first African American female priest) and Manteo and Virginia Dare (the first baptism in North America) to the calendar got reported out favorably; they go to the bishops first, so I do not know what happened with them. The plan is to refer them to the Standing Committee on Liturgy for study. The bishops on the Liturgy Committee did not like the resolution about an alternative baptismal covenant (see somewhere below), but hopefully they presented it to the rest of their colleagues today.

We will have a national health plan! And the laity will have pensions if they work over 20 hours per week. To be fair, most of them already do, but this will require it. We had the usual arguments about it hurting small congregations. Sorry folks; if we require pensions for the clergy who make more money, this is a simple matter of justice. Just my conscience along would force me to vote in favor.

This afternoon, we got the budget. It looks bad. Lots of cuts in National staff and program. But the MDGs got put back. And the youth staff position is in there--they tried to take it out because the position is not currently filled. But the youth presence mounted a good offense. Most of the money for starting new chaplaincies stayed in. Our young adult and college staff still have jobs, but their budgets shrunk.

And the budget will drop to 19% asking from dioceses by 2012 instead of the 21% it is now. It will be interesting to watch the debate tomorrow. In order to add something to the budget, you have to indicate where you will take money from. There ain't a lot of wiggle room, and you will piss someone off if you try to take their money.

The L.A. night was interesting. Only about 500 people showed up for Genesis, an emergent church experience. Brian McLaren spoke. As I learned later, this was put together byt wo different emergent congregations and leaders. Since no two emergent people do things the same, it seemed like a bit of a hodgepodge. A great piece of poetry in the middle, a wonderful confession of the business of life. And an artist was making images on a paint screen all through. And lots of video images. And music. And yoga. And drumming. And glow sticks. You get the picture. A bit too much. McLaren talked about how the broken body of Christ is made whole within us. But there was no Eucharist. Anyone who knows what CD of Bruce Cockburn has the song "Mystery" on it will be welcome to respond.

Well, that is it for today. I barely scratch the surface with all the issues we are handling, so if you want to know about a particular subject, write a note. Time for me to go to bed. Too bad those folks doing the U2charist on Thursday will be playing to an empty hall. I am certain the bishops and deputies will be having evening sessions tomorrow night.

General Convention, addendum

2009-07-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

Okay. Here is what happened in the House of Bishops. The General Convention Daily had a headline yesterday that said some thing like "Church approves the ordination of gays." That is not what we did, but the headline went around the world before it could be corrected. The Presiding Bishop was pissed. The Archbishop of Canterbury was inflamed. And you can pretty much imagine how this played elsewhere.

Given that, the Bishops were apparently a bit reluctant to take up same sex unions in any form until some of this could be dealt with. And a committee has worked to create something that will do a more nuanced version of what the various positions in the American Church are.

That is why they delayed discussion. But this afternoon, they passed an amended resolution that essentially formalizes local option, calls for the gathering of theological and liturgical materials, but also calls for theological study throughout the church before the developing of rites. I predict it will pass the Deputies without amendment, but not for lack of trying.

And for the record, what we actually did was say in the ordination resolution is that we would abide by our canons which say no one is denied access to the process because of sexual orientation. It is, in my opinion, deliberately fuzzy around the edges of whether this repeals B033. It definitely is a statement of where we are now. And it includes statements about our intention to remain in dialogue with and support of (including monetarily) the rest of the Anglican Communion.

Later. Gotta go do emergent church with a couple of thousand Episcopalians. That should be interesting.

General Convention, day 9

2009-07-15T05:28:00.000-07:00

Well, one victory has been accomplished. D025 came back from the Bishops with a change, so we had to look at it again and see if we would concur. And the usual speeches were made. And once again we got to vote by orders, which is apparently a way that some delegations use to show that they voted the right way when they go back home. And once again, we passed it.

Wait a minute. We passed it! D025 got through the process! Now, everyone has access to the ordination process, even to become bishops. Well, actually, that is not true. Now, everyone is allowed in the process regardless of sexual orientation. You can still be determined to be a total nut job. In that case, you only get to be a bishop in Florida or Fon du Lac.

We are now in full communion with the Moravians. Somehow, that slipped through on the consent calendar. The consent calendar is where less controversial resolutions go. Unless three deputations object, they get voted on without debate. And lately, we have been voting on those resolutions as a group. It gets a lot done quickly.

Something's up in the House of Bishops. They should have finished with D056 yesterday morning. That's the one which would authorize the development of blessings for same gender couples. Well, then it got put off until the afternoon. Then there was a lengthy closed door session. Now, it is put off until the afternoon session today. We think it is because the Archbishop of Canterbury is not pleased, and he may have called +Katherine.

Too bad. Let's not back down now people. We cannot make them angrier than they already are over D025. So let's carry through.

There are definitely some people who like to talk in the Deputies. And President Anderson does not seem to know how to shut them up. She needs to stop letting people speak on points of personal privilege. We will never get through the list of resolutions if we do not stop chattering about nothing and changing the rules.

We shut down the legislative session one hour early today so that the provinces could meet. For province four where I am, this was not a big deal since we had been together a month ago. But we had to choose our members of the presiding bishop nominating committee. (Don't worry folks. This is a pro forma issue for next convention. +Katherine is not going anywhere.). So we showed up and it was basically a walk through since we had already chosen our candidates. We filled out a ballot and left.

Then, it was off to dinner at a local Italian restaurant with the North Carolina crowd. Anyone from the diocese who was there was invited. We had about 25 folk, all treated by the bishop. Great dinner and conversation. The picture is of the spun sugar and hard caramel tower that was the centerpiece of dessert. Sadly, it was a cell phone picture. That's the bishop to the right in the rear. Thanks +Michael.

By the time we got back, it was after 10:00, so that's about it for the day. Tomorrow is a repeat, except the evening is L.A. night with a sensory emerging church event called Genesis. Brian McLaren is scheduled to appear. Should be wild to see Episcopalians trying to grasp emergent. Pray for me....

General Convention, day 8

2009-07-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

Okay, it is beginning to catch up to me. I am staying in my room tonight, even ordered room service. There are no great events to get to, and I am just tired of being social.

Today was a good day overall. In the morning, I listened to the draft of the resolution on same sex blessings that is going to the bishops for consideration. The Liturgy Committee has crafted a carefully worded resolution to suggest that we are not of one mind doing this but that we needed to go ahead and gather resources including liturgies and to present something for next GC to consider. It also gives broad pastoral powers to bishops, especially those in states where there are civil marriage, unions or domestic partnership laws. To be clear, the call for a report to go to next GC was always in the cards because no new liturgy gets authorized outside of that venue. So anyone who thought it was coming from this Convention was mistaken.

The best part of this was that the two committees voted and the bishops were 6-0 in favor and the deputies were 24-1 (I think. I know the 1 is correct). That type of support from the bishops was critical. There is some disputed language in one resolve that will have a minority report from Bp. Parsley of Alabama, but even he is overall in favor of what the committee crafted.

In the morning legislative session, we again took up the cause of Bishop Elect Ruiz of Central Ecuador. Believe it or not, this may actually have been more controversial. I made a refere3nce to it in an earlier post. Complicating things here is that the bishop elect is from Columbia, which is supporting his episcopacy heavily; the Ecuador deputation however is 3-1 against his becoming bishop. Even that is a smokescreen however. The people of the two nations are the same people; it was the Spanish who divided them into two nations, pretty much arbitrarily.

What happened in the diocese is this. The former bishop was totally corrupt, taking the money and running some illegal activities out of the diocese. The Standing Committee had not met in years. When this was discovered, he was deposed and a provisional bishop was sent in 3 years ago to help them put things together. When it came time to try to have an election, a search committee was formed, several candidates were considered, and in the end, none of the final slate were from Ecuador, although there was a process to nominate candidates beyond those of the search committee; no one did.

Then, several candidates dropped out after seeing the mess they would have to work with. It was down to ne, although a second was persuaded to put his name back in. Then, an attempt was made in the search committee to reconsider the election; it failed, but three members (out of 6) dropped off the committee. Provisional Bishop Ramos=-Orench called for the election to be postponed. The convention voted to send it to the House of Bishops to choose someone--any diocese can do that.

The Bishops interviewed the candidates and chose Fr. Ruiz. However, it happened in March, which meant it had to be ratified by General Convention, as any election close to GC does. This is how the Gene Robinson election came to GC 6 years ago. Anyway, there was a lot of emotion, accusations, and mis-information. The deputies were also caught with feeling a bit like colonialism was alive and well in our choosing the bishop of a Latin American diocese; that is not what was happening, of course, but it felt like it.

So we had a voice vote that sounded too close to call. And then the stupid voting machines decided to fail, so we could not vote electronically. So we had to wait until the afternoon.

Then it was off to worship. This is what makes the Anglican Communion great: The preacher was a lay woman, Courtney Cowart, the director of disaster response in the diocese of Louisiana. The celebrant was Prince Singh, the bishop of Rochester (who apparently had a lot to do with the House of Bishops afternoon voting--see below). Singh is from India; he was the first celebrant we have had who sung the Sursum Corda, and he used on in Wonder, Love and Praise that is written out of melodies from Appalachia (the Sanctus is #850 for anyone with WLP handy). And the gospel has been read in a different language of TEC every day. This time it was Chinese (The diocese of Taiwan is part of our province). And we had a children's gospel choir, just to make things interesting.

Lunch with the deputation and then we were back in legislative session for four hours. The machines were working, and we voted bishop elect Ruiz in and gave him a standing ovation when he was brought in. Did I mention I met him Saturday night and had about half and hour with him? He is one of the kindest pastoral souls you will ever meet. I'd take him for a bishop any day.

The afternoon session seemed to get a lot more done than some other sessions. The big item was the Title IV Canon Revision. Title Iv is the disciplinary canon; the last revision was based on the military code of justice! We decided that maybe the church had a different way of doing things, so the new code is fashioned on a model of repentance and reconciliation while still recognizing the need to care for victims.

Someone needs to tell the Canons Committee to get off their high horses. Three or four of them got up and told us not to make changes because they had already perfected it. Um, note to committee, our job is to scrutinize the legislation and decide what we will do with it, including changing things. And, in fact, we found several errors in their words on the various canonical changes that needed to be made to get it write.

We got bogged down right at the end of the afternoon on a different canon change to include gender identity or expression in the list of reasons people cannot automatically be excluded from the ordination (along with race, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc.) It took to the end of the day, and someone called for a vote by orders. I have no doubt it will pass, but we have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

We left and I went over to the young adult closing celebration in the Marriott. As it turned out, word had just come down that the bishops had passed D025, the B033 response. They made a fairly minor change in it, but that means we will get it back again. But it is gonna be passed. So we are saying that we do not exclude any of the baptized from any of the sacraments, but that we also are active in our relationship with the Anglican Communion. I know Integrity already has the new resolve on their website. Their reporter is a member of my congregation going off to seminary in the fall, and he is way on top of things. Good job James.

So now I am in my room. The Black Deputies are meeting about something in a few minutes, but I may not go. Oh look, it is actually after the time they are meeting. Oh well.

General Convention, day 7

2009-07-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

It was Sunday, so we had a relatively light day in terms of activity. The United Thank Offering ingathering was in the morning. Always nice to see 150 bishop vested out. In the afternoon, three hours of legislative time. That's it.

But there was one little resolution taken care of, D025. You have probably heard of it already. It is the response to B033 that the World Mission Committee put forth out of the many resolutions it received on the subject. If you look at it--you can find it in several places, including the Episcopal Church's General Convention pages and Integrity's pages--you will see that it has a lot of language specifically designed to say where we are with respect to the Anglican Communion.

We passed a special order to limit debate, so we had 30 minutes to comment upon it, followed by 10 minutes for amendments and ten minutes for substitutions. And then we voted. There were two attempts to divide the motion, which to say some wanted to separate out parts of the motion they did not like and voted separately on them. Both failed.

There were also two attempts to remove language from the resolution, but they also failed. Then time was up. However, someone called for a vote by orders. When this device is used, the deputations are split into clergy and laity. A yes vote means more than 50% of your deputation voted in favor, usually 3 or 4 members (Some deputations have fewer than four members in each order). A no vote means 1 or none of your members voted. A divided vote means just that, a 2-2 split. To pass the resolution, you must have a majority in each order.

The process also requires written forms filled out ans signed by each member of the deputation. So it takes time. We also dragged it out by having to vote by orders on one of the motions to divide. Fortunately, Joe Ferrrill, member of the North Carolina delegation, offered a motion to suspend the rules and allow a voice vote. It passed overwhelmingly, so we did not have to vote by orders on the second division.

Anyway, the results were overwhelmingly in favor of the resolution (77-31 in the lay order, 74-35 in the clergy. I did not write down the divided numbers.

Now, it is on to the bishops, who are likely to be a closer vote. Film at 11....

The Liturgy committee is planning to draft their final version of the same sex litrugies resolution today, in which case it is likely to show up tomorrow in the bishops. This will be the tougher sell, though the committee member bishop think they are getting a version that will work. I am off to watch them now. See ya.

Short Note

2009-07-13T00:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, a blog is coming about D025, the "statement of where we are now" resolution about the ordination process. Not tonight, though. I am tired.

Well, just one: Yeaaa! If you have not found it, go to Integrity's web page.

General Convention, day 6 addendum

2009-07-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the protesters have gotten a little more specific in their signs. But you should also know that Integrity pulled out the rainbow flags and flew them in front of them. Don't get into verbal exchanges with folks like this. That is what they want. Provide an alternative response like the flags.

This was removed from the last report because apparently it was too large.

One last thing. We had visits in the House of Deputies from official representatives of The Anglican Churches in South Africa, Brazil, Kenya, New Zealand and Canada. They urged us to do what we need to do and know that we are still welcome. (The New Zealand one also gave us a great caution about appropriating the word Ubunto too easily without necessarily knowing what it means!) Hopefully, this made the official web posts. I know that Barbara Harris' Integrity Eucharist did.

General Convention, day 6, edited

2009-07-12T02:43:00.000-07:00

Today I played hookey from the public narrative discussions. So did most of our deputation. Before that,though, we heard some inklings about what will come out of the sexuality reports. I listened in on the ones on same sex unions at the morning meeting of the Liturgy Committee. They are looking at allowing diocese to prepare right along with significant conversation with other parts of the Anglican Communions. Note that the word conversation is not the same as consultation, which, in some places, implies agreement.

At this point, it appears that the resolution about B033 are going to center on the reality that we are not of one mind. It is not clear to what extent they free us from the shackles. And, of course, the two houses can make all sorts of changes to the resolution when it reaches the floor. Keep watch on Monday and Tuesday.

By the way, I testified for the resolution out of our diocese about making the baptismal covenant moreof an active statement. Instead of the priest asking quesion about how we will live it out as the person assenting, the candidate (and the congregation) would actually say what they will do. And there is a additinal response about our stewardship of creation.

You may hear some rumblings about the choice of bishop for Central Ecuador. Be aware that the process followed was absolutely canonical and proper. The folks who do not like it represent one of the candidates who lost.

Ray Suarez (a deacon and yes, the name is familiar because he is on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS) preached a great sermon; go to the official web site for the footage. The gist was that we have something to offer to people who cannot find a home in other places in the church, and we have an obligation to carry that to those people.

So now on to the evening. I skipped the seminary dinner at $50 and went instead to the Latino/a party. Good food, but even better conversation with the current and future bishops of Central Ecuador. Both are wonderful folk and need our support. The previous bishop apparently ran the diocese without benefit of a standing committee and used the money for his own lifestyle. We are getting it back together, but it will take time. Pray for Bishop elect Ruis.

While I am at it, pray for Matt & Rebbecca Hanson, married yesterday. Matt is my assistant; they were married yesterday. To make matters worse, Matt had teaching job offer on Friday!

Now keep reading; this is a great story. I decided to go to the House of Blues in Downtown Disney, an area that is technically not in the park (you do not have to pay to get into it). Keep reading if you want a good story. My friend Dan Brown (no, not that guy. Dan is chaplain at U. of Georgia in Athens. We brought along Juan Diego, one of the young adults Dan knows from working with Vocare. We get there about 10:30pm.

The first thing that happens is we are given a wristband (right hand please!). Next we were asked if we were guests. Of course, we are not, but we are allowed to move to the head of the line. They sell us entry tickets for $20. Then we were practically stripped searched by their security. So we climb a dozen stairs and have our passports scrutinized--no, actually they just take the tickets from us that they just sold us at the bottom of the stairs.

If you read all this, you may have noticed some strange words at the bottom. I have no idea where they came from except it was 3:00am and I babbled on paper. Here is the rest of the story.

When we walk into the House of Blues, we hear techno pop. But what we see is nothing but Asian kids; they could not have been older than 23. And, of course it is obvious that they are there for each other and know this is the place to be. So all you non-Asian people with fantasies should just know that you would have been out of luck. And, as was pointed out to me by one person I told this story (believe, we have told this story!), not a whole luck of luck would have been had for gay folk either.

Except, to be honest, no one in the place is making a move. It's like 8th grade in here. The boys are in their clumps and so are the girls. No one is dancing in thei increasingly crowded place. The video monitors around the place are showing images of the empty dance floor. I tried a couple of times to take a picture with my cell phone, but of course the light is too low.

Not that there weren't pictures being taken. And a lot of giggling. At one point, I turn to Dan (who is White and looks like a good old boy from Georgia) "This may be one of those rare times where you and I are equally uncomfortable." Nothing like feeling like the dirty old man standing in the corner. Except Diego is 23 and he feels the same way. He went off to talk to the bartender (the staff by the way is all White and Latino/a), who suggests he come back on Sunday for the Gospel brunch. He politely declines. But when he comes back, he asks if we have read the wristband. Printed on it are the words "Unity in Diversity." We decide to not be the diversity any more and leave, looking out over another 50 kids ready to get in.

Today is Sunday, and I am finishing this blog. It is a short day. We have the United Thank Offering ingathering service at 10:00 and a 3:00pm legislative session. A lost of people, bishops especially have been booked to be in congregations, and besides it is both Sunday and we have been at it for a week. almost. I am missing the Episcopal Women's Caucus $35 breakfast with Barbara Harris, but hey, I just heard her preach at the Integrity Eucharist and anyway, I am eating breakfast in my room.

General Convention, day 5

2009-07-11T00:27:00.001-07:00

No picture today. The protestors have not returned.

Well, I missed day 4 on line. My parishioner Greg who is in seminary at CDSP came into town and I had a 'meeting' (read drinks) with some younger Black clergy about our frustrations with the identity politics being played out by our elders. (Yes, at 52 I can still talk about my elders in the situation. Sad, isn't it? Run to your next diocesan convention and run for GC deputy younger people! Your chances of getting elected are better than you think.)

In the morning, ++Rowan preached at the Eucharist and made a snide comment about things being okay unless we take some action that further strains the bonds of affection. Check out the video on the Episcopal Church General Convention web site at . It was hard not to hear his words as a subtle warning not to kill B033. At this point, though, I think he's gonna have to deal with the fact that we complied with the Windsor report 3 years ago and still had to deal with other dioceses intruding in our province.

Oh, and be sure to check out the Episcopal Church web page for reports about GC. I read all about the Young Adult Festival on line; I sure did not see them present at the actual event! Plus there are video links of the sermons and other things. Go to www.episcopalchurch.org/index.htm and click on the media links at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, the afternoon session in the Liturgy Committee on same sex unions went well, with the vast majority speaking in favor of creating some rite. And the evening session in the World Missions committee on B033 was similar. In the House legislative committee, we got to talk to our neighbor about how B033 affected our ministry. I talked with a woman from a small town in Oklahoma whose priest did nothing to prepare the congregation about sexuality. And, of course, Gene Robinson's consecration split the small congregation apart. Avoidance is not ministry people!

Oh, the electronic voting machines failed, so we had to put off the pension Fund Board vote. The next day, when we voted again, we had to spend 45 minutes voting, rather than giving ballots to some tellers to count. And there is no paper record of our individual votes! But I am ahead of myself.

Today we had out first really marathon session for four hours with one break. Whew!The highlight of it was our affirmation of the need to continue the antiracism work of the church. According to James, my parishioner who is working with the Integrity team, the House of Bishops kept going into executive session. They are taking up same sex blessings before we are, so that is probably the subject they wrestled with. If so, we will probably see it tomorrow.

Oh, and there was some asshole from Texas who kept trying to bully his way through Bonnie Anderson. As far as I can tell, someone needs to tell him to stop trying to control this strong and capable woman and start acknowledging her as president of the House of Deputies.

The highlight of the two days was the Integrity Eucharist. Creative, good music, Barbara Harris preaching and Gene Robinson celebrating. Well done folks. Even the biggest homophobe would have to admit they got this liturgy right. The whole thing was taped, so I assume there will be video on the integrityusa.org site if not the GC media site. Look for it. Still trying to get my alternative coalition going. We met tonight and are still considering what we are talking about. I think we are in the same struggle as people trying to define emergent. Something has to change but we are not quite sure what it is just yet.

More coming soon.

General Convention, day 3

2009-07-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

This picture says we are actually threatening to somebody. I don't think it is Fred Phelps' wackos from Kansas, but I did not ask. They saw me taking a picture of them and one guy said something about how someone was supporting them. I just said, "Dream on, buddy. You really are delusional," and then I walked away. Thought you'd love to see it.

Well, let's see. The PB told us we were in crisis again, this time in the opening Eucharist. The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke for twenty minutes, followed by some video that malfunctioned and then the three young people that the video was about answered two questions that the president of the House of Deputies posed to them rather than asking the Archbishop anything. What a wasted opportunity. He gave us some wonderful things to think about in relation to lies and truths in the global economic crisis, and we just threw his aside to toot our own horn.

To be fair the third of the younger speakers was an African doctor working with Malaria. Unfortunately, it came across as part program plug, part pat ourselves on the back for the ERD (Episcopal Relief and Development) Nets for Life program. People started walked out steadily when they saw that the program had stepped away from Rowan Williams.

Okay, let's back up. Today I spent time in the Social Concerns Committee. In the morning, I spoke to the Economic Justice resolution which was asking for $100,000 in the budget over the next three years for program and administration. Boy, the sponsors did not have their act together. It took half an hour for them to explain where the money would be used. Choose your speakers better, folks. You had a sympathetic audience, and I would not be surprised if you don't get the money.

New Deputies luncheon on the budget: A waste. I already knew everything they had to say, and I could have answered the questions that other new deputies were asking. Didn't any of these folks do some homework before showing up?

Highlight of the day: The afternoon hearing, again in Social Concerns, that focused on marriage rites in the states that have authorized civil marriage. Those bishops are putting forth a resolution asking for a pastoral allowance to, in effect, allow their clergy to act. There were no speakers against the resolution! It still has to go through both houses, but that was a strong start.

Tomorrow is one of the big days. Same sex marriage goes before the Liturgy committee in the afternoon, and B033 (see my earlier columns if the numbers make no sense) comes before World Missions in the evening.

And we had our first two legislative sessions as a full house. The first was basically organizing (Don't click your notebook after the house has come to order people. And don't clap unless allowed to by the chair). The second mostly cleared away some non-controversial resolutions.

There is a mysterious group of 8 who are meeting with the Archbishop to talk about the American Church in relation to homosexuality, supposedly to represent all sides. No one knows who they are. I bet James Joiner knows. I will ask him. Maybe I'll even be able to tell you!

After all that, the Archbishop's talk came. Oh, and I may be fomenting a coup among Black (and other) clergy who don't buy into the identity politics of our elders. We'll see. Probably should not be printing that just yet, but nobody reads this anyway.

It is 9:30 now. How do I know? Because the nightly fireworks display from Disney has started; I can hear it from the window in my hotel room. Still have a deputies of color meeting at 10:00. That will end the day. Bourbon helps.

Anaheim, Day 2

2009-07-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

Got here yesterday at 9:30 in the morning, in time to beat the rush of folks flying in to go to the Michael Jackson memorial. Actually, most of them flew into LAX. We are in Anaheim, using the John Wayne International Airport, but if you think television has been inundated with MJ stuff where you are, I promise you that no one is turning on tvs in their room here; just passing them in the lobbies is more than enough.

For some reason, the Hilton did not want me to have a refrigerator. Mind you, I ordered it a few weeks ago and have to pay $30 for the privilege. At least the wifi is down to $5 a day; originally it as $12, but I figure they got an offer they couldn't refuse and suddenly we have a 'promotional price.' Anyway, I reminded the Hilton about the refrigerator when I checked in. No go. I came down to the desk again at 4:00; at that point they tried to say they might be out of them but would check on it.

At 7:00, a member of our deputation arrived and got a refrigerator in her room right away, while I was still waiting. We go to dinner, and then I come back and ask about it one more time. This time, the woman calls housekeeping and they send one up in ten minutes. So what was so hard people? For what we are paying, service should be a little better. And for the record, I was not threatening, loud, or rude.

Dinner at Morton's steakhouse. Overpriced, but very tasty. A $45 small steak should not come a la carte people.

This morning, several hundred new deputies woke up to go to an 8:00 meeting only to learn it was canceled. Later today we were told it was a mistake on the schedule. How did you miss this one?!!! Mind you, most of us from the east coast had no problem getting up for the event, but I certainly hope this is not the standard for scheduling. In the meantime, we had not bothered to look at what committee hearings we might want to go to during that time because we all know we were busy.

Started taking shots with my cell phone camera, but will carry my real one with me tomorrow. I love the gluten free communion station. Is this separate but equal? Is it really so hard to keep a few gluten free wafers at each station?

So nothing shocking or amazing yet, although the Presiding Bishop made it sound like we were all in crisis, and the President of the House of Deputies was almost as grim. Sorry folks, not all of us live in crisis world.

Pray especially for us Thursday. Two open hearings that afternoon and evening. The first is on same sex marriage and the second is on moving past B033 (look it up in the2006 General Convention archives.). Hopefully, that means the votes will come up by this weekend and we can get some other work done too.

Public narrative (sigh!). The next gimmick. Pick one part your story (personal experience), two parts our story (isn't that also called the Gospel?), add a dash of current situation demanding attention and there you have it. We called that a sermon in seminary, so I guess this is homiletics for the rest of the church. And I still don't know why we are doing it except the last GC said we need to do something. I'm not impressed.

Now off to the Black Deputies meeting at 10:00pm. Then we get to go back to it tomorrow at 7:00. And guess what. General Convention doesn't officially start until the Opening Eucharist tomorrow! You can anticipate some more pictures and probably some serious posts soon.

Seniority and the Church

2009-07-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

As I prepare to leave for General Convention, I read some posts from a few younger members of the church. That means under 40, in case the word younger implies children to you. These are the thoughts that came from this reading:

40% of the deputies to GC this year are new. We were explicitly told we were not being assigned to legislative committees if we are new unless we had some 'specialized knowledge', whatever that is. So, basically, if you are under 25 (and there are several, including at least two high school students) you are locked out of the power structure before you even begin. The reasoning given for this decision is that GC is so overwhelming that they are trying to make it easier on us newbies so that we won't find it so difficult to maneuver. The goal is for more of us to run again. You see, something like 2/3 of us newbies won't if past history has anything to do with it.

Sorry. I just don't buy it. The reason people don't run is precisely the fact that their input as new deputies is not valued. Now we have institutionalized it in a new way. We've basically been told to let the old folks decide for us.

The reality is that this system perpetuates itself mercilessly. Returning deputies basically are those who were patient enough to ride out their powerless conventions and return after the people ahead of them died off (metaphorically and actually). You can't blame them really. If you don't have the ability to get the authority until you wait a few rounds, why would you give up your seat before you reach your goal? We tend to look at the more seasoned deputies as hanging on when, in many cases, they have only just arrived at the goal of the seats of power.

But they have also been trained and brought up by a system that perpetuates itself. Change comes from new elements (people?) being introduced into the system. In other words, the seniority system has to be scrapped. Yes, of course we need the expertise of people who have been around for awhile. But there are plenty of them around. It is not enough to open the door to letting younger people run; they had that privilege all along. Once they get there, you have to give them an equal seat and a microphone that works.

And, by the way, that goes twice for deputies of color, who think I am new in the system even though I have been ordained 25 years and have attended four other GCs. Just cause I am a new deputy does not mean I haven't been around! And I no longer quality as young; I'm 52, for heaven's sake. However, I work with young people all the time, so I know I do not think like them. But I sure want to hear what they have to say, and I am not afraid to give them power in the decisions that affect them--and us.

The Episcopalians are Coming! Hide the Women and Children.

2009-06-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

Well, there are now less than three weeks before thousands of Episcopalians will be descending on the Happiest Place on Earth, Anaheim, California. No, we're not actually staying at Disneyland Hotels, but the mouse house is just up the street. And, from what I can see, there is already lot's of Mickey Mouse behavior going on.

First, my pet peeves: The Hilton Hotel (along with the Marriott) attached to the Convention Center, is charging $12/day for wireless. Mind you, we could stay at a Motel 6, a Super 8, a Holiday Inn Express, or virtually any other hotel in the area and get it for free. But we're special, so paying for the more expensive Hilton, which basically means not walking 5-10 minutes each morning, grants us this outrageous fee.

I might have gotten over it until I was told about the refrigerator fee: it's another $30. So much for saving money by having breakfast in my room. It's embarrassing to the hotel chain. I hope every Episcopalian who learns about it tell their friends.

Anyway, that's the rant. Right now, I'm just trying to work my way through the emails, Facebook messages and snail mail that are showing up on a daily basis. I usually ignore my spam file except once a week, but now all sorts of people I have never heard of want to share information with me. And every one of them wants to invite me to lunch/dinner/cocktails/church.

Except they really want to take me to the cleaners. These 'invitations' are running anywhere from $25-$50 per meal, and I am sure I could go to one or two each day. At least my seminary apparently actually wants to treat me; no one else does.

Even the invitations to Eucharist have to be treated with suspicion. The printed programs will no doubt tell us the worthy cause that our offering will be funding, and a second pitch will be made right before the offering is taken up. We're not being nickeled and dimed to death - this is serious money.

And, let's face it, Anaheim isn't exactly cheap to begin with. $24 for breakfast at Denny's? IHOP is a bargain at $17? Now you know why the refrigerator (yes, I already have one reserved) is so important.

And the reports. It is ironic that we will pass so many resolutions about the church going green this time around. The Blue Book (actually a shade of maroon), filled with Convention Resolutions, is over 800 pages long. Most people will probably ship it out west rather than be forced to carry it on the plane and pay excess weight fees. And it doesn't even include the proposed budget, which was a separate document. The Church Pension Fund sent me their own report, another fifty pages I probably won't be reading. And the paper keeps arriving. Yes, a rain forest was hurt in the making of this convention.

It would be nice if the rest of the world cared one whit about what we do out there. What will happen instead is that there will be one report on the day we deal with the resolutions about same sex marriage, a relatively small part of the convention agenda. But it is the, ahem, sexy part, so you can be sure it will hit the major news media unlike everything else. Condemn a war: who cares? Raise millions for fighting malaria: so what? National health insurance for church workers? Hell, the Presiding Bishop could probably swear up a storm, declare herself to be a Sarah Palin Republican, and smoke a cigar naked without gathering attention unless she was talking about same sex marriage.

Now, this is not to take anything away from the importance of that issue. BUT IT'S NOT THE ONLY THING WE TALK ABOUT!!

Personally, I am looking forward to what Brian McLaren has to say to 10,000 Episcopalians. That should be funny. I wonder if they will even understand what he has to say?

Anyway, be sure to bookmark the Episcopal Church home page for an opportunity to see daily updates about what is actually going on (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/index.htm). You will have to go through the silly "I Am Episcopalian" cover site, in which various church members prove they know nothing about Christianity except the word 'welcome', but then you'll get some actual reporting.

Or you can go to this blog. Or my Facebook page. I am going to try to write some things from my experience.

Now, let's get out there and starting talking about sex, shall we? We do it so well. Or at least so loudly. Or, well, anyway, frequently. It took the Episcopal Church to make sex boring. Go figure.

Proud Shoes, Indeed

2009-06-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

What's on your summer reading list?

Well, besides the utterly fascinating (NOT!) 800 page Blue Book (which is Maroon, but so what) that contains the reports for the Episcopal Church's General Convention, I have recently reread Proud Shoes, a wonderful biography/history of the family of the Rev. Pauli Murray. I was asked to write a book guide for it recently (one of my previous lives was as a writer of book guides), and went back to read it again as part of the process. Reading a book to write on it is a different activity from reading for enjoyment, though I have to say I did enjoy it maybe even more this time than I did back in the 1980s when I first read it.

Pauli was born in 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland into a family that blended northern free blacks and southern children who were part slave, part master--thanks to the peculiarly accepted and shunned practice of white men going down to the slave shacks and raping women. We have lots of other names for it, but, stripped of euphemisms, that is what happened. If this sounds like Murray was attempting to cash in on the Roots phenomenon of the 1970s, you need to know that the book was originally published in 1956, and unlike Roots, it does not fill in known history with fiction - no Chicken George in sight. Murray does not go back as far, staying with her grandparents and great grandparents for most of the story.

What you get, instead, is one of the earliest books to examine in detail the challenge of color in the black community, specifically they way that lighter skinned blacks enjoy privileges within both the black and white communities that darker skinned black do not, but also suffer some consequences in terms of loss of community. Also of great interest is the way the South moved from hopefulness for blacks in the post Civil War period to the tragedy of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.

One of the things that make the book so wonderful, though, is the sense the reader gets that this family, told with all the warts showing, continues to triumph and maintain hope even in the midst of setbacks. Like when the grandfather gets shot during the war and continues to lose his sight even as he establishes classrooms all over the south; years later he must fight for a pension because the army won't acknowledge that the injury occurred while he was a soldier. Or the great grandmother who is separated from her husband because the master wants her for himself. Or the brothers who fight the elements to prove their trade as brick makers and, for a time, are more successful in Durham than the Duke family.

And if this story is not sufficient for you, check out Pauli's autobiography (yes, we were on a first name basis before she died), Song in a Weary Throat. Pauli's life is American history that you have never heard before, unless you are one of the lucky few. An orphan at the age of three, this family combined its efforts to raise her in Durham, North Carolina.

Her life includes the following: she refused to attend a segregated school in the south (she graduated from Hunter College in New York); she was then rejected for entry to UNC graduate school due to race, a school sitting on land given to it by her family; she was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat long before Rosa Parks; while studying law at Howard University, she organized a successful lunch counter sit in in 1943, well before other such demonstrations; when she applied to Harvard Law School, she was rejected because of her gender, later attending the University of California at Berkeley.

Let's not forget co-founding the National Organization for Women or becoming the first African American woman ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. She celebrates her first Eucharist in the Chapel of the Cross, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; the Chapel is next to the university and is the place her grandmother, born a slave had been baptized. Oh, and did I forget to mention she was the first woman priest to celebrate in the entire state?

Yes, I admit she's one of my heroes, made no less so from having met her in the last few years of her life as I was heading off to seminary. At that point, she had returned to Baltimore, the home of a father she could not remember.

So, if you need a sense of triumph in your life or a perspective that reminds you where the difficulties you face fall in the scheme of things, check out both of these books. And in a few weeks I'll be able to tell you where to get the book guide (because I know everyone reading this has a book club you'll want to discuss these books with).

This and that

2009-05-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

Been a busy time. Robbie, one of my students was assaulted and landed in the hospital with a badly broken leg. Lot's of people have been gathering support for him now that he is home, but it has taken a great deal of potential blogging time. Pray for him. He will be on crutches for a couple of months.

Last night, my ministry held the second annual worship service in support of Pride Week. James my soon to be seminarian preached a great sermon. Too bad the church has so alienated the GLBT community that most of them stayed home.

Wouldn't it be great if church officials thought their job was to support and enable new ministries rather than to simply figure out what the problems will be and therefore try to block them?

What kind of school would make students have to work/go to class from 10:00am to 10:30pm without a single break? Guilford College apparently.

If we did not want Supreme Court justices with empathy, we could program a computer to make our rulings.

People who object to national health insurance have not looked at 1) the complete insanity of what we have now, 2) the better examples of how it works, and 3) the satisfaction rate of people even in the so-called failure countries (e.g. Britain).

Free pulpit available to anyone who can come up with a lively sermon for Trinity Sunday (June 7).

Anyone want to bet on whether I get dismissed when I go for jury duty in June? (Yes, of course I will wear my collar!)

Don't buy an Iphone right now! They are dumping their stock in anticipation of a new model in July.

Why hasn't someone in the Episcopal Church realized that, with a new Lectionary, we need new collects too (sorry for the confusions that sentence is causing the non-Episcopalians.)?

What level of stupidity must yo possess to try to text while driving?

Today is the proposed feast day for John Calvin in our new list. But you already knew that didn't you?

On Beer

2009-05-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

Just one more difference between Anglicans and some conservative churches. We drink on occasion. Almost any occasion, actually. We are not ashamed of it. Jesus wasn't, so why should we be? Remember that wedding in Cana with the wine? That was a lot of wine he made. A whole lot. Go back and read the story, and realize those urns contained gallons of wine. Strong wine. The kind they usually diluted before drinking. Wedding parties went on for days back then. And no, it was not "new wine" -- i.e., grape juice. No one has a grape juice steward. And no one says something like, "Most people serve the good grape juice first and then wait until the guest have had their fill of it and can no longer tell the difference. But you have saved the good grape juice for last!"

And then there was that Passover thing. Only someone who has not been to a Passover meal (I mean a real one in a Jewish home or community, not that Christianizing crap some churches do) would claim Jesus used grape juice there, or did not drink it. The number of cartwheels and hoops you have to go through to reach that conclusion are absurd. Let's just take it on face value this time.

The reason we can be certain Jesus drank? Because water was unsafe. The ancients did not understand bacteria. But they did know that fermented liquids were not going to kill them (no cars on the roads to worry about). No wonder virtually every culture developed some fermenting process.

Drinking too much could get you in trouble, to be sure (see Noah), but drinking wine was still safer than drinking water. And Israel had grapes to spare more than grain, so wine was more plentiful than beer.

Well, we have both grain and grapes, although so many fields got planted with corn that we had a hops shortage last year. Just another fall out of the too-quick rush to corn-as-fuel binge we went on. If you noticed your local microbrew not serving up as much of you favorite double IPA, that's why. Things have settled out a bit now.

So it has become brewing season for me. FIRST INTERLUDE: Before I go any further, I should point out that, yes, I do work with college students. And yes, I am extremely careful about who gets to have any of my homebrew. I'm not kidding myself about whether those under 21 drink or not, but I like my job, and a I like being able to get a job. And anyway, I don't particularly like the drink to get drunk culture of undergraduate parties.

That said, have you noticed how many guys will cook things on the grill but not in the kitchen? Or maybe they will make chili or spaghetti sauce, but not potato salad or peas. And forget about those guys ever baking. All that measuring and precision seems beyond them.

Well, take a trip to your local homebrew store sometime and just listen. It's all about measuring grain, which brand of yeast works best, the bitterness of various hops, and extract versus all-grain brewing. If beer is 'bread in a bottle' then there are a lot of guys baking out there.

Ever since I began making beer, I have learned how many friends either have also been brewing or want to start. And brewers will talk endlessly about their last batch and what they will do with the recipe next time to make it better. Mind you, there was a period in time (through the 1990s) that home brewing was cheaper than buying a quality brew. Not any more. We can rightfully claim that we do it for the unique tastes we can produce. But, really, it's a lot of fun.

And truthfully, brewing beer smells great! And saying you brew your own is big time bragging rights, especially when you show up at the party with a few varieties. Which is why some of us obsess on getting labels made. Or setting up a separate area in our home (I gave my realtor a six pack and told him to find me an extra room. He not only found the room but a second refrigerator so that I could begin brewing lagers!).

SECOND INTERLUDE: I need to point out that no one brews beer to get drunk. It's too much work, and brewing in 5 gallon batches would have you working all the time. If an alcoholic is sad when the last beer is gone, let me tell you that homebrewers are almost distraught when we reach then end of a batch. That last bottle or two can stay on the shelf in the refrigerator for weeks just to say we still have a little of that batch left.

Now, there are plenty of women who brew beer, though I don't think I have ever seen one in the homebrew store without a guy who is also clearly into it. There is clearly a male culture about all this. Which is funny because, apart from a little heavy lifting, it's really cooking - serious cooking. Like the kind that people who make homemade candy have to do, checking temperatures and precise measuring. Well, there is a little bit of added science in measuring specific gravities, but really, it's cooking. Which means we should never be allowed to get away with claiming we don't know how to follow a recipe.

And the great thing is that the skill bleeds over to other items. I am making my second batch of wine right now, which has a few extra steps but doesn't have the time on the stove. And my hard cider recipe, which is truly easy--if you want a true English cider, not that sweet junk you find in the market, make your own--is a favorite among friends. And my great research project has been figuring out how to make a gluten free beer for people who have those allergies. And my next big project is mead.

So, I have a double chocolate stout brewing now, and a shiraz fermenting. A chili IPA is probably next because that is easy and fairly quick. And I'll be wearing my "What would Jesus brew?" T-shirt when I brew it.

This Just In...

2009-05-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), one of the chief centers of governance for this loose affiliation we call the Anglican Communion has decided that it really believes in the Windsor Document after all. This was the document that followed the Episcopal Church's consecration of Gene Robinson, and openly gay man (See article just below this one.).

The Windsor Report said that The Episcopal Church should refrain from further gay consecrations. But is also said that Bishops should stop intruding in the internal affairs of other dioceses. This part of the Report has been routinely ignored by dioceses who choose to accept North American clergy who have been deposed or have abandoned the Anglican Communion over the issues related to sexuality.

Typically these clergy align themselves with bishops and dioceses in Latin America and Africa who claim to be providing 'missionary work' in North America because they believe the Episcopal Church (USA) has abandoned any kind of sensibility about Jesus' message.

So what happened. Well, the ACC has chosen to tell the Church of Uganda that they cannot be represented by an American priest living in Georgia who remounced his orders years ago because then the ACC would be sanctioning a violation of the portion of the Windsor Report that chastises the attempts to establish jurisdiction by a foreign bishop in a diocese where there is already an established church. It has been a chief complaint that everyone has been making demands of the American (and Canadian) churches but this equally critical issue has not been faced. Well, now it has.

Read all about it here: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2009/5/4/ACNS4603

Thank you ACC. We are glad the admonishing is now going out to someone other than us: You cannot keep shouting 'Windsor Report' and simultaneously ignoring the parts of it that apply to you!

Okay, enough Episcopal Church and sexuality stuff. Next week, a report on beer making!

B033 - An Idea Whose Time has Come and Gone

2009-04-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, just a bit of a warning for any non-Anglicans reading out there. I'm about to give you a history lesson on the Episcopal Church. If we sometimes seem confusing, this may clear up a few points. Or it make it all seems even scarier than your could ever have believed.

Here is the short version. In 2003, the Episcopal Church, having received a majority vote in the House of Bishops, consecrated Gene Robinson to be the Bishop of New Hampshire. The rest of the church went into apoplectic fits because Bp. Robinson is not only gay but living in a committed relationship. Everyone knew this at the time, so there was no deception going on here. Well, there was a lot of self deception from people who refused to see that this was going to happen sooner or later, but that's about it.

Skip ahead three years to 2006 General Convention (GC). By this time, the rest of the Anglican world (except Canada) had told us what bad people we were, demanded an apology and a promise that we would not do it again, and threw us off the playground. Mind you, our polity maintains that each Province of the Anglican Communion is separate and it really was none of their business what we did; but some other places felt there might be guilt by association.

Anyway, the 2006 GC was asked to make a promise to hold off on any more such consecrations. Initially, we rejected that demand. Then we did something else shocking. We elected a woman, Katherine Jefferts Schori, to be the Presiding Bishop of the USA. Not only was she (gasp!) female, but she was supportive of gays and lesbians in the church. However, she had a dilemma. There was no way she could participate in international Anglican events without some kind of a promise from the Episcopal Church not to make any more gay bishops, (or, at least, openly gay bishops).

So, on the last day of that GC, she brought forth a resolution numbered B033 which said we would not consecrate any bishops whose manner of life might strain the bonds of affection between the Episcopal Church (USA) and other parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Everyone knew that this language was targeted at one group only, but implied that there might be other manners of life (voting Republican?) that people would find offensive. The plea was made to do this for a 'season'.

Now here's the problem. GC meets again this summer and B033 will come up again, mostly in resolutions to repeal it. Here's why. In the three ensuing years, several dioceses have attempted to leave the Episcopal Church. Most are learning that they don't get to keep the money or the property, but that is a long slow legal process. The Presiding Bishop has been snubbed by a number of bishops around the world who refuse to go to meetings where she is present or to shake her hand. Bishops in other parts of the world have been interfering in American dioceses, sending so called missioners and appointing new bishops where there are already existing bishops. Not only is all of this redundant, but it goes explicitly against the other part of the agreement that was requested around the world. In the meantime, the Episcopal Church has not gone back on its word.

The final straw (in my opinion) was the refusal of some bishops to go to last year's Lambeth Conference. Lambeth takes place every ten years and is intended as a time of discussion, reflection, and education for bishops around the world. Some bishops have decided that they will not even listen to the thinking process that has preceded our decisions in this country, preferring instead to bury their heads in the sand.

An interesting thing that happened out of Lambeth last summer is that a number of foreign bishops, taken out of the spotlight (the press is kept out of these meetings), had the chance to talk with American bishops and discover that there really is some theology taking place behind our actions, not just some cultural abdication of the Bible as they were led to believe. A growing collegiality has begun to develop, but not, of course, with those who refused to attend.

So we are left asking this question: Given that we got virtually nothing we wanted from B033, no dialogue, no retention of conservative dioceses, and no ending of the interfering by foreign bishops, why should we continue B033?

It was a bad compromise when it first happened, but I can easily see how people voted for it. I might actually have been one of them, had I been present. The newly elected Presiding Bishop was asking for something that she thought would allow the dialogue to continue. Instead, other forces decided they were done talking, that the body of Christ was irretrievably broken once again.

Worse than that, we sacrificed other people for our comfort. It is one thing for Christians to sacrifice themselves; our faith is rather based on that idea wouldn't you say? But it is another thing to sacrifice someone else. I don't see the biblical model for that.

So the only question, as far as I am concerned is whether we repeal B033 or confess our shame in having passed it in the first place. I, for one, am tired of putting the institution above human beings. To put it bluntly, B033 stank from the beginning, and it has gotten any better with age.

A Few More 'Lesser' Saints

2009-04-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

April 27 - Christina Rosetti, Poet 1894 - A rare find! She wrote the poem "In the Bleak Midwinter", which was later set to music and is now a Christmas Carol. But (for all us Geeks), she also wrote "Goblin Market" part of which appears in the episode titled "Midnight" in the sci-fi show Doctor Who!

April 29 - Catherine of Siena, 1380 - The youngest of 25 children, Catherine began having visions at the age of six. Despite her families best efforts, she pursued her mystic vocation as a Dominican. An interesting woman to read about.

April 30 Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, Editor and Prophetic Witness, 1879. An early advocate of the back to Africa movement to return slaves to Liberia, Ms. Hale is best known for two other accomplishments, the children's poem "Mary Had a Little lamb", and the nationalization of the Thanksgiving Holiday. Editor of Goday's Ladies Book for forty years, she was also a tireless advocate for women's education, and the production of American literature.

May 2 Athansius, Bishop of Alexandria, 373 - Nowadays, he is a pillar of orthodoxy. Of course, he had to go into exile 5 times because the odds were stacked against him. What was the reason? In a word, homoousios. It means "of one being (with the Father)." The full divinity of Christ was the major debate at the time.

May 4 - Monnica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387 - Monnica prayed for years that her son would convert to Christianity. She won. You might want to check out whatever your mother is praying for!

May 7 - Harriet Starr Cannon, Religious, 1896 - The founder of the Community of St. Mary, the Episcopal Church's first monastic order for Women. On September 9, the order is remembered for the martyrs of Memphis, when several members of the order died nursing victims of Yellow Fever in Tennessee.

May 8 - Dame Julian of Norwich, c. 1417 - One of the great medieval mystics. "All is well."

May 9 - Gregory of Nazianzus, Bishop of Constantinople, 389 - Known as one of the Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory championed the Trinity at a time when the church was just beginning to work out that theology. A beloved bishop and good preacher.

May 10 - Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Prophetic Witness, 1760 - Zinzendorf can be attributed with creating the Moravian Church, which is odd since he was not exactly the type who wanted to create another organization. A somewhat maverick Lutheran, he simply could not conform and saw the idea of free churches developing along family lines, becoming structured only when necessary. We can all see some attraction in that! He also had some interesting ideas about sexuality and transcendance.

That's enough for now!

Gotta Love Them Saints

2009-04-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

Actually, one of the fun things coming before General Convention is a complete revision of our Lesser Feasts and Fasts, the book that identifies, among other things, the Christian people we remember on our calendar. In Anglican lingo, the term Saint (capital 'S') is only officially applied to New Testament witnesses to the early events of Christianity. Other Christians are referred to saint the way that Paul calls the entire community saints. And certain exemplars of the faith are commemorated for what they have done in a book now entitled Lesser Feasts and Fasts. So, for example, Timothy is Saint Timothy but Francis of Assisi is not (and yes, the common useage of the term does not always match this formula). Timothy's feast day is included in the Book of Common Prayer Calendar, while Francis remains in the Lesser Feasts group.

One other difference between us and Roman Catholic practice: In Anglicanism, it is not common practice to pray to Saints for intercession. We believe one can pray to God (in any part of the Trinity) directly. Yes, I am hedging here because as with much of Anglicanism, there are not prohibitions against praying to saints. You just won't see much of it, and lots of people will tell why the believe it is unnecessary.

Anyway, back to my point. The revision has a new title: Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints. And yes, you can tell one of the differences is an attempt to include more women. And more non-European or North American folk. And more post-Reformation non-Anglicans. So here is what is upcoming on the new calendar. Hopefully, I will remember to do this a few times for you:

April 15 - Damien, Priest and Leper 1889, and Marianne, Religious 1918 of Molokai
God of compassion, we bless your Name for the ministries of Damien and Marianne, who ministered to the lepers abandoned on Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands. Help us, following their examples, to be bold and loving in confronting the incurable plagues of our time, that your people may live in health and hope; through Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

April 16 Mary (Molly) Brant (Konwatsijayenni), Witness to the Faith among the Mohawks, 1796
Maker and lover of all creation, you endued Molly Brant with the gifts of justice and loyalty, and made her a wise and prudent clan mother in the household of the Mohawk nation: Draw us also toward the goal of our faith, that we may at last attain the full dignity of our nature in our true native land, where with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

April 19 - Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Martyr, 1012
O loving God, your martyr bishop Alphege of Canterbury suffered violent death when he refused to permit a ransom to be extorted from his people: Grant that all pastors of your flock may pattern themselves on the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep; and who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

April 21 - Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1109
Almighty God, you raised up your servant Anselm to teach the Church of his day to understand its faith in your eternal Being, perfect justice, and saving mercy: Provide your Church in every age with devout and learned scholars and teachers, that we may be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

April 22 - John Muir, Naturalist and Writer, 1914, and Hudson Stuck, Priest and Environmentalist, 1920
Blessed Creator of the earth and all that inhabits it: We thank you for your prophets John Muir and Hudson Stuck, who rejoiced in your beauty made known in the natural world; and we pray that, inspired by their love of your creation, we may be wise and faithful stewards of the world you have created, that generations to come may also lie down to rest among the pines and rise refreshed for their work; in the Name of the one through whom you make all things new, Jesus Christ our Savior, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Hey, we get to remember John Muir liturgically by reading from the Song of the Three Jews!

On to Anaheim, Round One

2009-04-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, I am a deputy to the 2009 meeting of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which takes place in July in Anaheim California (Sorry, but the term "Mickey Mouse Convention" has already been taken!). This is that time every three years when the Episcopal church is in the news several times in a row, after which we are largely forgotten by the news media.

As part of my deputy duties, I am going to a pre-convention meeting of deputies of color this weekend.

I must admit, I am going with a bit of trepidation. It looks like this meeting is being run by the same folk who were in charge of these things when I finished seminary 25 years ago. Put another way, we appear to have Jesse Jackson leadership in a Barack Obama world. I hope I am wrong and will be pleasantly surprised.

I wouldn't really care except I think younger deputies of color have different battles they want to fight. I don't claim to represent them (I am, after all, older than President Obama), but I do get to listen to folk their age a lot as a college chaplain. Is this a time for the passing of the torch?

And I really wonder if that torch is gonna get passed right over my head to those younger than me. If so, I'll be happy to stand with the younger group, especially if they decide to try something other than the old identity politics that, quite frankly, now bore me to tears.

One thing I do know is that I will have to take a walk if we continue the old practice of people of color decrying discrimination and then turning around and refusing to support gays and lesbians in their struggles against the same thing. For me to sign on to that would be, among other things, a betrayal of the folks who are part of my ministry.

I guess what I am really doing as I write this is gathering the courage to face a potential adversary. Pray I have the strength, if needed. Fortunately, my ministry is not really tied to these folks liking me.

More on this as it develops....

Vocation as Vocation

2009-04-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

Here is an edited version of the quiet day meditation I gave last week at our clergy quiet day.

Every Facebook user knows about the proliferation of quizzes right now. Here was the result of one I took recently:
“Kevin took the ‘What is your ministry calling?’ quiz and the result is Grounds Keeper and Fence Mender. You are your own boss. Although you believe in the church, you do not want to deal with the hypocrisy of church. You are willing to show up during the week to do odd jobs. You appreciate being called when there is a special need. You may clean the sanctuary during the week or put together the video technology for Sunday. You may teach a Sunday school class occasionally. You will drive the church van or paint the social hall but you are not called to attend staff meetings or put up with the politics of church.”
I write this as an entry into discussion about where we are going with our vocations. What I love is they way my job got described in a manner that had nothing to do with my ordination. I know lots of clergy who have spent a lot of time as grounds keepers and fence menders without picking up a rake or a hammer. Priesthood is a part of who we are, but the living out of our priesthood comes in many forms.
There are two errors that get repeated when clergy talk about vocations. Neither of these should be particularly enlightening to clergy, but they bear repeating.
The first is this: Vocation is something that clergy have.
As a campus minister, I talk about ordination with people a lot. At the moment, I am talking about ordination with seven different people. Some of them are not even members of my ministry, just people who wanted to talk about it. It is a regular part of my work.
But I also get to talk with a lot of other people. Like the student who suffers from PTSD and anxiety issues and has to consider that when he looks at possible careers and jobs. Or the one who graduated, moved away to become a teacher and is now back after discovering that he really hated it. Or the student who may have to leave school if she is not granted in-state status, even though she doesn’t live anywhere but North Carolina. Or the returnee who started a career in journalism—we all know what that’s like now.
In the midst of all their challenges are the same questions: Where is God in all this, and where is God calling me? And out of a ministry that in many ways is almost always about vocations, I am forced to conclude that there really is no difference between the vocational challenges of the clergy and those of the laity. Our struggles are their struggles. The struggles are just as deep, just as powerful, just as meaningful on both sides of the collar.
Which means, of course, that the questions we ask the laity to reflect upon are the same questions we need to be asking ourselves.
This is the second error clergy make: Vocation is something that you have settled once you become ordained.
In my work history after ordination I have been an assistant in a parish, then in a cathedral (where I later became priest in charge for awhile) a member of the bishop’s staff, a vicar of an inner city mission, a PhD student, a writing instructor, a freelance writer, an interim (twice), and now, for the third time, a college chaplain. And truthfully, if I had it to do over, I would only leave out one of those experiences.
I mention this to illustrate a point. One of the biggest mistakes clergy make is to think we have settled the vocation question by being ordained, or by becoming a rector, bishop, dean, or some other position. And while we all know better, too often we act on this false belief. And we find ourselves in vocational difficulty because we lose sight of something that we so readily can see when talking to other people.
I love the stories of the first deacons as told by Acts. Here they are, a group of guys set apart essentially to wait tables. After the apostles lay hands on them, the next part of the story is all about how they go on to be really good waiters.
Oh, wait. That part isn’t there. The next thing we here is not about them fulfilling the diaconal duties of service. It is the story of Stephen going out into the street and preaching until he is stoned to death for upsetting the status quo. And his story gets followed by Philip teaching and baptizing. Apparently, their calls to ministry did not settle much of anything for them. Nor did they seem to have a problem with moving past the tasks originally assigned to them.
So, then, what is the vocational quest really about? For Christians (and certainly for Christian clergy), it is first and foremost our struggle to shape our lives in a fashion that lives out our baptismal covenant. Put another way, it is about aligning our lives with Christ’s vision of the kingdom. In that sense, it is not primarily about happiness or fulfillment, though both of those are very important to our ability to function.
No, it is about a Christological view of our world and our lives. It is about building a seamless bridge from Sunday to the rest of our week, rather than seeing them as forever separated. We know that vocation is a spiritual matter. But it is also an incarnational one. How do we live our lives in a way that Christ is made real in the world? And then how do we help the people we find ourselves in the midst of do the same thing? Vocation is about making Christ incarnate.
Which leads me to one inescapable question. Is the clergy vocation primarily about helping everyone else to find their Christian vocation? For most of history there were very few people other than the wealthy who had much choice about their vocation. Poorer folk were apprenticed to a trade if they were in a city, a farmer if they were in the country, and a wife if they were female.
In that system a vocational crisis occurred when you were injured and could not do your job, not when you felt angst about wanting to move on to something else. Priestly counsel about vocation was to help people accept the life they had been dealt.
Now we live with the belief that we can grow up to be anything we want. Has it become the role of clergy to help frame vocation spiritually and practically and sacramentally for people? If so, what does that mean about how we fulfill the ministries to which we each have been called? Does this, for example change anything about how we worship? How might it affect premarital counseling or youth group or the mid-week Bible Study, the Outreach Committee, or the men’s group, or your EFM class, or—dare I say it—the Vestry Meetings? Or, for that matter, does it affect the budget?
So let me leave this not as a question but as an assertion. Our vocation is all about vocation. It should rarely be away from our minds as we plan our activities as clergy.
Now I have to admit that I am still playing with the implications of this; I had never verbalized it or put it on paper until now. So now it is an offering to you along with this one last consideration on which I invite you to reflect. We know that vocations do not live in isolation from God, but they do not live in isolation from other people’s vocations either. How then is your vocation tied to others?

The Recession as Sporting Event

2009-03-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

It is almost a cliché right now to write a column about the difficult economic times. Everyone has done it. The news broadcasts and papers can hardly go a day without leading with some more grim news about unemployment, down turning markets, corporate bonuses, or federal deficits.

One sad thing about all this is that it begins to sound less real the more we hear it. Worse than that, by showing it on television, it becomes a kind of perverse entertainment for the majority of Americans who still have their jobs, houses, and SUVs. Oh, they may worry about keeping those things, and they may cut back on spending, but truthfully, a whole lot of people are not really hurting all that much and many will be able to weather this storm without too drastic a life style change. I just read a newspaper story about families struggling but also finding the money to send children out of state to summer camp. That’s not poverty but inconvenience, and it is dismissive of those who really are facing a financial or housing crisis.

When the children no longer have cell phones and the house cuts back to basic cable (or better yet, no cable), that’s when it starts to hit home. Yes, I know how embarrassingly wealthy that means we really are. But instead of counting our blessings, we grouse about the villains getting even more, with bonuses that seem to reward incompetence and companies being declared too important to fail while our neighbor is being put on the street.

Let us all declare a moratorium on the grousing, shall we? It is not helping your neighbor’s foreclosure situation or you brother’s job loss. Yes, we should be angry, and yes we should change the laws that made all of this almost inevitable. But we all should have remembered pharaoh’s dreams, handily interpreted by Joseph. The lean years are going to come from time to time, regardless of who we have to blame for them. We should get ready for them.

Credit card debt was never a good idea, except for short term emergencies. The stock market was never supposed to provide a quick investment return. Adjustable rate mortgages were a bad idea when they surfaced in the 1980s and they burned buyers then. Why did they look better now? And subprime loans were just irresponsible from the get-go, for both the lender and the buyer.

The Christian response to difficulty has always been to go out on a limb and place our trust in God. Yes, planning and saving for the future is a good idea. So is paying off debt. But so is giving of your time and money to help out those who really have been hurt by this economy. If you are not going out to the movies so much right now, you have a few hours to give to volunteering. A couple of extra cans will hardly break your food bill, but they can certainly keep someone else from starving. Many communities are rehabbing existing homes that have been foreclosed and making them available for lower income families; it’s cheaper and faster than building new ones, and greener too.

This is not “Go out and spend,” a sad leftover from the last administration. It is go out and help. Go out and make a difference. Go out and change someone else’s life, not just your own. Go out.

The temptation is to ride this out at home isolated from what is happening if we are able. That is exactly the wrong way to respond. The recession is not a spectator sport or a dark television comedy. What is happening to too many people is real, and if you are not one of them, don’t sit on the couch doing nothing. Get involved.

On Being Single

2009-03-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

It sucks!

Oh, I know you are going to assume this is some endless bitching about not being able to find someone. You are wrong. I actually like living alone.

No, being single sucks because the world revolves around couples and does not see the challenges single people have. And now that we live in a nation that assumes two income families, it really sucks.

Why? Because my mortgage is not half of yours. My grocery shopping takes just as long, and I don't get a discount on a gallon of milk. Cleaning my house takes twice as long as when two people do it. I don't get to pass off cooking dinner (no, I don't just eat carry out or fast food all the time). I pay more taxes than you do for the same amount of money. When I finish mowing my lawn, I still have to do all the indoor work. I can't even bitch about the partner who isn't doing their share of the work.

And then of course there is the church. You know, that institution that really does not know what to do with single people (despite being headed by one!). Or young people. Or seniors. Or children. Wait! Who exactly does the church serve well? Oh, I suppose that's another column.

Show up somewhere without a partner and you completely throw off the plans for the evening. Go out to eat and you get stuck at the table by the kitchen or stared at by half the room.

So what actually started this rant? Yesterday, I heard a presentation about high deductible insurance programs with attached health savings accounts. The idea is that your employer pays money into the HSA with couples/families getting more money than singles because they will (presumably) have to pay more out. I'm fine with that. I think everyone should have access to health care, and sadly, in this country, that means insurance.

The problem comes with money that might accumulate if you are healthy. If you get to age 65 with money left over in your HSA, you get to spend it. Any way you like. On your boat or Fiji vacation. Now, put aside the notion of rewarding people for things that may not be in their control (which is still most of our health concerns). What this has the potential to mean is that the married employee can accumulate much more money than the single employee does. Put another way, married employees (potentially) get paid more than single employees for the same job.

Fortunately, at this time this does not look beneficial for my neck of the woods. Our current insurance plan is actually a bit cheaper. Thank God.

Someone will probably quote the workers in the vineyard to me. I don't think that's relevant because the real issue here is that our screwed up health care system just got even more screwy with this new idea.

If the word socialism wasn't brought up every time anyone speaks of needing a fundamental shift in the way we provide (or don't provide) health care in the country, we might actually be able to do it and stop paying twice as much as the rest of the world without the best results. So maybe that's what I'm really pissed off about.

We keep propping up an fundamentally unfair health care system out of fear of things that the New Testament actually commends to us (i.e. pooling our resources for the good of those who have need.) We're so sure it could only be horrible, and you hear stories of how bad it is in some countries. Funny how there are plenty of other countries with national health care that never get mentioned in those tirades. You know why? Because people generally like their health care in those countries (try most of Scandinavia, for example).

Yes, I know how families with children can say various systems discriminate against them in many ways. There are plenty of voices out there making that clear. And I like kids, so don't think this has anything to do with them. It took adults to create the various inequities we have developed in our culture.

But say a prayer for all those single people out there. And please don't pray that our lonely existence will be ended. Plenty of us are not feeling lonely. Pray that we don't lose our jobs because we don't have a second income to fall back on when times get tight. When that happens, our health insurance, if we have it, will disappear with the job, and let's face it: bad health care is better than no health insurance.

Random Thoughts

2009-03-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

So, look, there are days when you just don't have deep theological thoughts, right? Well , this is one of those days for me. You've seen columns like this in the newspaper (Remember newspapers?). They occur when the columnist just doesn't have anything to talk about. So, random thoughts for the day:

1) You can cook a chicken in half the time if you a) cut out the backbone and lay it out flat, butterfly style (this takes literally a minute and can be done with kitchen shears, and b) preheat the oven to 450. salt & pepper are obvious and then you can choose (My favorite is garlic and rosemary). A five poound chicken will be done in 35 minutes, with nice crispy skin.

2) Snow makes everything look better except the streets you have to drive over.

3) The sixth Dr. Who is really annoying.

4) Listening to Creed a few years later shows you just how pretentious they really were.

5) Christians don't really embrace new ideas very well, do we?

6) Today marks 24 years of being a priest. Next year, we party, even if it is in Lent!

7) Facebook has made it possible for you to stalk people without trying. They tell you what they are doing!

8) By the end of Ash Wednesday, I had been exposed to mono, strep, the flu, that nasty sinus thing that is going around, and God only knows what else. Using fortified wine for communion must really work 'cause, so far, I have not gotten any of it!

9) What do you do with old cleaning fluids that you no longer wish to use because you are trying to go green (see last entry)? How do you throw them away?

10) Happy birthday, sis.

11) Why does two men or two women getting married threaten anybody else's marriage? I at least understand some of the other arguments, but I really don't get that one.

12) Do you realize that 60s rock is to current music as ragtime was to the 60s? Somehow, the Beatles have weathered better than Scott Joplin or the Charleston did. And the Stones just keep going in their wheelchairs....

13) With historically low interest rates, why is my credit card (currently no balance and paid off on time when there was one) raising my interest rate by 8% and upping my default rate to over 29%? That's absurd. I didn't make all those bad investments!

Okay, that's enough for now!

Going Green for Lent

2009-02-24T08:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, so since I was thoroughly frustrated with that environmental action book (see below), I decided to do my penance by creating a Lenten discipline for myself, my students, or anyone who would listen. Here's a plan that will cost you a little money (not too much) but really it is mostly about time. Besides, if you do it, you will actually save quite a bit of money over time. More importantly, it is better than just feeling guilty all the time.

A Revolting Christian's Guide to a Greener Lent:

February
25 – Ash Wednesday. Do an energy fast today, and vow to combine future shopping trips; learn the patience of waiting before going out to buy just one thing.
26 – Thursday. Spend ten minutes picking up trash in your neighborhood.
27 – Friday. Go online and find instructions for that compost pile you keep saying you should have. Make a list of needed items.
28 – Saturday. Buy the items needed for your compost pile. Save gas by combining this trip with other errands.

March
1 – Sunday. Leave your car at home. Walk to church if possible, thanking God that you can.
2 – Monday. Wash your dishes by hand, not by running water constantly but by filling the sink with hot soapy water and a second one (or a plastic tub) with rinse water
3 – Tuesday. Read the contents of your cleaning solutions and throw one away.
4 – Wednesday. Mix vinegar and soap and water to make your own cleaning solution.
5 – Thursday. Take a walk & give thanks to God for any nature you see.
6 – Friday. Locate any drafts in your home and put weather stripping on your list of things to buy for your next errand run.
7 – Saturday. With Daylight Savings Time coming tonight, change your smoke detector batteries. Start a battery collection to take to the city and dispose of properly.

8 - Sunday. Leave your car at home. Walk to church if possible, thanking God that you can.
9 – Monday. Check to see if your light bulbs are all energy efficient. Consider replacing light fixtures that are not good candidates for those bulbs. If necessary, add light bulbs to your shopping list.
10 – Tuesday. Vow to turn off your computer each night and to hit the off switch on your outlet box so that you are not wasting passive energy on all those lights (printer, monitor, etc.)
11 – Wednesday. Walk to a park on your lunch hour.
12 – Thursday. Give away something you don’t need any more.
13 – Friday. check your thermostat and make sure it is not running full speed at times you know you are not home. Lower the heat temperature by one degree if you are not down to 68 or less.
14 – Saturday. Buy or order on line fair trade coffee, tea, or chocolate if you use any of these things.

15 - Sunday. Leave your car at home. Walk to church if possible, thanking God that you can.
16 – Monday. Make an inventory of all the items in your house that waste passive energy such as cell phone chargers. Learn to unplug or buy outlet strips with an off switch
17 – Tuesday. Turn off the computer and the tv and read a book.
18 – Wednesday. Remember your basement, attic and outdoor lights? Make sure they have been replaced with energy efficient bulbs too.
19 – Thursday. Write the Mail Preference Service to reduce your junk mail. www.dmachoice.org.
20 – Friday. Add clothespins to your grocery list. Hang a rope in the kitchen window for drying reused plastic bags
21 – Saturday. Visit 10,000 Villages web site or store (if you have other errands) and buy gifts in advance for birthdays, weddings, etc.

22 - Sunday. Leave your car at home. Walk to church if possible, thanking God that you can.
23 – Monday. Bring an energy efficient bulb to your office and replace one of the incandescent ones there.
24 – Tuesday. Purchase enough cloth bags to cover all your groceries and other shopping items. Store them in the car so that you always have them with you.
25 – Wednesday. Visit the library instead of the bookstore.
26 – Thursday. Start a pile of unwanted catalogs that come in the mail, and write to each to ask that you be removed from the mailing list.
27 – Eat a meatless meal and vow to do so at least once more a week than you do now.
28 – Saturday. Hang a rope in your basement (and/or outside) for drying your clothes.
29 - Sunday. Leave your car at home. Walk to church if possible, thanking God that you can.
30 – Monday. Clear your bookshelves and give away any books that, a) you will never read again, or b) will be more helpful to someone else.
31 – Tuesday. Pay bills on line. If you set it up through your bank, you do not have to go to each company’s web site. You can also elect to get the bills electronically and save even more paper.

April
1 – Wednesday. Save your garbage and recycling. Stopping to pick up your half empty bin costs the trash industry (and, therefore, you) time and energy. Put the bin on the curb only when it is full.
2 – Thursday. Buy a low flow shower head and install it.
3 – Friday. Ride your bike or walk to work or school.
4 – Saturday. Stop pretending you will wear all those clothes you have. Donate the ones you have not worn in a year to a local charity.

5 – Palm Sunday. Leave your car at home. Walk to church if possible, thanking God that you can.
6 – Monday. Look around the house and identify things that clutter your life that you are only holding on to because of memories. Take a few pictures and decide to give them new homes.
7 – Tuesday. Get your car serviced before traveling home for the holidays. Inflate the tires properly.
8 – Wednesday. Before you lay in extra food for the Easter feast, clean out the refrigerator and reflect on how much food you have wasted by letting it go bad. It’s Holy Week. A little guilt is appropriate!
9 – Maundy Thursday. Go to church! Wash your car at home and save money and water.
10 – Good Friday. Go to church! On this second fast day of Lent, think about what you are willing to sacrifice on a permanent basis, not just for Lent.
11 – Saturday. Start a garden, if you haven’t already. If it is your first time, or you live in an apartment, make it an herb garden, in pots if necessary.
12 – Easter Sunday. Give thanks for the resurrection and give some food so that others can too..
13 – Now that you have looked at the small things, joyfully start considering the big projects such as insulation, solar energy, etc.

We're an Adult Church

2009-02-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

I read that recently. It was a description of the Episcopal Church by a priest to a parishioner. The context was an online discussion about lifelong learning in the Episcopal Church.

Now, if your mind works in the twisted way that mine does, at least part of you read 'adult church' and thought, "When do they get to the sex?" Alas, when Episcopalians get to sex, it's all a lot of talk. It took the Episcopal Church to make sex boring--many have tried, but few have succeeded like we have in taking a subject so filled with excitement, energy, and humor and making it dull, pedantic, and mind-numbingly off putting.

Well, thankfully, this comment was not about the sex lives of Anglo-Catholics (for once). Sadly, it said something worse; this priest was saying, in effect, that the Episcopal Church is really not for children.

This, of course, was news to me, having grown up in the Episcopal Church. I did not realize that all of that Sunday school, choir, acolyting, ushering, youth group, and being a page at diocesan convention was not aimed at me. Let's not forget the diocesan youth retreats and church camp. And we can just skip past the last thirty years of my life spent leading youth events on every level from the parish to the international stage.

Apparently, being a church that encourages an intellectual approach to one's faith, that allows questioning, that changes over time, and that encourages its members to figure out for themselves who God is (working through a community of believers, of course) is not for children.

I pray that this is an attitude that very few of my fellow clergy take. Or other Episcopalians, clergy or not. And especially those Sunday school teachers and Directors of Religious Education in our churches. If it is, than we may as well relegate our work to the same trash heap where the most failing school systems in our country belong. You know, the ones that don't teach children to think but only try to keep control and make them give rote answers. The ones where history is just 'one damned thing after another' and English is designed to make the kids hate to read and crank out five paragraph theme essays that say nothing.

Oops, I'm getting off track. How much do you want to bet that the congregation of the priest who made this comment has very few children? And how long will it be before he drives away the few that are left, thereby proving his point. And wouldn't you also bet that his adult education program is pretty boring too? It's like politicians who make a career of saying how badly government fails and then get into office and set out to prove their point. Except maybe it's not quite as calculated. More like an unwillingness to admit personal failure by blaming the whole system.

The problem with this declaration, of course, is that the ministry of children and youth in the Episcopal Church is succeeding all over the place. The evidence of that can be found all over the land. Yes, there are places that struggle, especially small churches that only have a few children.

But tell me a kind of ministry where this is not true. Then say it about any other church or denomination out there. Even Saddleback Church, Rick Warren's southern California mega-entity, isn't resting on its laurels. You just know that there is some back room there where someone is tearing her hair out saying, "Why isn't our __________ ministry reaching people?"

Well, I believe children want to think too. And churches that tell children what to think lose them as soon as they decide to think for themselves. Do we really want a program with a hundred children if 99 of them are going to leave before getting out of high school? Of course not.

But the attitude is the first thing that has to go. Yes, we are an adult church. And a young adult church (that's a whole other discussion). And a teen church. And a children church. And an elder church too. The sooner we start believing that, the better. Because any group of people can figure out when a church is not interested in them. Even children.

Green for God

2009-02-10T07:59:00.000-08:00

It seems everyone in the church has suddenly decided that being environmentally conscious is a good, even holy thing. Congratulations. The scientists are telling us it's already too late, but at least we are getting the point.

Now all the liberals out there, especially the younger ones and the parents of the younger ones (who twenty years ago were shamed by their kids into learning to recycle) are saying "It's about time! Here's something we can agree on for a change. Rather than deciding whether someone is going to heaven or hell by looking at who shares their bed or blindly following the next Republican who claims to be a born again Christian despite showing absolutely no sustained relationship to a faith community of any kind, we finally are talking about doing something useful for the world. We can all work together, right?"

Yes, I know how those last sentences read. Those liberals can be pretty judgmental too, can't they (Notice how I refuse to label myself as a liberal. Maybe I'll talk about that sometime soon too.) Not exactly the best way to start an alliance. But maybe if everyone can learn to keep their mouths shut about other issues, we can actually get something done, especially if we can agree that maybe, just maybe, the government can also be a partner in this. Good will is certainly welcome. Organizing as a people to do something also helps. And at its ideal, isn't that exactly what government is supposed to be?

Unfortunately, the Sunday forum at the campus ministry where I work read a book on environmental action by one of the evangelicals. I won't mention it's name, but one of the gurus of the emergent church movement, Brian McLaren, gives it a front cover "Enthusiastically recommended." You can figure it out if you really need to.

Notice how I said we read this book unfortunately. I should mention that this was a group of activist type folks who hang laundry, reuse plastic bags, take cloth bags to the grocery and try to buy local whenever possible. And I should also say we loved the appendices, which include a way to do a home energy audit, notes on home appliances to help you when shopping, and practical lists of things you can do today through the coming year. But we also had the reaction that one often has to converts. "This guy has taken a good idea and run over everyone with it." Worse than that, his excess seemed designed to make everyone else feel guilty. Theologically, I saw more than a little Pelagianism in his writing.

Here is a way too brief and overly simplified explanation: Pelagius was a fourth century theologian who believed that one could work ones way into God's redeeming love through a life of good deeds. Augustine, in one of his better moments, refuted that claim, saying that it is only by God's grace that anyone is saved; Pelagius was condemned as a heretic (Perhaps a bit of overreaction too).

Why did we feel this way? Perhaps it was his daughter chiding him for cooling down a glass of water with ice on a hot day. Or maybe it was the image of his teenage children (a boy and a girl) working wonderfully side by side in the garden on a summer day. There was the chapter in which he managed to turn the idea of sabbath time into a rule that seemed more rigid than the Pharisees could dream up; in fact, I thought of Pahrisees often while reading this book.

How about the lecture on how evil television is? Or the one chiding anyone who does not buy ethically responsible food that glossed over the extra cost of this --I do work with lots of public college students who don't have lots of money or cars-- and never said a word about how much fuel I would have to spend to go get this food. Buying local, after all, means two things: products grown locally and not burning lots of fuel to get them. We have to balance between the two.

I completely jumped ship when, for reasons that now escape me, he declared that he was not taking blood pressure medication on the argument that Winston Churchill had high blood pressure and lived to age 91 without benefit of such medication (that did not exist for him, of course). At that point, I realized that logic was not a part of this doctor's argument either. That's right; the author is a doctor. I would not seek medical advice from him either.

So, the net effect of this book was to turn off a sympathetic audience of people seeking ways to alter our own lives (further) to be more environmentally appropriate. We decided to make our Lenten discipline as a congregation to examine our building to find ways we could do a better job. Sure we will use some of his checklists, but I won't suggest others read the book. Excess guilt trips are not the best way to motivate people. We don't have to look at how many ways we can make people feel bad about themselves in order to build up God's kingdom.

When will the church finally figure this out?

Pirate Eucharist??????

2009-02-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

I know. It sounds like the stupidest thing you've ever heard. Sadly, it is not, but it certainly ranks on the list of wannabees. An entire Eucharist, Rite II, translated into pirate talk. God becomes the Admiral, Jesus the Cap'n, and death Davy Jone's Locker. It gets worse from there. Think about having to roll your tongue every time the word are (arrr) comes up, ye scurvy dogs!

If you must, here is the link to read the service: http://www.sjmp.com/pirategloria.pdf. Fortunately, no one has embarrassed us yet by putting it on YouTube. And, as far as I know, the only place it has actually been celebrated is Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento. I'm sure I am wrong about that, though.

Maybe I've missed something, but the last time I thought about pirates, it was those murderous thugs who have been off the coast of Africa. Nothing "yo ho ho" about that crowd. Johnny Depp will not be playing one of them in a movie any time soon.

I suppose someone thought that this would be a good idea for the kids. Well, it's not. They don't need to be pandered to with this amount of asininity. If you think the Eucharist isn't reaching them, try having a decent children's sermon and some hymns they like. Wave banners. Invite them to stand around you at the consecration. Treat them like you care about them (radical, I know). You can even simplify the language.

But this Pirate Eucharist does none of that. It distorts what is going on here into being a game. It teaches them nothing about who God is. Worse, it glorifies a life that none of us would wish our kids to have.

Mind you, I have nothing against play, and I probably played pirates as a child, so no, I don't think this will irreparably harm them. But right now, the word pirate is once again a part of current vocabulary, and it's not a good thing. And, anyway, what does this have to do with the Eucharist???!!!

And, for the record, I've done youth ministry for decades, and that has included many unorthodox ideas. I celebrated in the middle of a dance. I've celebrated on beaches, in the woods, all sorts of places. I changed language to fit the occasion, and I am sure that many things I have done would seem gimmicky to somebody. But they all had a particular purpose in a particular community. The purpose of this eludes me.

I am sure someone will tell me that I am simply being too hard. "Lighten up." Well, it's not going to happen. This is a bad idea that needs to go away. Soon. Please relegate it to the same hell as the clown Eucharist--but that's a rant for a different day.

Who do you love?

2009-02-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

I'm old enough that blogging does not come as naturally as talking on the phone and I am a private enough person that I don't bleed everything that is happening onto the net without thinking about it first. So I have been away for a bit taking care of family business.

What business, you ask? My 82 year old father had a stroke up in Columbia, Maryland. Fortunately his grandson and daughter-in-law live with him, and even more grace filled was their decision to get a dog. The dog likes to chew pens, so naturally everyone puts their pens where the dog cannot reach them. When the dog showed up with a pen from my father's desk, they knew to check on him. And so, 911 was called. Another reason to be a dog person (not that I needed any more!).

He's been in the hospital, then to rehab, then back to hospital for a pacemaker after his heart slowed, and now back to rehab again. Fortunately there is family in Maryland, but I still needed to go up and see how he was doing. His left side is struggling but he can lift his arm and leg and has begun walking short distances with a walker. Speech is rather slurred, but I saw him before any speech therapy had begun, so this should improve as well.

I realized that the whole time I was up there, I was thinking about my ministry in Greensboro. And then I started feeling guilty for thinking about my ministry rather than just focusing on events in Maryland. Mind you, most of my relatives up there were going to work each day. People say you are supposed to just let other things go by the wayside at times like these. But that was not happening.

Mind you, it is Monday morning and I am writing this while an auditor is going over the books. If anything is going to draw you back, it would be the notion of a pending audit.

But that was not all of it. I had one student who was sick, a couple of students who were seeking a way out of a feud but not succeeding, and another one who I wasn't sure had food. And so on. Not to mention the sermon I was expected to preach on Sunday.

And then it hit me. Why should I be forgetting about the rest of my life when a crisis occurs? More importantly, why do Christians suddenly act as if all that language about who your family is doesn't apply when the biological family needs something?

I love my dad. A lot. But I realized just how much I love the students and other folk that I am called to serve too. And some of them are going through some very serious events in their lives at the moment.

So here's the deal. When I am in Greensboro, I am going to worry about what is happening up in Maryland with my dad. But when I am in Maryland (and I will probably be back up there in a few weeks), I'm going to worry about the folks in Greensboro that I have given my heart to (and my time and my pledge of Christ's love). And I am not going to feel guilty about it. Love knows no bounds. Why should I act as if it does?

Fortunately, I bought a new laptop over Christmas break. And I could keep tabs on my students, even in the hospital, through the magic of Facebook. And, just as nice, they could know where I was and send wonderful prayers out for my father. Letting them know just by keeping my status up to date became an opportunity for them to minister to me. Being surrounded with others providing me ministry has always been a holy place to be. Thanks.

So don't let your family be narrowly defined. And certainly don't let others tell you where your love comes from or goes. It, like the Holy Spirit, goes where it wills and does what it may....

On Not Celebrating MLK Day

2009-01-13T07:53:00.000-08:00

Well, it is upon us again, our annual descendant of Hands Across America, National Brotherhood Week, and all the other predecessors where we pretend to love one another and promise to work for true equality and then go back to doing the same rotten things we were doing the day before. Our students get to hear (for the thousandth time) the "I have a Dream" speech, as if MLK never gave another one. People who will not see each other for another year will sit down to prayer breakfasts in which the prayers last five minutes, and the participants are encouraged to buy out tables, making it possible for them to only have to sit with people they invite.

Do I sound cynical? You bet. Martin would not have stood for most of this crap. In fact, he would not have shown up. He would have been outside protesting the self congratulatory nonsense of it all, in the face of the poverty and war that we continue to allow and support.

If you want to celebrate, write your senators and demand better funding for homeless and job training programs. Ask your minister why the church only reflects people from one socio-economic background. Clear out the closets and give the clothes and unused toiletries to the local shelter. Pay closer attention to where your products are being manufactured. Donate money to clear a land mine. Read the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and figure out why you aren't in jail right now. Plan to go protest at the School of the Americas. Support groups of Israelis and Palestinians who are actually looking (together) to find peaceful solutions. Go to Confession, not for all those petty personal sins, but for the corporate ones that continue to keep others in poverty and defeat, all those luxuries that provide your ease of life because of sweatshop labor or pollution to other people's lands.

Be the change you want. And, for God's sake, please stop talking about it.

Getting Out of the Marriage Act

2009-01-07T11:27:00.000-08:00

Yes, I took a break. I stopped going to Facebook for almost two weeks, read nobody's blog, and decided to live life during the Christmas break (And yes, as a campus minister, it really is mostly break time for me.). This month, the Diocese of North Carolina meets in Convention. Among the resolutions we will be discussing is one which says in essence that we clergy should get out of the business of performing weddings for the state.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking, and you're wrong. You assumed that the primary purpose of such a move would be a kind of protest over the fact that gays and lesbians cannot get married. I have heard of people who refuse to do weddings or even to get married until this double legal standard gets changed. And, frankly, this would be plenty of good reason to pass such a resolution - a protest in which we actually sacrifice something. How original!

But believe it or not, there are even better reasons for clergy to get out of the marrying business. The main one is that whenever we sign a marriage license or ask if there is anyone ..., we are acting not as members of the body of Christ but as subordinate agents of the state. Sorry folks, but I don't work for the state of North Carolina, and if I do, i want to be paid for it (LOL).

The state (and the Feds) have an interest in marriage. Tax laws, some of them quite unjust, are based on it, and it is one more way we keep tabs on our citizens. Now, someone out there is probably thinking that the Church keeps records too, so we are also keeping tabs on people. And maybe that is the point. Do we really want to be a part of two systems of tracking people's lives?

One of the sponsors of the bill tells the story of an older couple who were living together without benefit of marriage because to get married would wreck havo with their retirement benefits. Seems absurd doesn't it. Let's stop getting our hands dirty with the state's business.

I first heard this suggestion in seminary 25 years ago, and at that time, no one (in my circle at least) was even thinking gay marriage. One professor noted the fact that even the Soviet Union had managed to get this one right. A couple there would go to the courthouse, fill out some forms, have a brief ceremony and be on their way. If they wanted something from the church, that was done separately.

And that is what we should be doing to, just like much of Europe does. The church is in the business of blessing people and declaring things holy. Marriage is not an act that we have an exclusive claim to.

The benefit of this approach is that we can feel much freer to choose whether or not we bless the relationship. In theory we already are, but I wonder how many marriages we clergy really refuse to perform, given the state of the wedded couples I see out there. It also changes the gay marriage business from a question of theology (i.e., Is gay marriage even possible as a sacred act?) to one of justice and equality (i.e., Do we really think some couples should get benefits from the state that other couples cannot?)

If the Episcopal Church were to do this alone, we will lose lots of couples as potential new members. That is called sacrifice people. You do the right thing and sometimes it costs you. We might just see some other people join us however, and the debate will surely cross over into other denominations as they begin to consider why religious groups in the land of separation of church and state want to be needlessly in this subordinate position.

Straight No Chaser

2008-12-16T09:05:00.000-08:00

If you heard my sermon or visited my Facebook page, you know about my shameless promotion of a group called Straight No Chaser. This was an a cappella group at Indiana University in the 1990s. When they were coming up on a 10 year school reunion, one of the members discovered an old video of the group and put it on YouTube for the rest of them to see. Their version of the 12 Days of Christmas got 8 million hits last year. One of them was the president of Atlantic records. The now have a multi-record deal.

Now, you need to know that the 12 days of Christmas is a song that, around day eight, I start looking for an ice pick to put through my eardrum so I don't have to listen any more. It's is not as bad as grandma and the reindeer, mommy kissing Santa, or those damnable dogs barking, but it is pretty horrible. If you are like me, you'll appreciate this version, which even take s a stab at the fact that maybe not everyone out there being forced to listen to this stuff in the malls is a Christian!

Most of the guys in the group were holding down regular 9 to 5 type jobs, not even thinking of show business as a career. They are still not sure where this will take them. At least one person I know is getting their holiday CD as a gift. Take some time out ans laugh.

The End of the Year

2008-12-16T08:59:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know. For Christians, it is the beginning of the year. For campus ministers, it is the middle of the year. But let's face it. Weall know it is December. The media has already been fixated on their 10 best ___________s of the year and their person of the year stories. It's over

Admit it. Christmas hasn't even come and you are already thinking about what you will do differently next year. I've got an idea. Since next year has already started, why not get going on living in it? You don't have to wait until January to work on those resolutions--if you want to lost weight, for example, starting now is better than after packing on an additional five over the holidays!

The day you start your journey is the day it gets shorter.

My Thoughts on the Last Post

2008-12-08T11:39:00.001-08:00

As an African American, I've certainly heard the cries of White Americans that we need to get over it. I've usually suggested that I will when you will. Nice to hear one of y'all figured it out. I'm sure there are more of you.

However, as a Christian and more specifically an Episcopalian, I now have to ask some other questions along the same lines. Since 1979, the Episcopal Church has asserted that gays and lesbians are beloved of God and that sexual orientation should not be an impediment to the ministries and sacraments of the church. Yet when Gene Robinson got ordained a bishop, people decided (albeit five years later) to walk out. He had to wear a bullet proof vest for his consecration.

We ask our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to sit quietly and wait for change and let provinces across the seas who have no idea what the discussion in this country has been like threaten our standing in the communion. We learned from Lambeth last summer that much of the work we have done on human sexuality has not been passed on to some of these bishops.

So it is just as valid for us to ask, "When are we going to get over it?" When are we going to live into our General Convention declarations? When are we going to let or lesbian and gay sisters and brothers live into their baptisms? And when are we going to stop letting ourselves be bullied by the threat of being cut off?

Maybe we should call their bluff, or let them call ours. Hold our grounds and let them throw us out (or not). At least we could end this nonsense and get on with the work of the kingdom.

Getting Over It

2008-12-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

This showed up in the email today. Kind of turns the tables, doesn't it? The author is Andrew Manis, who is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering committee of Macon's Center for Racial understanding.

Here is a commentary responding to these phenomena which I have sent to Charles Richardson at the Macon Telegraph Newspaper. I hope he will see it into print:

When Are WE Going to Get Over It?

For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it?

Now I want to ask: "When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?

Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk." Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes.

Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying -that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can -once and for all- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?

How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?

How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to
assassinate them when they do?

How long before we starting "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that "red and yellow, black and white"
all are precious in God's sight?

Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still do n't believe I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here's my three-point plan:

First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit and in truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."

What Small Colleges Can Teach the Church

2008-12-02T07:56:00.000-08:00

A while back, I wrote a piece about what universities could teach the church. I attended two universities as an undergrad and have served as chaplain for three others. I also did graduate work and taught at one.

Now I find I am also chaplain to a small liberal arts college in addition to the large state university I work next to. I also went to a stand alone seminary, unattached to any larger school, which had a total of about 200 students. Here are just a few things I have noticed--and yes, this will sound a bit idealized. I know things are not actually this smooth.

Small colleges have departments that are sometimes only one person. A big department might have five people. The big exception might be the English department, particularly if the school has a required writing course. Otherwise, faculty tend to have to be generalists. While they may have an area of focus, they usually find themselves teaching well beyond their degrees.

What I have noticed is a heck of a lot more cooperation between fields at small schools. For one thing, they all work in just a few buildings and probably eat in the one school cafeteria. For another, it would be a lonely existence to stay within your department.

When a department is up for outside review, the whole school pays attention and lends support. When money gets tight (like now) everyone feels the pain. Talk about expansion is tempered with a desire to continue to serve the students well. Students and faculty know each other. Teaching is actually valued as part of the tenure process.

On the other hand, salaries suck, teachers have to teach more classes than at big schools, and they are still expected to do research. Lots of people get hired prior to finishing their dissertations, so they have to try to get that work done too. Libraries are small. Tuition rates are just as high as top ranked research universities.

Still the competitiveness seems to be much more muted. The trend towards specialization is confronted with the needs of the teaching load. And small school really know what they do well and target those potential students who will fit their particular niche, rather than trying to be all things for all people.

Now on that last one, I should mention just how much I dislike the church growth movements that suggest that we identify a particular group and aim our programming at them. For some reason, the group everyone targets is middle class suburbanites! A group of people who are all alike is not my idea of what church is about.

However, choosing particular ministries to concentrate our efforts on is not a bad idea. Most churches cannot do everything, and it is especially a mistake when smaller churches spread their efforts too thin. Better to do a good youth program (especially if it reaches beyond the congregation) than to do a mediocre job with youth and homelessness and mission trips and singles and....Well, you get the idea.

So what can small colleges teach the church collectively and Christians individually? Cooperate. Never see the world as only being your myopic interests. Do a few things well. Resist growing for growth's sake (growing because you are being successful at evangelism is a whole other issue.). Know what your mission is. Be okay with other churches doing some of the things you are not doing. Know one another. From time to time, take on tasks that will stretch you. Lend a hand when someone else's schedule gets full.

Next up: what colleges and universities can learn from churches.

The Not-So Anglican Covenant

2008-11-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

Here is a wonderful reprint from The Lead at Episcopal Cafe. A friend passed it on to me. You can read the whole article here: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/

For all you non-Episcopalians out there, the Anglican Covenant is supposed to be an agreement that the various world provinces of the Anglican Communion sign on to as a way of governing our common life. Some of us thought a common confession and worship were supposed to be our cohesion, but some others want the ability to punish, those who step out of bounds (which, in their minds, means the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. The reason: our attitudes towards gay people, blessings, and ordinations). Others see it as a way to punish provinces that cross bounds, such as the Nigerian churches accepting American churches as part of their dioceses. Many of us find the whole process repugnant and unAnglican. And now, apparently, the mother church cannot sign on anyway. Read on:

Church of England can't sign Anglican Covenant http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/church_of_england/church_of_england_cant_sign_an.html
Peter Owen of Thinking Anglicans calls our attention to what may be the most overlooked aspect of the current controversy in the Anlgican Communion, namely that Rowan Williams believes that the solution to our problems lies in the development of an Anglican covenant which the Church of England CANNOT LEGALLY SIGN. (excuse the capital letters, but really...)

Note this response from the Secretary General of the Church of England to a written question from a Synod member:

Mr Justin Brett (Oxford) to ask the Secretary General:

Q2. What research has been undertaken to establish the effect of the Church of England’s participation in an Anglican Communion Covenant upon the relationship between the Church of England and the Crown, given the Queen’s position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the consequent tension between her prerogative and the potential demands of a disciplinary process within the proposed Covenant?

Mr William Fittall to reply as Secretary General:

A. The Church of England response of 19 December 2007 to the initial draft Covenant noted on page 13 that ‘it would be unlawful for the General Synod to delegate its decision making powers to the primates, and that this therefore means that it could not sign up to a Covenant which purported to give the primates of the Communion the ability to give ‘direction’ about the course of action that the Church of England should take.’ The same would be true in relation to delegation to any other body of the Anglican Communion. Since as a matter of law the Church of England could not submit itself to any such external power of direction, any separate possible difficulties in relation to the Royal Prerogative could not in practice arise.

A pattern is beginning to emerge here. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada must cease blessing same-sex relationships, but the Church of England does not have to because it does so quietly. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada must relinquish their autonomy and sign on to a covenant that will almost certainly be used to marginalize them, but the Church of England doesn't have to because it is an established church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury continues to demand from the North American churches what he does not ask from his own people. And the peculiar thing is that nobody seems to find this objectionable.

The Result

2008-11-13T06:55:00.000-08:00

And guess what? They did not print my advice to the new president. Go figure.

More comments coming soon. It's been a busy week.

Letter to the President Elect

2008-11-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

I received this request in my email yesterday from a features reporter:

"I’m working on a story that will run Nov. 8 on how local faith leaders would minister to the next president, whoever he may be, should he choose your parish to worship for a Sunday or weekly before Inaugural Day. It could be a letter to the president or just a thought or advice on healing divisions. If you are interested, I’m looking for a written paragraph or two at the most, and will run them as written.

"I’m trying to collect these before the votes are tallied because I truly want this to be a story more about what the president inherits and how he/she might best with it."

As I wrote my response, I realized there were several ways to respond here. I could have outlined a strategy for regular meetings and helping him to think through the implications of his new position in spiritual terms. Unfortunately for him, I have been reading Jesus for President with my congregation (If you have not read it, you need to.), so I am not very inclined to think in terms of fixing the political system as much as I am thinking about how we are called to live within a different landscape, the Kingdom of God. Hence, I gave the following response, which was simply my challenge to try to live as much as a Christian as is humanly possible in that job. Hey, if you get just one chance to speak to the President, say what is on your mind!

"Mr. President: Congratulations. Please remember that Jesus, the author of the faith you confess, never held public office and rejected the temptation to rule. In order to do your job well, you will have to worry less about maintaining power or getting reelected and more about caring for the people of this nation and the rest of the world. Show all of us that that the true America recognizes that people are more important than empires, food is more important than bombs, and housing and medical care are more important than our reputation.

"Remember that Jesus rejected violence, even to save his own life; reject torture, reject revenge, and reject nation building, all of which seek to serve our own selfish ends. Remember that God gave the world to us with the instruction that we be its stewards; be a leader for a new way of relating to the land we have so severely abused. Remember that Jesus spent most of his time with the poor, the outcasts, the despised, the criminals. the workers, the foreigners in the land, and even the people of other faiths; befriend and welcome those who are considered the ‘others’ in our world. Finally, no Christian acts in isolation; find a way to maintain your life in a faith community."

So what would you have written?

What the Church Can Learn from the University

2008-10-29T06:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent a lot of time on university campuses. A lot of time and a bunch of campuses. The University of California, Riverside. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Johns Hopkins University. North Carolina Central University. Duke University. Shaw University. And now, I am in my third year as the Episcopal Chaplain at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Now before I go any further, I have to mention that Guilford College, which I also serve, is conspicuously absent from this list. So is Virginia Theological Seminary, from which I actually got a degree! Never fear all you Quakers and seminarians. Your time is coming. This column is specifically about universities, which you are not. That column is coming.

I’ve been a student, faculty, staff, and chaplain at these institutions, occasionally serving in more than one capacity, even at the same time. I know universities. Let me just say for all the church people one thing I know you want to hear: Universities are incredibly screwed up places to work. The faculty intrigue about tenure and promotion, the jockeying for control of a department, the utter lack of concern about meeting student needs, the bizarre and failed attempts to come up with a coherent and consistent alcohol policy, the borderline personalities, the extreme political correctness, the panic over publishing, the funding shortages coupled with wasteful spending, I’ve seen it all.

But now that I’ve castigated universities for their wackiness, I have to say that they get a lot of things right that we in the church cannot. Universities, for all their failures to protect the rights of minority groups, are so far ahead of us in the hiring process that it is a tragedy. For one thing, universities tend to be a lot more honest in stating who they want to hire and why. For example, a department that is all male will openly state it is looking strongly for women to apply for an open position because it believes a woman teaching in the department will be good for students, and will balance the type of research being done, and maybe even that the lack of female hires is an indication of a problem. When a gay person is hired, there is often as much attention paid to finding his or her partner a position as there would be for a heterosexual spouse.

In the Episcopal Church, we’ve made great strides in much of the country when it comes to the calling of women to lead churches. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are still areas of the country in which women cannot get ordained, much less called to lead churches. And it is still probably true that a black priest has a better chance of getting elected bishop than of being rector of even a medium sized predominantly white church. African Americans advance their careers by becoming diocesan staff or appointed deans of cathedrals. We clamor for Spanish speaking clergy but fund the positions we have for them at the absolute minimum. And for gay clergy: good luck. There are places that will take you, but….

People in universities will be happy to tell me about their poor track record on the road to equality. Don’t bother. The Promised Land may be a vague blur on the distant landscape for you, but we’re still back at home loading up the truck. For all the times your car breaks down, at least it is on the road. We’re still arguing over whether or not the trip is a good idea. You have some pretty good road maps. We’re trying to decide if the world is flat or round.

A second example: Universities have built it a system of evaluation and accreditation that involves outside visitors, a standardized evaluation plan, and a schedule that everyone knows years in advance. It is a great deal of work and everyone hates going through it. But every academic department goes through it.

Churches are individualized enclaves (even those that are part of a denomination). In some cases, clergy get moved at the whim of a denominational leader whose information may or may not be accurate. In other cases clergy outstay their welcome for years because no one knows how to challenge their authority. Evaluations are done sporadically at best, with criteria that are developed on the spot—and the congregation’s responsibilities for getting the ministry done are rarely acknowledged. It’s all the clergy’s fault if things do not go well.

I seem to vaguely recall that one time there was a connection between the church and the university. Oh, wait, now I remember. We started most of them. Given our current state of confusion, it is no surprise that the good universities have largely disassociated themselves from the churches. Maybe they noticed who was getting things done.

It would be great to get screaming angry letters from university folk about how wrong I am about this. Unfortunately, hardly anyone is reading me yet.

Oh, in case you were wondering, the next post will be "What the University Can Learn from the Church." But that is another day.

The Obligatory Election Post

2008-10-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

Trust me to set up all these grand ideas of what I will be blogging about and then ignore them with my second post.

Has anyone out there with a blog not written about the candidates? Is there anything else you need one of us to say?

Okay, I’ll answer both questions for you. NO and HELL NO.

Sorry. I just needed to get that out of my system. Now, let me say two things. First, there is not excuse for not voting this time people. Second, protest voting for one of the minor party candidates is a stupid waste of time. No one cares and your protest goes unnoticed. The truth is, the major party candidates are different from each other, and both of them are more likely to be able to get their agendas through Congress than Bob Barr, Ralph Nader or the other third party people out there. The next president’s primary job will be cleaning up the mess from the last eight years—you can forget just about anything else in their platform—so they better have the backing of at least some people in Washington.

If you need to feel good about yourself, don’t vote for the people who are going to lose. Stop going to Starbucks and give the money to your favorite charity. Dance naked in your living room (draw the curtains, please). Go work for Habitat. Volunteer at your church for one of those jobs no one wants. Quit drinking. Tell your pastor how you really felt about that awful sermon he or she preached last week. Start that diet or exercise program.

If you do any of these, you’ll feel better a lot longer than the half a second it takes to push that button. Protests only work if someone notices them. In this case, none of the minor parties have made enough of a case for why we should choose them, so it’s not going to matter.

Oh, and one last thing. No matter how many people want to say it, let me just go on record: Sarah Palin is not, I repeat, not a hottie. And if they were going to spend all that money on clothes, they should have done a better job.

Revolt Now

2008-10-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, everyone who knows me knows I have resisted a blog for the longest time. So the question begging for an answer is 'why now?'

Too bad I don't really have a good answer. Maybe I just gave in to the fashion. Or maybe I realized how many people I might meet -- I like meeting people.

I do know why I should not have a blog. 'Cause I hate deadlines. I already have one. Some people call it a sermon, but from my point of view, its a deadline. There is no option but that I have something to say at 11:00 on Sunday mornings. The idea of having a blog means that you write something. And even if there is no set deadline, we've all read blogs that we STOPPED reading because the blogger didn't post often enough to make it worthwhile.

Which leads to the second reason why not; I have the basic insecurity that maybe I don't have enough to say to sustain this. As above, we've also dropped blogs that had little to say or kept repeating the same tired themes. I refuse to be one of those.

Finally, I see no reason to have a blog simply to point out stuff out there that other people have written, no matter how witty, intelligent, thoughtful, ironic, dry, or creative it might be. If I want you to see it, I'll email you. If I am going to blog, it will be mostly my own stuff, or, at the very least, my comments about someone else's works.

So who am I? Well. I am many things in this world:

- Owned by a Siberian Husky named Andy
- Home Brewer (recently reaching into wine too!)
- Former fat kid and successful dieter
- Home owner
- Episcopal Priest and Campus Minister
- Single Guy
- Person who has actually visited Kazachstan
- Surrogate Parent to Several high school and college students over the years
- Person who does not easily align with the right or the left
- General Convention Delegate (the Episcopalians out there understand what that means)
- American of African, Native, German, and Irish descent (and still looking)
- Person who is fed up with the way Christianity allows itself to be sold in the culture
- Watcher of Dr. Who from the beginning (currently on the second doctor) - Wow, what kind of a geek does that make me!?
- Survivor of an aortic aneurysm

And, I will certainly add to that list. But the title of this blog is not "Dr. Who Watcher", but "A Revolting Christian." Since no one has ever called me that to my face, you can assume that I mostly mean rebelling, rather than disgusting, though I suppose to some people that's the same thing.

What am I revolting against? How about these for starters?
- People who talk to the media as if their understanding of Christianity is the only one out there
- Media people who are too stupid to know the truth about that or fail to point it out
- Liturgical Nazis (Q: What's the difference between a terrorist and a liturgist? A: You can negotiate with a terrorist)
- Christians who threaten to leave (or actually do) when they don't get their way
- Christian litmus tests for politicians
- Biblical literalism (I've never met a literalist who was consistent about it)
- Hymns sung too slowly
- Sacristy rats (you know who you are! Only clergy with weak egos want you around.)
- Complaints about overhead projecting in church (It can be done well.)
- Middle aged women (and one guy) in black leotards prancing around the altar with streamers and calling it liturgical dance
- The use of the words 'just' and 'really' in prayers ("We just really want to thank you Jesus....")
- Interfaith services that reduce God to a warm fuzzy
- Any services that reduce God to a warm fuzzy
- Ordination processes that take five or more years
- People who retire from the military and get a call to be ordained after they begin receiving a full pension
- Complaints about acolytes in sneakers, female clergy in open toed shoes, and ushers not wearing ties
- The notion that I cannot bless two people's relationship, but I can bless your battle cruiser
- The belief that Jesus turned water into grape juice

Okay, this could go on for awhile, so I had best quit while I'm not too far behind. What I am seeking here is ways to strip the church of its silliness and to present ourselves to the world as a transformative presence like Jesus did. To do that, we need to toss a few things away and start adding a few new ones. Like not fighting all the time. Or really accepting people the way they come to us. Like doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.

In other words, this blog will not be aboutcreating a list of the things I dislike (see above), but about suggesting alternatives, reviewing new ideas that others are trying, and posing questions about things we might want to reconsider.

And maybe I'll talk about a few things that have little or nothing to do with the Church (remember that home brewing item?)

I bet you can add a few areas to reconsider to my list. Hopefully, I've ticked off one or two of you out there. Or maybe no one will ever read this. Does anyone ever read the first post of a new blog?