Lady of Silences

Here I am, here's what I see

2011-11-03T14:25:00.001-04:00

"To be at the edge of your time, on the cusp of extinction, and still be working like that? This is a long way from 'I am waving. I am waving my hands. I am disappearing.' This is pressing your mind against the world and still saying, 'Here I am. Here's what I see...' "

From "The Difference a Hand Makes" NPR.

Will be back here soon, just saying what I see...........

K.

(photo courtesy of imagebase.davidniblack.com)

Worship as an Offering

2010-09-08T15:26:00.004-04:00

Presentation of Christ at the Temple by Hans Holbein the Elder, 1500-1501 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg)

Mary was a devout woman and so she was anxious to do all that the Law of the Lord required, not because she felt coerced or put-upon, and not because she was afraid of the consequences if she didn't, but because her entire life was one of saying "Yes" to God. Remember, that's how it all began, when the Angel Gabriel came to her, announcing that she would give birth to God's Son. She said, "Yes -- let it be according to your word."

One of the great truths about human life and our relationship with God is that we have been given the freedom to choose -- we choose whether or not we will be a part of the life which God offers, and we choose whether or not to seek God's will. And God waits for our free participation. Mary said, "yes," and in that response she was blessed. That's why she has always been seen by the Church as the first example of what it means to live the Christian life. It means living in joyous response to the will of God. Because Mary said "Yes," the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, and the miracle of the Incarnation took place. By the power of God she conceived in her womb, and the perfect union of humanity and divinity was accomplished. That's why Mary is among the blessed and that's why Christians down through the ages have always shown great love and devotion to her.

This feast also reminds us of something that is essential to the whole idea of worship, and that is that worship is something that we offer, something that we give to God. In the Temple scene where Mary and Joseph stand by the priest, holding their baby and offering their sacrifice, there is something very simple and natural -- something wonderfully objective. They did not perform this act because they thought it would make them feel good inside. I suspect that they would have been shocked if anyone had asked if they got anything out of it. They may well have been moved by a beautiful act of worship, but that's not why they did it. They were simply fulfilling their obligation -- participating in the religious observance of their faith, something that completely transcended their own feeling or convenience.

Worship is both an offering and an experience: it is something we offer to God and it is also intended to put us in touch with and give us an experience of the 'holy.' But we need to avoid the temptation of becoming so totally focused on our experience that we lose sight of worship as offering. Far too many people have developed a twisted idea that worship is a kind of church program whose primary focus is on the worshippers, and making them feel good. If the reason we come to church is to give ourselves some positive strokes, then what we're engaged in isn't the worship of God but the worship of self -- and that, it seems to me, is the supreme blasphemy.

Worship is giving glory to God, offering our praise and thanksgiving, and acknowledging our dependence on God for everything that we are and ever will be. It's a time to be reminded of what it means to be God's people, and to join with our sisters and brothers in Christ in receiving the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation. That's what we're to get from it -- the sacramental assurance that we belong to God and that nothing in this world has the power to change that fact. There are times when it is not particularly fun or exciting, there are times when we don't particularly feel like it, but we do it anyway because that's part of what it means to be God's People. In fact, I would argue that it's precisely when we don't feel like it that we need it all the more. We need to reject the temptation to be consumed by our own feelings, and instead place ourselves before the one who knows us, inside and out, because God is the one who can bring us wholeness and strength.

So we give thanks on this feast day for our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our light and our salvation. We give thanks for the example of Blessed Mary and her loving and willing obedience to God's will. And we offer our worship in the way in which God delights -- gathering around the altar with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven to lift our hearts and voices in praise and thanksgiving.

Excerpt from a sermon given for the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, February 2, 1997, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Dekalb, Illinois by Fr. James M. Jensen.

Stopping the World

2010-07-18T09:22:00.005-04:00

Last week I stumbled upon a video featuring a talk by Fr. Terry Martin on evangelism (follow link here to video at EDOW site). I listened attentively, hearing much I had heard or read before, including the Stopping the World stories, the ones that had first drawn me to Jake's place, which I later came back to from time to time. My blog began when these stories meshed together in my heart and mind with those of my husband and his family, and the Good Shepherd story he used in a sermon given not long after his mother's funeral. Both struck me as Wounded Healers, in the best sense, and I began to understand Jim in different, deeper way, finally knowing how the man and priest were one and the same.

But last Saturday, during a dark time, was the first I heard these stories told with Terry's face and voice. I listened and the tears started streaming down my face. I heard "in all things God works for good" and "God redeems the most terrible of situations," and all I could think was, "yes, sometimes, maybe for you, but no, sadly no, not for me." It was not a lack of faith or conviction of hope in a global sense, but rather an overwhelming feeling that redemption was over for me, that all that I had been through in life, good and bad, all I had struggled for, had come to nought, and had ended in a flood of despair and heartache that was choking all life from me, so that for me there simply was no hope of redemption - not ever.

This week has been full of turmoil of all kinds. Yet I awoke this morning with an odd realization: John, my first husband, was diagnosed with a Type 4 glioblastoma, had brain surgery to remove a golf-ball sized malignant tumor, was told he had less than six months to live, miraculously recovered, went into remission, and lived another fourteen years. During that time, we resolved our marital differences by separating and divorcing, and I was able to learn to love him again, recall what was best in him, and be there to support him in ways I never could have done had we stayed together.

Jim died suddenly and brutally, each step of the way during his last moments going horrifically wrong, a kind of nightmare scenario from all the medical shows we watched on t.v., which somehow ended up being eerily quiet and heartbreakingly real. In the time since, I have grieved and will continue to grieve much. But I have also come to love him more and to better know the best in him, each and every day, and he has been here to support me in some ways he never could have had we stayed together longer here on earth.

So, maybe instead of cruel irony, despite the deep despair and loss, maybe there is redemption after all. I do not believe that God engineered these events, made them part of his grand design, for the sake of my benefit, instruction, or suffering. Yet I am beginning to see that God has been redeeming this most terrible situation, for me and others. It just takes time, patience, and a willingness to listen for it.

[Note: The link to Fr. Terry's video from his website no longer works for some reason. You can still see his video talk if you go here: http://www.diobeth.org/Ministries/Evangelism/evangelism.html and scroll down to Video-Based Small Group Courses and look for the videos from the Diocese of Washington. Then if you click on the WindowsMedia link next to Terry's name, you can see it from there.]

The Cup of Sorrow

2010-07-11T03:06:00.000-04:00

"Now I look at the man of sorrows. He hangs on a cross with outstretched arms. It is Jesus, condemned by Pontius Pilate, crucified by Roman soldiers, and ridiculed by Jews and Gentiles alike. But it is also us, the whole human race, people of all times and all places, uprooted from the earth as a spectacle of agony for the entire universe to watch. "When I am lifted up from the earth," Jesus said. "I shall draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). Jesus, the man of sorrows, and we, the people of sorry, hang there between heaven and earth, crying out "God our God, why have you forsaken us?"

"Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" Jesus asked his friends. They answered yes, but had no idea what he was talking about. Jesus' cup is the cup of sorrow, not just his own sorrow but the sorrow of the whole human race. It is a cup full of physical, mental, and spiritual anguish. It is the cup of starvation, torture, loneliness, rejection, abandonment, and immense anguish. It is the cup full of bitterness. Who wants to drink it? It is the cup that Isiah calls "the cup of God's wrath. The chalice, the stupefying cup, ou have drained to the dregs," (Isaiah 51:17) and what the second angel in the Book of Revelation calls the "the wine of retribution" (Revelation 14:8), which Babylon gave the whole world to drink.

. . . . .

In the midst of sorrows is consolation, in the midst of darkness is light, in the midst of Babylon is a glimpse of Jerusalem, and in the midst of the army of demons is the consoling angel. The cup of sorrow, inconceivable as it seems, is also the cup of joy. Only when we discover this in our own life can we consider drinking it."

Henri J.M. Nouwen, Can You Drink the Cup?

The Thirteenth Station

The body of Jesus is placed in the arms of his mother

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.

Because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

All you who pass by, behold and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. My eyes are spent with weeping; my soul is in tumult; my hear is poured out in grief because of the downfall of my people. “Do not call me Naomi (which means Pleasant), call me Mara (which means Bitter); for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.”

Her tears run down her cheeks:
And she has none to comfort her.

Let us pray.

Silence is kept

Lord Jesus, you consoled Mary and Martha in their distress, you wept at the grave of Lazarus your friend, dry the tears of those who weep and comfort us in our sorrow that we may go forth strengthened in your love. Amen.

Holy God,
Holy and Strong,
Holy and Immortal,

Have mercy on us

Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England
The Archbishops’ Council 2000
Stations of the Cross.doc.5 — 26 March 2004

Is there such a thing as a "healthy" congregation?

2010-07-10T20:25:00.006-04:00

Is there such a thing as a healthy congregation? The short answer, I think, is no. There may be moments in time when a snapshot might capture group traits and behaviors suggestive of a strong, relatively stable system for nurturing spiritual growth and ministry. But there can no more be healthy congregations than there can be perfect marriages.

So what? Isn't the point to try, to work on developing and maintaining group dynamics that approach the ideal? And after all, isn't one of the cardinal points in a systems theory such as Peter Steinke's that "wholeness is not attainable"? What's wrong with using systems theory and other psychological and sociological models to help people get along better and learn to work better together?

Nothing really, at least not when sensitive, thoughtful people use them in situations that cry out for help. If systems theory or anything else can get people to step back from conflicts that are strangling a community and learn better ways to manage differences in the future, so much the better.

The same is true for many tools widely available and touted as essential parts of a Human Resources tool kit (or, if you will, medicine bag) for congregations, clergy, and dioceses -- survey forms, focus group studies, long-range planning programs, etc. Used sparingly, appropriately, by those who are not only trained in how to use them but also gifted in their ability to relate to people, to listen, understand, and assist, rather than diagnose, direct, or control, these may be helpful. The problem, however, is when everyone is using them, all of the time, regardless of whether the congregation is suffering from a condition or situation that the tools might help remedy or whether they are being applied by those who know how to use them effectively.

It is like taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications or even going to counseling to try to achieve the perfect balance in mood, mind, attention or energy. While it is good to seek help when we need it and learn what we can and should change about ourselves and our circumstances, it also is important to recognize the limitations of medicine, technology, and self-help in general, to make sure that we do not blind ourselves, with a flurry of self-improvement activities, to the pain and suffering of others, the stark reality of our flawed natures, and the urgent need to be in right relation with God before we can even begin to hope of peace and the joy of knowing God's saving grace.

To put it more simply, when we put so much of our time and energy in employing assessment tools and trying to implement social engineering, we run the great risk of our methods becoming the message. I think that is really the point of Ed's sermon (see below). Do we want to be seen and known as those who construct and maintain "healthy congregations" or those who go forth into the world living the Good News, imitating Christ rather than checking off items on a congregational assessment checklist?

Of course the proponents of these methods will argue that they are, in fact, serving the greater goal by helping us live in communities that will better nurture our spiritual growth and provide encouragement and support for serving others. I understand that is the goal, indeed the hope, of their efforts, and I mean no disrespect for those who have thought deeply, listened carefully, and worked diligently and faithfully towards that goal.

Yet I still must ask the questions. I have seen time and time again groups of laypeople and clergy who have attended countless hours of meetings, seminars, and workshops, who have heard truly inspirational speakers, read books and articles about what the church should be doing and how it might best weather the storm of sweeping changes in our culture, economy, social groups and interactions. We listen, become more hopeful, and sometimes we feel we have learned a lot. Other times we share these ideas with those in our parish and brainstorm as to how we might implement them. Yet, truthfully, what becomes of most of it? Even when we think we see some small positive results, have we really gained much other than the pleasure of a few moments of wistful hope that things are not as bad as they seem to be?

As far as professional assessment tools are concerned, their benefits in terms of efficiency may be outweighed by the mixed messages they send. No matter how expertly constructed, their structure and content imply certain expectations and ideas about what makes a healthy congregation. Even the best designed and administered surveys have a slant, suggesting which characteristics are negative and which are positive. For example, satisfaction with things they way they are or doing them the same way is seen as negative, while greater willingness to change and experiment with new ways is seen as positive. Likewise, ranking the extent to which congregational life sparks "energy" and "enthusiasm" implies that the failure to produce that kind of response indicates either that the congregation is not spiritually alive or that it is not lively enough to attract outsiders.

More tellingly, significant parts of these surveys assess levels of satisfaction with certain aspects of congregational life. While it may be useful to find out what people are really unhappy about, discovering it with this kind of exercise gives the message that the congregation is comprised of customers to be satisfied, and that by scientifically cataloguing their likes and dislikes, they will have a better chance of being matched with the pastor of their dreams (shades of E-Harmony).

It is debatable whether professional surveys, consultants, and the data and reports they produce give enough benefit for the dollar over the old ways of open-ended survey questions distributed by mail or in church, lay people puzzling over what they receive in return, and group meetings and flip chart data. They certainly have the advantage of having others do the hard work of collecting and digesting information and presenting it in a format that is attractive and easy-to-read for both the congregation and, in the context of a search process, candidates for clergy positions. But the point here is not which survey methods are best or even how often or how they should be done, but rather to suggest that these assessment rituals have become increasingly important for not only the ways in which the data is used to direct and shape congregational life, but also the way it makes us think that the "health" of our congregations is a matter of vital and ongoing concern, which can be measured according to scientifically informed criteria and measurement tools.

The larger implication is that there are, in fact, objective ways to identify and "treat" unhealthy conditions, and that we must be ever diligent in seeking out congregational "disease" and doing all we can to rid ourselves of it. This adds a whole new layer of meaning to the need for any organization to listen to its members, face problems, and deal with them before they get out of hand. Instead of taking us away from the notion that our clergy are merely hospice workers caring for an old and dying institution, it merely reinforces that idea. It also supports the view that unless we do something quickly and effectively, in terms of dramatic life-saving efforts, with the best tools that science can provide, mainline Christianity will die out entirely. Finally, it suggests that what the church is most concerned about maintaining is the congregation as a functional social unit rather than nurturing the faith of the people who are its members, wherever they may go.

I'd like to suggest a metaphor that may be more realistic and helpful than the medical one -- a forest, rather than a corporate body plagued with disease or mental or emotional dysfunction. For a long time forests have been viewed either as a natural feature of the landscape or as something to be managed for a particular human use, such as hunting grounds, parks, or a crop that produces timber for fuel, building, or commerce. However, it was only in the 19th and 20th centuries that people began to think seriously about applying scientific knowledge and management techniques to preserve and protect large areas of forested land from rapacious harvesting and expanding areas of human habitation and agriculture, and to maintain others to provide a controlled but steady supply of timber and other wood products for human use.

Managing forests and forestland, however, turned out to be more difficult than some first imagined. It required more than just limiting the destructive effects of human activities. Fire, disease, variable weather conditions, soil composition, and other factors could impact forest growth and health, and human interventions sometimes worsened rather than improved the situation. As the science of ecology developed, forests began to be viewed as part of larger ecosystems and life cycles. Even the timber industry began to replace clear cutting with more sophisticated planning, selective cutting, and planting that promoted diversity and better conditions for the soil and the other flora and fauna that inhabited the forest's ecosystem.

A critical turning point came with the understanding that the so-called "climax" forest -- the stage with maximum maturity-- was only one stage in a larger cycle of growth and death, one which might produce variable results depending changing conditions, and one which, in any event, was not static. So while one might find a mature stand of trees and want to preserve it, for aesthetic or commercial reasons, as is, it was only one stage that could not be extended indefinitely. Without fire, decay or wind damage, the forest canopy would become so thick that it would stifle or prevent all undergrowth, including young trees needed to someday replace the mature ones when they die. Therefore, using human means to protect the mature trees from decay, disease, and fire might, in the end, do more harm than allowing them to die naturally to allow new plant and tree growth on the forest floor. So while the results might seem better than clear-cutting or other thoughtless means of seeking short-term human ends, even well-intentioned human meddling can sometimes cause great harm as well.

I like to think of congregations in much the same way, although the life cycles are less regular and predictable. It is, I think, impossible to create and sustain indefinitely what many would consider a mature, spiritually "healthy" congregation. Yes, a good measure of intention is needed to make a religious community spiritually alive, hospitable, nurturing, growing, and relatively conflict-free (or whatever characteristics make one "healthy" and "mature"). But I think if people were really honest, there's a good deal of luck involved, as well. How often do any of us experience -- if we ever do -- a time in a congregation where most of these supposedly necessary elements fall into place? Once in a lifetime, I'd say, and then for maybe at most two to five years.

The reality that many have to face is that the stars are not always going to be aligned to produce the results we want, no matter how hard we try, no matter how diligently we study, tinker, and maneuver to try to create them. More important in today's world is that the ecosystem, if you will, has changed dramatically. With greater geographic mobility and displacement from family members, weaker ethnic and social ties to religious institutions (with the exception of some minority and new immigrant groups), less support and involvement from the moneyed upper classes, and overall less social pressure to be affiliated with and participate in a particular religious community (with some regional variations), we are bound to have fewer numbers, more frequent losses, less stability and continuity overall in terms of the identity of the members, their ages, family and social connections, and the extent to which they can provide steady financial support. With an ever-changing group of people, less financial resources, more reasons not to attend and less pressure to stay, if conflict arises or simply if something changes that is not to one's liking, little or no denominational loyalty, it's no wonder that congregational life is ever more fragile and precarious, without there necessarily being something seriously wrong or defective about the people involved, their goals, or their individual spiritual health.

In fact, it could be argued that the more passionate and serious people are about religion, the greater the possibilities of conflict and instability than back in the days when church was just "a Sunday habit or a social club." Filling the pews with fairly happy, comfortable people who enjoyed the social life perhaps more than hearing a challenging sermon or having a stimulating leader or group for Bible study, may have once acted as a kind of buffer -- or perhaps simply played the role of a steady Martha who minded the teas, took care of the kitchen, baked and gathered old clothing for the poor, as compared to the sometimes unsettling behavior of the seeking Mary. At the same time, the law of averages might have meant that the larger numbers and the social pressure that kept the successful business people and others with better skills at management and social relations coming to church regularly meant that it was easier to get a ready supply of people who might excel at the more practical aspects of church governance.

This, admittedly, is idle speculation. The demographic trends, however suggest that the decline in numbers and influence among the mainline churches is not so much because of any declining religiosity in the general population but rather because of dramatic changes in the social environment that have largely removed the non-religious reasons for joining and attending church regularly. It may be that the "spiritual but not religious" types were always around in larger numbers than we might imagine, but they once had compelling reasons to warm the pews on a regular basis, as well as a more positive view of religious institutions and religious people.

The mainline churches may still harbor hopes of reversing those trends or, at very least, preventing any further losses. But at some point they are going to have to choose. One option is to keep pursuing efforts at marketing, trying to find and ride the waves of consumer demand and satisfaction, against decades of evidence that what sells is the certainty of fundamentalism combined with the enthusiasm and zeal of evangelical fervor and the money and facilities that go with greater numbers and passion. The other option is to stay the course, tighten our belts, and work with what we have, and focus on nurturing strong, intentional faith communities, whether we lose numbers and buildings and, in some places, meet in small groups and at odd locations.

I think what we have now, at least in the Episcopal Church, is a schizophrenic course that tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, we talk a lot about innovation, new ways of doing things, and now and then check our consumer satisfaction thermometers. On the other hand, we say we want to improve the quality of the communities we have, make them deeper and richer. But what we do is try to measure how far they fall short of the climax forest ideal, with its towering hardwoods and lush undergrowth and sun-drenched floors -- a warm and welcoming place with wise, benevolent preachers and teachers, little or no conflict, and the absence of troubled, contentious people, doubters, and depressives. And instead of patiently waiting for congregations to grow deeper roots and stronger limbs, with the time-tested means of worship, prayer, and mutual love and support, we tell them that what they need most is more energy, more flexibility, different arrangements of furniture, and more lively and contemporary music. So we want our congregations to be spiritually and socially "healthy" and "mature," and, at the same we distract them with assessment tools, fast-talking consultants, systems theory, and innovative liturgies, and constantly remind them that they are not drawing in greater numbers or enough young people.

I think it is time to step back and do less in the way of measuring and engineering and just let the trees grow. We cannot keep obsessing about the right soil conditions, acidity, temperature, and the like and frantically applying more and more fertilizer and pesticides. If we keep doing this, we will have no trees at all, let alone the occasional climax forest when the trees reach their full maturity, before they decay and fall or are taken down by wind or fire.

One of the most memorable moments I ever had in an adult Christian education class was a film series on the Epistles of St. Paul. The narrator traveled to the places where the cities once stood that held the congregations to which Paul wrote. With a deserted hillside behind him, the narrator explained that not only were the Roman cities gone from those locations, but Christianity was gone as well, and Islam had taken its place.

There was something remarkably calm and matter-of-fact about what he said. It was not some great tragedy or a waste of time and effort on Paul's part. Times change and the faith takes root wherever it can, for awhile, at least, and then starts over. All we can do is keep planting the trees and tend them with care and love. God alone will decide when we are done.

Jesus as a Congregational Development Specialist?

2010-07-09T21:58:00.001-04:00

Listen to Fr. Ed Hunt's sermon of June 27, 2010 here (or from here)

THE GOSPEL Luke 9:51-62

The Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Luke

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Congregational Vitality By The Numbers

2010-07-08T06:29:00.037-04:00

Elizabeth Kaeton and Lisa Fox have begun an important conversation about assessing "congregational vitality" by the numbers. Elizabeth quotes a recent article in Progressive Christian by Rev. Dan R. Dick, a Methodist minister, "Measuring Faith: Metrics are no way to assess spiritual vitality." He writes:

Mainline denominations are in a panic. They're losing members and resources, and they're responding to the crisis with the best models that business schools can buy. The trouble is, the church of Jesus Christ isn't a business, and to run it like a business may be one of major reasons that Protestant churches are in trouble numerically, and have so little moral influence on society today.

This is, I am afraid, nothing short of heresy -- that all the efforts to make over, rebrand, cut costs, and tightly manage the Good Ship Mainline may have caused it to sink even faster than anything Post-Modern Western culture has ever done to it.

Part of the problem with the business model is that it relies on quantifiable goals and assessment tools. As Elizabeth observes, one point the article makes is "that we confuse 'indicators of vitality' with 'activity' and they are not the same." In the Methodist Church, like many others, the first "indicator of vitality" is "Average worship attendance as a percentage of membership" -- or, as Lisa translates:

… the number of people who plop their butts in the pew on any given Sunday and how much they drop into the offering plate. That is to say, we worship at the Golden Calf known as ASA [average Sunday attendance] and finance.

As Rev. Dick knows, however, ASA

...will not tell you anything more than how many people attend worship. True measures of spiritual growth and development must measure how a person is progressing in his or her relationship with God and Jesus Christ. This requires a set of standards, of which, worship attendance should certainly be one. But this should also include some measurement of prayer, study of scripture, service to others, relationship to the covenant community, etc.

The obsession with growth and numbers reflects much more than the latest wave of anxiety over the Great Decline (in churches X, Y, and Z; in mainline Protestantism; in Western Christianity -- take your pick). It goes back nearly fifty years to the Church Growth movement, which spawned many of the consultants who have been advising, training, and leading clergy and church officials for decades. Their quasi-business-sociological model of church, (modeling both what church is supposed be and how it should be "done"), has gripped our imaginations and absorbed our attention for so long that few question anymore its underlying premises, let alone its hopes of success in reviving Christianity in the Post-Modern West.

In recounting the history of these developments, Professor David A. Roozen suggests that the measure-by-the-numbers (i.e. Church Growth) proponents have now prevailed to the point that "mainliners" have largely capitulated to adopting their methods, if not all of their goals:

One of the more helpful consequences of all the attention given in the late 1970s to the original research and commentary on the oldline membership declines was a questioning of whether or not membership trends were an appropriate gauge of the/a church's faithfulness. Although the debates were often clouded in obtuse abstractions and subtlety overlaid with the typical, academic deconstructive strategy of caricaturing one's opponent, two issues dominated. One was whether evangelism (pro-membership growth) or social justice (highlighting the costliness of discipleship) was the primary purpose of the church. A second was whether or not God would provide the blessing of growth to faithful congregations. The pro-growth position within the latter was that while membership growth per se was not the primary purpose of the church, God surely intended for faithful congregations to grow. Two generations (and two generations of continual membership declines) later the debates continue with two major differences. One is that they seem less intense and less direct, perhaps because after forty years of losses few mainliners are against recruitment and/or development efforts that can be, correctly or incorrectly, passed off as evangelism, and social justice has lost its edge as denominational identities have become more diffuse and contested. Perhaps more importantly, the last decade or so has witnessed an increasing emphasis on multi-dimensional notions of congregational vitality, with an especially strong surge of interest and prominence being given to "spiritual vitality."

Hopefully other[s] ... will vigorously and dialogically explore the variety of possible normative definitions of vitality, including my own personal preference for the affinity between multi-dimensional approaches and post-modernity. The latter notwithstanding, the major thrust of my analysis will focus on membership growth for three reasons. Most importantly and comforting, all empirical studies including multi-dimensional measures of congregational vitality of which I am aware show that membership growth is significantly related to other possible indicators of vitality. That is, congregations that show high levels of mission outreach, spiritual vitality, financial health, lay involvement, etc also tend to be growing. More pragmatically, membership growth is the most concrete and statically robust measure of vitality available in the largest national sample survey of congregations (over seven times larger than the next largest) available for multivariate analysis. Finally, there is a much more substantial body of social scientifically informed literature on membership growth than for any other of the currently debated measures of congregational vitality.

Choosing a measure of congregational vitality is a debatable enough decision in itself, but it begs an equally vexing and even more foundational question. When dealing with theological, spiritual or religious matters, why bother with measurement and human statistics at all? It is a question that has haunted religious research since its outset: and as Smilie has reminded church growth researchers, Barth presented as far back as 1948 a particularly clear and passionate argument against confusing membership trends with questions of faithfulness. It is beyond this paper to argue the case for the value, much less necessity, of using human agency in general, much less a social scientifically informed rationality in particular, as a vehicle for God's purposes. Therefore let it suffice to note but two major dimensions of such an argument. One would build on the simple fact that the dismissal of human agency occupies an extremely minimal space in both the long history and contemporary currency of Protestant theology, especially that of liberal Protestant theology. A second, more defensively deconstructionist tact, and one more specifically in regard to the statistical measurement of changes in growth, would use Smilie's rejoinder to Barth as a point of departure: "Some observers, unable to relieve themselves of 'all quantitative thinking,' might observe that Barthians in Europe have succeeded in lowering membership and participation without necessarily lifting the quality of life of the body of Christ."

David A. Roozen, Oldline Protestantism: Pockets of Vitality Within a Continuing Stream of Decline.

While Roozen acknowledges that other "normative definitions of vitality" are worth exploring, saying in effect that numbers are not everything, nevertheless he maintains that they are the best indicator of "vitality," in part because there is the most data and research on them. No doubt most people involved in mainline churches would agree, both for the pragmatic reasons he cites and the fact that such measures have long been fundamental to the way clergy, congregations, and hierarchies operate. On a local, regional, and national level, ASA drives just about everything and is the one measure that has been slavishly (if not always accurately) recorded for generations in virtually every congregation. It has also driven successful non-denominational movements, such as Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Church.

One can hardly dispute that ASA is a rough and telling measure of the prospects for survival, as there is an inevitable correlation between the numbers in the pews and the money in the plate available to pay staff and maintain buildings, not to mention support various ministries and outreach. As ASA figures continue to decline across the board, they are no longer merely the canaries in the coal mines but rather a rough and ready indicator of when doors will close, properties will become vacant, and local financial resources will be lost for supporting higher levels of church administration and ministries.

Consequently, it is practically impossible to do anything but keep an anxious eye on ASA and to employ all the resources available to mitigate potential losses. It also is tempting to seek radical life-saving measures, even if they risk further alienation and loss, because they promise to abandon all the ways of doing and being church that apparently have done little or nothing to reverse the demographic and cultural trends that have taken away the power, influence, and presence the mainline churches formerly enjoyed. While once there was some patience and willingness to listen to those who warn of the danger of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, many now believe that it is far better to act quickly and decisively on the best that "social scientifically informed rationality" can offer.

So far it seems that the best such rationality has to offer is a data-driven sociological model that is often blind to local circumstances and the spiritual, psychological, and emotional health of the people involved. Lisa Fox presents a compelling case for allowing laity considerable freedom to explore and evaluate their own needs, without undue influence from the so-called experts, and to instead be guided by non-anxious clergy and lay leaders, with love and patience and confidence that they can find their own way with their own rationality and more than a little help from prayer, reflection, and the occasional gusts of the Holy Spirit.

For all the talk of the "Listening Process" with regard to issues of human sexuality and theology that divide Anglicans worldwide, true listening is something that is often neglected on the local and diocesan levels. Like their counterparts on the national and international scene, parish and diocesan leaders are sometimes dead set in their own convictions of what must change and who must effect those changes -- come hell or high water -- and anything but change is simply unthinkable. Even, or perhaps especially, in times of transition, when vast amounts of time and money are spent in employing consultants to conduct surveys, focus group meetings, and planning sessions, the Listening Process is nothing more than a masque, artfully designed and acted to call forth private agendas (however informed by social science and expert advice), with the results often well known ahead of time.

The problem, however, is not so much the process as determining whose needs and concerns are going to be heard. Church officials inflamed with the desire to evangelize (albeit in its narrowest and crudest sense) often want to focus only on those who are absent -- youth ages 15-35 and those who have grown up with little knowledge of or experience in living as part of a religious community. Consideration of the needs of those outside the established church no doubt is necessary to countermand insular and parochial thinking among those lost in delusions of what the church once was and always should be. On the other hand, ignoring the needs of those already active and desirous of spiritual growth, and focusing almost exclusively on those who may never cross the threshold, can seriously undermine the health and confidence of the existing community and make it even less attractive to outsiders.

Too often the anxiety-driven agenda of the so-called experts -- and all those with a stake in it, employed by the church, research institutes, and consultants -- engages in overkill when it confronts the local church culture. In order to make sweeping changes based on what the research says is required for numerical growth, the ideas and experience of those already present are often ignored or dismissed out of hand. The prevailing assumption is that most congregations or parishes are in some kind of diseased state that must be restored to health and vitality (why else would their numbers be static or declining?). So any excuse for doctoring is welcomed and, despite lean times, often well funded. ["The task of church leadership is to discover and remove growth-restricting diseases and barriers so that natural, normal growth can occur.” - Rick Warren.]

The disease model really takes over full force whenever a church loses its pastor, when the very first thing the congregation is supposed to do is create as much distance as possible from not only the person who is gone, but just about everything and everyone associated with his or her ministry. This is supposed to be a "healing" period because loss of any kind is presumptively traumatic and life-threatening. The subsequent period of "self-study" is one in which the focus is on what was lacking or misdirected before and hardly ever on what was valued and working well for the community. Suddenly, everything is up for grabs, with only lip service given to the past (often in the form of a reimagined history, which conveniently foreshadows the new goals of the appointed change agents). Thus, rather than attempting a smooth transition and proceeding as if one staff person were to be replaced with another, the congregation is intentionally led through a period of great upheaval, during which it is supposed to wholly divest itself of its immediate past and welcome the opportunity to take off in a totally different direction -- in other words, "healing" by amputation. [See the process described in CDO - Interim Ministries - Book 1 and The Fundamentals of Interim Ministry, which prescribes constant change as the hallmark of transition periods: "There is a time when innovations become routine, then they become the new orthodoxy and then they become a barrier to the future. In many cases, the questions remain the same but the answers are different because circumstances are different. The art in the successful management of transitions is to develop a system that works when change is the only constant."]

I am acutely aware that some may question my objectivity on at least this aspect of the process (knowing that my current parish is undergoing transition as a result of the untimely death last year of its rector, my husband). However, this has been a passionate concern of mine for a long time (in fact, long before I even met my husband). I have seen this kind of forced upheaval happen time and time again, first and foremost when I was a member of a congregation and its Search Committee in another denomination (Lutheran), which, even in the 1990's, was guided by the same Church Growth principles that continue to direct the attention and operations of most mainline churches today, including the Episcopal Church.

There we lost our pastor of sixteen years, when he left to take care of his wife stricken with cancer. And the first thing we did was sit through an excrutiating public "exit interview" with him and the bishop's assistant, who explained all that our pastor had failed to accomplish during his ministry that we would have to undertake in the future. Then we went through the usual self-study. Although we found enough positives to present to the candidates, it was clear from all our resources and advisors that we were supposed to reinvent ourselves and somehow do much "better" - never mind our healthy ASA, continued influx of new members even during the interim, the use of our building by numerous community groups, including AA and Al-Anon, the Boy Scouts, and a non-church community organization serving young moms and their children - not to mention our on-going three large adult study and prayer groups that met on Sunday mornings, a Sunday School full of children, various women's groups, and week-day prayer groups. Yet we must have been doing something wrong because we had not appreciably increased our active membership beyond 250, and we were made to feel we were selfish and not sufficiently concerned and focused on the unchurched and evangelism. So, of course, the only solution was to make radical changes in our liturgy, get rid of the sung Eucharist and the kneeling rails, shorten the service, and get people in and out quickly - as all the focus group studies said that was what the unchurched hungered after.

Then and now radical change seems to be the mantra because church never is good enough, and no one dares to say their congregation is anything but defective, if only because they have had the same leadership for awhile and have not gone through the kind of churchspeak colon cleanse required during times of "transitional ministry." If you did it before and you liked it, it's time for something else. Unless people are being drawn in like flies, there must be a new and better trap out there to attract those unfortunate enough not to have found Jesus in the person of our particular congregation.

There is nothing wrong with aspiring to do more and better - indeed that is what we all strive to do. However, even the best of those who work tirelessly and faithfully to improve and grow the Church, unwittingly get caught up in unexamined assumptions and beliefs about not only what the future must bring but what must be sacrificed now to bring that supposed future into being.

What I find most heartbreaking is the attitude many of our leaders have towards the "graying" population in the pews. Instead of drawing upon their knowledge and experience, and whatever wisdom they may have gained in their life-long spiritual journeys, they are at best relegated to what some have called the Old Church Chapels, their piety and practice being dismissed as something that inevitably must die out, as something that is no longer valued or needed by Post-Modern culture. For many it is simply inconceivable that such people could evangelize or nurture faith and witness among others without radically transforming themselves and their communities into something more marketable and, presumably, more easily understood by those not yet conversant in their ways. Of course their financial contributions are still welcome, but not much more -- unless they, too have, drunk the Church Growth kool-aid.

This attitude, fortunately, is not shared by all. There are some, like Diana Butler-Bass, who still find merit in at least some elements of tradition and have some hope that they may be used to help build and nurture intentional communities of faith. But even among those who express compassion for those who follow the "old ways," there is a growing conviction that those ways must and will be cast aside in favor of whatever will emerge from their ashes.

Take for example, William Floyd Dopp's The Tale of Two Churches. He writes of 80-year old Earl and his "beloved old chapel church [OCC]," where he was married a hoped to be buried. Dopp acknowledges that "to tell Earl that the world has changed and that there is no place for his beloved chapel would be too cruel." While the emerging mission church [EMC] has a "moral obligation" to treat Earl with "love and compassion," and to meet the needs of those like him, there is no doubt that the OCC has "come to the end of its days" and it will be replaced by the EMC.

Similarly, Thomas Brackett has no doubt that the old ways must be abandoned. Taking the view of the unchurched, he writes:

Now to my point on vending machine meals. There is nothing more dull than going forward to receive “a crisp and a shot” from robed holy people, in my humble opinion, though we have made it desirable and “holy” through many years of tradition and back-pedaled theology. Those of you Insiders who love the Eucharistic celebration as it is, please block your ears and bear with me! The Liturgical Lifeboat is still a means of grace for you and I honor that.

Yet, he sees that

Many of our church leaders are realizing that, for most of their careers, they have been offering a kind of hospice ministry to their congregations and dioceses. It is not just the flagging attendance and the graying of our denomination’s membership that push them to acknowledge the ennui of our beloved institutions. It is also the noted absence of fresh visions and dreams that would normally bubble up from our younger members. There seems to be a fresh hunger for the Spirit’s promise to give above and beyond anything that we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21).

(From Midwifing the Movement of the Spirit - Part 3.)

There may be some truth in what Brackett says. But too many have taken the consequences of that truth to the extreme of being ready and willing to sacrifice existing churches and their members to the altar of the new emerging ones. Instead of investing church resources into "planting" new communities in new places or even abandoned buildings, existing congregations and parishes are targeted for makeovers that not only fail to attend to the spiritual needs of their current members and make use of their time and talents, but sometimes actively drive them out. [See Leading Congregational Change: A Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey, by Jim Herrington, Mike Bonem, James H. Furr, a guide recommended by most mainline churches as well as Rick Warren, which explains how resisters to change are to be identified and purged, if necessary. Summary here.] And oddly enough, sometimes declining numbers and unhappy congregants are viewed as sure signs of progress. [See, Dan Hotchkiss, Don't Underestimate System Delays, quoted in The Lead, who writes: "Whatever patterns of behavior were preventing growth before need to be changed, and in the short run that is likely to repel more members than it attracts." "Remember that in general, the most frequent first sign of success in planning is that people get less happy."]

Although I've witnessed a series of aggressive attempts to make over a vibrant but numerically static congregation in the Lutheran church (ELCA), based on these principles and strategies, the real danger is not so much what I hope are rare instances of planned demolition, but rather the way the ideas behind the Church Growth and some of the Emergent Church movements feed a larger misconception of the current state of Christianity as both a faith and a social institution in the U.S.

An example of how many perceive our churches can be seen in this sermon from Reverend Hillary Crute Johnson of Bernardsville United Methodist Church, Bernardsville, NJ.

However, over the last 40 years, the Methodist church has been in decline. Congregational development experts are finding that people aren’t leaving their faith, but they are leaving our church and many of the main line denominations. I have been told in seminars that on any given Sunday only 30% of Christians are actually in church. There are many reasons for this, but it should suffice to say, open your newspaper, look at the lifestyles of your family and your neighbors, think about your own feelings about church and you get the picture of why the church is failing to attract people today. If I could get most people of the people who have shown interest in our church here on any given Sunday, we would have about 30-35 people, which is the average attendance for churches in our area. But, other events and obligations or distractions keep most people from coming to church.
. . . .

This past year, I have been on a mission trying to discover what has happened to the Methodist church: a church that has roots in visible, life changing ministry that has begun to dry up and decline; and how can we recover our spiritual center and reform ourselves so that our dry bones live once again and have the impact in the world that we once did?

This is, in many respects, an excellent, thoughtful, soul-searching sermon. Rev. Johnson, like many others I have quoted here, has some great insights into what is going on in the world around us and is dedicated to doing all she can to bring life and hope to her church and her community. However, some of those ideas and dreams are tinged with not only understandable anxiety about the Great Decline but assumptions about how and why mainline churches are suffering this decline. Most telling is the nostalgic view of the past in which the church once had "impact in the world."

The irony is that the views of Congregational Development and Church Growth experts, and those that they educate and train, are based on sociological research and an understanding of history that now appear distorted and outmoded in light of recent work by leading sociologists and historians of religion. In the past, their fields were dominated by those who studied religion within the confines of particular religious movements and institutions rather than from the larger perspective of society as a whole. Also lacking was a cross-cultural understanding of what "religion" is, or rather how Western ideas of a division between the secular and the religious aspects of human life and culture have led to an ethno-centric notion of what, in fact, religion is in all times and places - one that has long shaped the way religion has been conceptualized and studied. [See generally, authors and essays at The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere.]

Of particular relevance to the Great Decline of the mainline churches in the U.S. is the work of Jon Butler, Howard R. Lamar Professor of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies and Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Yale University. Professor Butler views religious culture and institutions in the U.S. in the late 20th and early 21st centuries against the backdrop of what he has learned of them from his research into the 18th and 19th centuries, most notably detailed in Awash in a Sea of Faith - The Christianizing of the American People (Harvard U. Press 1992). In a 2004 interview with the History News Network he points out that we, as a nation, are much more religious than we were at our founding:

If we went back to the religion of the Founding Fathers we would go back to deism. If we picked up modern religion, it's not the religion of the Founding Fathers. Indeed, we are probably more religious than the society that created the American Revolution. There are a number of ways to think about that. Sixty percent of Americans belong to churches today , 20 percent belonged in 1776. And if we count slaves, for example, it probably reduces the figure to 10 percent of the society that belonged to any kind of religious organization.

Modern Americans probably know more about religious doctrine in general, Christianity, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, than most Americans did in 1776. I would argue that America in the 1990s is a far more deeply religious society, whose politics is more driven by religion, than it was in 1776. So those who want to go back would be going back to a much more profoundly secular society.

Also, the role of religion in the U.S. today is vastly different than it is in England and other European countries. [Listen to his excellent lecture on "The Surprise of Religion in 20th Century America," available as a Yale University Netcast audio recording here.] Consequently, the dichotomy many, such as William Floyd Dopp, have drawn between the nearly empty churches and cathedrals in Europe and the brimming stadiums of Christians gathering in various African countries, does not necessarily inform the present or predict the future of Christianity in the U.S. Yet we, especially us Episcopalians, see ourselves in the shadow of the Church of England and other European churches, which we take as the ghosts of our Future Church.

Most important, those pesky numbers may not mean at all what we think they mean -- the Great Decline of the role of religion in general and Christianity in particular in the U.S.   While the mainline churches may have been diminished in numbers, social prestige, and political influence, Christianity appears to be very much alive. As Butler recounts in his lecture, he once advised a visiting European who was interested in learning about the role of religion in U.S. culture to rent an auto and drive cross country from New York to the Midwest. The visitor took his advice and was amazed at what he saw, all the churches of all sizes and shapes, that dotted the countryside, in rural, suburban, and urban areas, in virtually every nook and cranny of the places where he traveled.

This is not to say that everything is rosy or not much changed. Butler recognizes that enormous changes have occurred. Nevertheless, he puts them into the perspective of early American religious life and demonstrates how the halcyon days of American churches in the 1950's and 1960's represent a level of membership and participation that was unrivalled in history and arguably artificially high because of the various historical circumstances and events that produced them.

From this perspective, it is not clear that we are in the great crisis of faith and disdain for religion that many would have us believe. What we see passing are those social and historical forces that were the tides that left us awash in "a sea of faith."   Churches, especially immigrant churches, were critical to the settlement and social organization of American communities from the 19th century through the explosive growth in population in general and of suburban communities in the 1940's, 1950's, and early 1960's. Religion was for most people not simply a matter of faith, belief, or commitment to its tenets, but rather a critical part of personal and familial identity to an extent unparalleled in other Western countries during the same time period. In the U.S. there was no state church or, for the most part, any parish boundaries that encompassed all (whether participants or not), which served as the larger context in which people lived their daily lives but often did not play much of a role in forming their social identities as family, class, ethnicity, and geography. Instead, in the U.S., churches were an important part of people's identity -- for many, the center of their social lives, and for recent immigrants, the source of important ties with their distant homelands.

So what do all these numbers really mean?   Well, for those of us in parishes that struggle to pay utility bills, repair and maintain buildings, and keep professional clergy and musicians employed, the numbers do represent critical losses and real threats to our continued existence as the organized bodies and institutions that we have been. For others, they mean less influence in local politics and other community affairs, less visibility overall, and fewer resources and networks for assisting the hungry and poor and others in need.

But one must seriously and earnestly ask what does any of this have to do with the spiritual life and "vitality" of our congregations and parishes? And why do we even posit the notion of a "healthy" church? Back when the pews were overflowing and social pressures brought in both adults and youth, as largely captive audiences, did our numbers contribute in any significant way to the spiritual growth and development of either individuals or the corporate body of our churches? Yes, they gave us more breathing room, a more diverse group of people, more complex and regular social interactions, but at the same time, we had more than our share of dysfunctional leaders and communities, probably more resistance to change, more abuse by tyrannical clergy, cliquish and exclusive lay leaders, and more social snobbery and emphasis on appearance largely for appearances sake. If we are truly honest with ourselves, the good old days were not as good as we would like to remember.

More important, the current climate of hyper-consciousness of the respective "health" of our parishes - whether measured from the standpoint of numbers, mission work, orthodoxy, or Bible study - may be causing more anxiety and ultimately depression than the demographic and financial changes. Although hope, salvation, and transformation is at the heart of the Gospel message, the reality has always been that we, both as individuals and as groups, do not develop, grow, or progress in straight lines or all together at the same time. It is bad enough that families are breaking up more often because they cannot tolerate differences or stages of maturity or lapses in care or fidelity, rough spots that once had to be weathered through no matter what. While some of those families are no doubt better off being no longer yoked together in mutual destruction and infliction of emotional and sometimes physical pain, just as some parishes may be better off dying rather than staying within the stranglehold of petty tyrants and obstructionists, church families should not be looking for ways to split or purge themselves of inconvenient persons or ideas.

There is enough to divide us nowadays in terms of the culture wars and the theological differences that some tie to them. Yet time and time again we put ourselves under the microscope searching for flaws, calling in experts to fret and fuss over them, study and implement "systems theories" to engineer different social structures, and impose the latest trends in liturgical innovations, programs, and even schedules in an effort to market our hyper-conscious over-anxious groups and leaders to those on the outside, in hopes of not only replacing those we have lost due to death, disaffection, or relocation, but filling our pews and our parish halls with greater numbers of people, expecting somehow that an influx of newcomers will mean an escape from our old bad habits, a shot of adrenalin and enthusiasm, and some dollars and hard work besides.

Let me suggest a radical alternative. Why don't we stop treating our parishes like lab experiments in social engineering or business start-ups, stop trying to remodel and reinvent them, and just try to do our best to follow Christ in our hearts, minds and deeds? Why don't we start focusing on acts of kindness, compassion, and understanding, strengthening our bonds of friendship, spending more time in corporate worship, mission, fellowship, prayer, and study? Why don't we stop constantly beating the drums for change, change, change, and simply be mindful of new things we might try and new kinds of communities that we can sponsor and help grow, without dynamiting and discarding the communities we already have to make way for those imperfectly visioned by hypothetical constructs of who seekers are and what is needed to reach and serve them? Let us make the best use we can of the new ideas and out-of-the-box thinking of those active in Emergent Church and other new movements, be willing to sponsor their experiments, even when the numbers do not show worldly or immediate success, and at the same time ask them to be more open to what we have to offer, to learn from our experience, and the acquired wisdom of the gray-haired persons who have been so faithful for so many years.

And, finally, let us remember that while not everyone will want to seek us out or join our numbers, nevertheless, we have - without doing some new or different thing - reached some who have never been baptized or attended a church before, who nevertheless wandered in one day and were moved by what they saw us do and be together, gathering for Holy Eucharist, not in assembly line dispensation of wafers and wine, but in reverent and grateful joy in receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, so as to grant us strength and courage to love and serve God with gladness and singleness of heart.

Mother's Day Redux

2010-05-10T19:11:00.158-04:00

One thing that I found peculiar in my early years attending an Episcopal church was that there was nothing really in the way of celebration for Mother's Day, other than a line or two in the Prayers of the People. It probably should have been a relief, and it certainly was more sensitive to all those who for one reason or another might not want to or need to celebrate, especially in the time-honored traditions of the corsage, brunch en famille, and whatever else it might take to make Mom feel like Queen for a Day. But at the time I felt somewhat short-changed. There I was well into middle age, in my early 40's, with two young children in tow, having finally earned my stripes and, I thought, deserving of some recognition for doing the physical and emotional work of mom, dad, cook, wash woman, babysitter, pet caretaker, teacher, recreational director, negotiator of neighborhood playtimes, places, and playmates, and full-time worrier about how we would pay the bills and have enough left over to eat the next week. Nevertheless, pretty much what I got out of it was a regular Sunday at church and home to do what I could to make my own mom, who ordinarily was visiting, feel fussed over herself. (The dad in this picture was usually off taking it easy).

Several years later, I discovered that the absence of the full regalia of Mother's Day festivities in church was not so much an Episcopal thing as what I sensed was the jaded view of the rector hidden behind a lead-encased safety wall of "It's NOT in the Book of Common Prayer" and hence a Hallmark holiday, not a religious one. I never had much reason to question it, as he knew I was easily silenced by the spectre of the Liturgically Correct -- except that I made it clear after we were married that I didn't much care if only the Aussie side of the family believed in honoring mothers as "different but equal" -- once we were in the privacy of our own home, I wanted my cards and flowers all the same, thank you very much. He went along ("submitted" might have been the word he would have used), and I did my best not to stir up his ghosts of mothers past.

Well, this was the first year without my favorite curmudgeon, and although I do miss him terribly every day, I must say that this Mother's day was really no different than any other, perhaps a bit better. My daughter not only got up and took me to church, but rather than make me hobble on crutches through the snow and sleet to a restaurant, she went shopping and bought and made some of my favorite foods - scallops, crab cakes, and creamed spinach - gave me a beautiful card, which she bought herself (with no stepdad to remind her), an azalea plant (my favorite from the time I kept one alive all one semester in London), from my son as well, who remembered to call. So, indeed, it was Mother's Day as usual....

Except, by golly, it was Mother's Day in church, and Liturgically Correct, no less, having walked right through the door of Common Lectionary for Easter 6C, Acts 16:9-15, Lydia's Conversion. Although I was not unmindful of the difficulties the day poses for many, especially some close to my heart, it was after all lovely to hear an honest and straightforward acknowledgment of the contributions women make, at home and elsewhere, with no sticky Hallmark sentiments or the idolatry of American civil religion -- a fine and welcome sermon.

At the same time, it was wonderful to know and hear that Easter was still in season, with these extra touches: Sursum Corda (S 120) (Ambrosian Chant), Sanctus and Benedictus (S 128) (W. Mathias), The Lord’s Prayer (S 119) (Plainsong), Christ Our Passover (S 152) (Ambrosian Chant), and Agnus Dei (S 165) (W. Mathias). Yes, "God" and "King" and "Lord" and "Mercy" "Father" "Son" and... all those words. I loved them all, finally beginning to hear and understand the different parts of the liturgy in ways I had not for a long time, it gradually coming back to me.

And what a glorious hymn we sang on that snowy day to our God and King:

All creatures of our God and King,
lift up your voices, let us sing:
Alleluia, alleluia!
Thou burning sun with golden beams,
thou silver moon that gently gleams,

Refrain:
O praise him, O praise him,
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

Thou rushing wind that art so strong,
ye clouds that sail in heaven along,
O praise him, Alleluia!
Thou rising morn, in praise rejoice,
ye lights of evening, find a voice, (R)

Thou flowing water, pure and clear,
make music for thy Lord to hear,
Alleluia, alleluia!
Thou fire so masterful and bright,
that givest man both warmth and light, (R)

Dear mother earth, who day by day
unfoldest blessings on our way,
O praise him, Alleluia!
The flowers and fruits that in thee grow,
let them his glory also show: (R)

And all ye men of tender heart,
forgiving others, take your part,
O sing ye Alleluia!
Ye who long pain and sorrow bear,
praise God and on him cast your care: (R)

And thou, most kind and gentle death,
waiting to hush our latest breath,
O praise him, Alleluia!
Thou leadest home the child of God,
and Christ our Lord the way hath trod: (R)

Let all things their Creator bless,
and worship him in humbleness,
O praise him, Alleluia!
Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son,
and praise the Spirit, Three in One: (R)

Words: after Francis of Assisi (1182-1226); paraphrase of "Canticle of the Sun" by Francis of Assisi.
Lasst uns erfreuen - Oremus Hymnal

Extraordinary photos:

With full choir:

Mother, Daughter, and Holy Spirit

2010-05-09T21:01:00.729-04:00

Mother's Day, that sometimes peculiar and awful holiday, has come and gone. But it made me think, once again, of the predicament in which Christian women find themselves, in a tradition so bound up by the Father-Son relationship, the fire and wind of the Spirit notwithstanding. It is one thing to say that the Father-Son formula is merely relational, and like so much else, that women are simply supposed to identify with masculine words, symbols, and metaphors as universal rather than gender-specific. It is another to actually ignore what it means to be the daughter who, even with the best of fathers, is not and can never be the same as a son to a father or a grandson to a grandfather, or what it might mean to imagine a mother directing her son or daughter to be flogged and strung up on a cross as an act of love for all humanity (though one can and does imagine a mother at the foot of the cross, mourning yet another act of violence on yet another child).

We generally are not given a choice in thinking in more abstract, less literal terms -- at least two of the three "persons" (hypostases, if you will) of the Trinity are conceived in terms of two males in a parental-child relationship. The intimacy of that kind of relationship, and the humanity that attaches to the whole, not just the Son, does not readily or easily imply that all are welcome through adoption, at least not without first going through the Son, the "firstborn of all creation." So it is no wonder that feminist scholars and theologians have sought ways to not only bring back the women who were part of the history and tradition from the beginning, but also to use more "inclusive language" that literally includes women, mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, and all females.

While there certainly is no need to have every other word in the liturgy or elsewhere refer to God in terms of masculine pronouns, the Christian religion, like Judaism, is based on an understanding and experience of a God acting at specific times and places in history, which is handed down from generation to generation in the form of written accounts of the experience, some deemed sacred and integral to the understanding. One can be open to change, new experiences and new understandings, which build upon and sometimes supersede the past. But, well, the Story is the story -- as it began and it lives on -- and the rich literature (and to some extent the liturgy) that expresses it cannot be entirely shorn of its time and place without losing some of its essential meaning.

Of course people can seldom agree on what is "essential," especially with regard to religion. That is why it may be good to keep as much messiness as one can, or, to put it another way, language that is rich in metaphor and not wrenched from its historical and cultural context. That does not mean that new words and images cannot be added, but it seems that we lose something important if we seek only that with which we can mostly closely identify.

Carla Pratt Keyes makes this point in a sermon, reflecting on the the writings of Kathleen Norris:

[R]ecently I read some of Kathleen Norris’ reflections on “God Talk.” She suggests that too often (and despite our best intentions) our conceptions of God – like our language for God – can become a kind of idolatry, a way of making God small and manageable, safely confined to our comfort zones. So often, she says, one hears people say, ‘I just can’t handle it,’ when they reject a biblical image of God as Father, as Mother, as Lord or Judge; God as lover, as angry or jealous, God on a cross. I find this choice of words revealing, [Norris says, no matter how real the pain they reflect]: if we seek a God we can “handle,” that will be exactly what we get. A God we can manipulate, suspiciously like ourselves, the wideness of whose mercy [we also have] cut down to size.”1

Carla Pratt Keyes, "The God We Know" (sermon preached at Ginter Park Presbyterian Church, Richmond, VA, June 7, 2009). [n. 1 Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead Books, NY, 1998) 214.]

This led me back to Kathleen Norris, whose writings have affected me deeply over the years, beginning with Dakota: A Spiritual Biography. Her struggle with the language of the Christian tradition -- the Bible, hymns, liturgies, and prayers, in general, and all that is Christological in particular -- sounded much the same as my own. I read Rosemary Radford Ruether and other feminist theologians, but simply could not swim the tide, even as much of it informed and enlightened me.

Norris wrote about this at some length in Amazing Grace. In a chapter entitled "The Feminist Impasse," she recalls a Benedictine nun, who translated Hebrew texts, who once said to her, "Does it ever surprise you that God chooses to reveal in such a fallible fashion?" Whereupon Norris expands:

And this is the key, I think. In a religion based on human incarnation of the divine, when ideology battles experience, it is fallible, ordinary experience that must win. My initial appropriation of the Christian religion, which in its early stages often felt like a storming heaven's gates, had been based on a fallacy, on the notion that religious faith could provide me with a coherent philosophical system. Feminist theology especially had seemed a safe place in which all my stances could be argued and defended, as in an impregnable fortress. But I found I could not breathe there; I found no mystery. I am surely not the first Christian or last Christian to seek to forsake the fallibility inherent in Jesus' incarnation as a sure thing.

It was the false purity of ideology that I had to reject, in order to move to the more realistic give-and-take of community. Not a community of those who would share my presuppositions about feminism, but an ordinary small-town church congregation, where no one would much care for the heavy-duty theology in which I had been immersing myself. I could still employ it, as a useful guide for navigating Christian seas. But I could also learn to look to the strong women of the congregation, who often seemed to incarnate a central paradox of the Christian faith: that while the religion has often been used as an instrument of women's oppression, it also has had a remarkable ability to set women free.

It took me a long time to shed my feminist anger so that I could see that the women of Hope and Presbyterian were faithful Christians precisely because they knew liberation when they saw it. As rural women in a remote part of the Great Plains, they had not received much assurance from the outside world that their lives were worthwhile. The second wave of American feminism had largely passed them by; it seemed to belong more to city and college life than anything they knew. But Jesus had told them that they were worth a great deal, and it was as Christians they embraced their human dignity.

And they found their sufferings had been sanctified not because they were doormats or duped by a male conspiracy but because Jesus, too, had suffered and now gave them strength.

Amazing Grace (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999) pp. 135-136.

This to me is at the heart of what I think should guide not only liturgical revisions but all those in leadership positions in the church -- a deep understanding and appreciation of the admittedly "fallible, ordinary experience" of Christian women and men, children and mothers and grandmothers, throughout the ages. For all those who have distorted and exploited it, there are so, so many more who have found hope and faith and courage from both the language and rituals given by the church and from their own prayers and devotion.

Ordinary experience is often deemed not good enough, not capable of inspiring Great Awakenings or, for some, even the Great Emergence (at least as seen from the lofty heights from which Phyllis Tickle observed that Christianity requires literacy and social stability, which is apparently why she felt there were no real Christians other than those in the monasteries during the Middle Ages). And ordinary Christian language may be seen as oppressive, mindlessly clung to by those who have not immersed themselves in liberation and feminist theologies. So the elderly man or woman who has recited the King James version of the Lord's Prayer since childhood must be the first to be discomfited, to be told that their religious experiences and beliefs are of a bygone era, and the new and improved religion is about to finally emerge, far better than anything seen or known before -- which would not be so bad if there were any truth to it, instead often nothing more than an expensive marketing campaign, fueled by a cottage industry of self-styled experts and consultants, who have little more to offer than a fervent belief in the New Coke or Windows 7 editions of mainstream Christianity and secret hopes that young people will come in droves, like ants to... well, Coca Cola.

Norris addresses this, as well, in Cloister Walk, where she confesses that "if you're looking for a belief in the power of words to change things, to come alive and make a path for you to walk on, you're better off with poets these days than with Christians." Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997)p. 154. She notes,

It's ironic, because the scriptures of the Christian canon are full of strange metaphors that create their own reality -- "the blood of the Lamb," the "throne of grace," the "sword of the Spirit" -- and among the names for Jesus himself are "the Word" and "the Way." (p. 155).

She explains the difference between poets (and those who would read like them) and church professionals as follows:

Poets believe in metaphor, and that alone sets them apart from many Christians, particularly those educated to be pastors and church workers…. One difficulty that people seeking to modernize hymnals and the language of worship inevitably run into is that contemporaries are never the best judges of what works and what doesn't. This is something all poets know; that language is a living thing, beyond our control, and it simply takes time for the trendy to reveal itself, to become so obviously dated that it falls by the way, and for the truly innovative to take hold.

(pp. 155-56). As an example of what not to do, she cites

the drearily abstract version of the Lord's Prayer that liturgical scholar Gail Ramshaw has dredged up from the 1960's: "Our Father, who is our deepest reality." God is merciful, and most of us can now grasp how vapid these prayers are. (p. 156)

and contrasts this with the language of metaphor:

Metaphor is valuable to us precisely because it is not vapid, not a blank word such as “reality” that has no grounding in the five senses. Metaphor draws on images from the natural world, from our senses, and from the world of human social structures, and yokes them to psychological and spiritual realities in such a way that we're often left gasping; we have no way to fully explain a metaphor's power, it simply is."

Ibid.

Finally, as a poet she must embrace language that some would like to eradicate:

I refuse to give up on such metaphors like "bride" and "kingdom" just because they have been so ill-served by Christian tradition -- the Vatican especially demonstrates a consistent ability to literalize metaphors within an inch of their life. And I reserve my right to a love of literature, even when it is John Donne saying "no man is an island."
….

Where the ideologues on both the liberal and conservative sides of the inclusive language issue seem to fall short is in humility, accepting the fact that language is far more than a tool for transmitting ideas, and even the most well-intentioned people cannot control a living tongue.

I find that my religious perspective helps me here. In a religion centered on what in Christian convention is termed the "living Word," even our ridiculously fallible language becomes a lesson in how God's grace works despite and even through our human frailty. We will never get the words exactly right. There will always be room for imperfection, for struggle, for growth and change. And this is as it should be.

Amazing Grace, p. 137-38.

As both Kathleen Norris and Rev. Keyes point out, humility is required on all sides. We have to listen to one another and not be so convinced that there is only one, good way to read a text. Norris gives a wonderful example in the following:

One of the most remarkable passages in Bill Moyers's book Genesis is an exchange between two feminists, Karen Armstrong and Carol Gilligan, and a black theologian, Samuel Proctor. The women do their best to convince Proctor that God is murderous, angry, vindictive -- and they imply, immature -- a God who in a fit of pique brought on the great flood that is described in Genesis. But he keeps asserting the black experience:"Black people identified themselves with Daniel in the lion's den," he says, "the Hebrew boys in the furnace, the Israelites coming out of the Flood. They saw the Bible in the context of their own experience, and they kept it alive... They took ... the Hebrew Bible saga, and made it their own story." Where the women see nothing but a false assurance in the sign of the rainbow as the flood ends, Proctor insists that "it's not just a rainbow" but a sign of hope for oppressed people. "Black people could have put God on trial, he says, but instead we put white supremacy on trial... People had gunpowder and ships, and they used their freedom [to go out] and enslave others. But... in time, we can correct these things. I'm living with that bow in the cloud right now. And if I'm the last optimist left, I don't mind that at all."

Amazing Grace, pp. 319-320.

Of course, one can just as easily find other passages that provoke the opposite response: anger and pain and frustration in reading stories of people exploited, treated in dehumanizing ways, sometimes tortured or killed, in circumstances where there seems to be nothing in the narrative that recognizes any kind of wrong being done or even suggests that one should sympathize or empathize with those being ill-treated. These cannot and should not go unnoticed, but can or should they be banned or excised or should they be there if for no other purpose to demonstrate the fallibility of the writers and the fallacy of taking it all as sacred, unerring text?

No doubt it is one thing to tamper with translations or otherwise bowdlerize the text of the Bible and another to judiciously excise passages for use in Psalters, lectionaries, or liturgies. The more difficult questions lie when what is being proposed (if it ever is) is a fairly thorough expungement of words like "Lord" "Father" and "Son," "kingdom," "reign," "rules" or phrases like "blood of the Lamb" as archaic and replacement with abstractions cleansed of all problematic connotations or disturbing images -- or in the realm of gestures and "holy hardware," prohibiting kneeling, genuflecting, reverencing the altar or a cross, use of crucifixes, candles, vestments or altar linens, triumphal music, anointment with oil, sprinkling "holy" water, or maybe even baptism itself (marking those who are Christ's "own" as distinguished from all who are not).

Whatever happens and when -- and certainly some changes, perhaps many -- are inevitable, I would hope that there will always be room for "fallible, ordinary experience." Christianity certainly has had and probably will continue to have very dark moments, as there seems to be no way to insulate its adherents or its institutions from those who would seek power and exploit others. But no amount of tinkering with the language is going to keep people from finding ways to distort and misconstrue the Gospel message -- new language being just as capable of being twisted and misused as the old. We need clergy and lay people to help forge the bonds of Christian community, to help one another through times of hardship and pain, to celebrate times of blessing and joy, to work hand in hand, to take time to pause and listen to one another, and learn all we can from each other's encounters with God and struggles through life, both that which has been recorded in the past and that we can share from the present.

In the meantime, there may be many of us who will continue to struggle with so much he-manness in the language, the difficulty of relating to any god clothed in the trappings of a king, emperor, lord, or husband, or standing aside while all the Prodigal Sons get the favors, and the women sweep the hearth or gather up the crumbs from beneath the table. But for others perhaps we can share how we have explored amd shaped the words and gestures and rituals in ways that free rather than enslave us, that bring humility rather than humiliation, and strength and courage, rather than weakness and submission, in the face of those who seek to assert power over us, so we can turn our hearts and souls to the one who is indeed greater than us all.

The Lord be with you

2010-05-04T00:15:00.353-04:00

Got up my courage and hobbled my way to church Sunday. The bad leg aches a bit now, but I am so glad I went. Was reminded that we are still in Easter season (good to know I have not missed it entirely), as we had two children baptised, two others joining the rank of full chorister (presented with their cottas -like these), the Mathias Gloria at full tilt, the sweet ache of his Agnus Dei, and a Postlude with Timothy Davis performing Mozart on the Engstrom grand piano. And thanks to Theresa, who kindly came to get me and give me a ride at the last minute, on a weekend her mom was visiting (whom I finally got to meet).

As usual, my mind and emotions were off in a million directions at once, but one thing I noticed throughout the liturgy was that the word "Lord" was everywhere. Made me smile (felt like I was playing the old college game of watching reruns of the Bob Newhart show and counting each time someone said "Hi Bob!"). But I was stunned at how pervasive it is, or rather how it had not occurred to me before, even after reading several days of discussion on it on the HoB list serve. I mean, really, what would Episcopal worship be without, "The Lord be with you" (and "also with you")?

And here's the Rite II Gloria:

Glory to God in the highest,
and peace to his people on earth.
Lord God, heavenly King,
almighty God and Father,
we worship you, we give you thanks,
we praise you for your glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father,
Lord God, Lamb of God,
you take away the sin of the world:
have mercy on us;
you are seated at the right hand of the Father:
receive our prayer.

For you alone are the Holy One,
you alone are the Lord,
you alone are the Most High,
Jesus Christ,
with the Holy Spirit,
in the glory of God the Father.
Amen.

and the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
....
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son....

the Prayer of Absolution:

Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.

the Great Thanksgiving:

The Lord be with you.

*People*              And also with you.

*Celebrant*          Lift up your hearts.

*People*              We lift them to the Lord.

*Celebrant*          Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

*People*              It is right to give him thanks and praise.

the Sanctus:

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

the Eucharistic Prayers:

[A & B]

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.

[C]

Lord God of our Fathers: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his great High Priest, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, your Church gives honor, glory, and worship, from generation to generation.

[D]

We acclaim you, holy Lord, glorious in power. Your mighty works reveal your wisdom and love. You formed us in your own image, giving the whole world into our care, so that, in obedience to you, our Creator, we might rule and serve all your creatures. When our disobedience took us far from you, you did not abandon us to the power of death. In your mercy you came to our help, so that in seeking you we might find you. Again and again you called us into covenant with you, and through the prophets you taught us to hope for salvation.

the Benediction:

Eternal God, heavenly Father,
you have graciously accepted us as living members
of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ,
and you have fed us with spiritual food
in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
Send us now into the world in peace,
and grant us strength and courage
to love and serve you
with gladness and singleness of heart;
through Christ our Lord.

and the Dismissal:

*Deacon...*       Let us go forth in the name of Christ.
*People*           Thanks be to God.

     or
*Deacon*          Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
*People*           Thanks be to God.

     or
*Deacon*         Let us go forth into the world,
                         rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.
*People*          Thanks be to God.

    or
*Deacon*         Let us bless the Lord.
*People*         Thanks be to God.

And of course, these do not include the Psalms or the Kyrie eleison, which is about "kyriocentric" as one can get:

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord have mercy upon us.

Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

[Text of Episcopal BCP (1979), Rite II from http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/bcp.htm].

There are, of course, many others titles or names given to Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, in Rite II prayers and elsewhere. But it is hard to imagine spending any time in worship that follows the Book of Common Prayer without the word "Lord" evoking the sounds, memories, and even conceptions of prayer and worship. Even those from other traditions or no tradition at all may think of Christianity when they hear "Lord" because of having heard the word in the context of "The Lord's Prayer," "The Lord's Supper," or perhaps even the beginning of the Twenty-third Psalm ("The Lord is my shepherd...").

The word, "Lord," particularly in its Greek form, kyrios (Κύριος), is not something that suddenly appeared in the King James version of the Bible in the 17th century or the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. There is historical evidence that the term pre-dates the Gospels and was in use in the earliest Christian devotions and worship. New Testament scholar, Larry W. Hurtado has spent his career focusing on this question, presenting his evidence and conclusions most fully in Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Christ in Earliest Christianity (2003). See also, Davd B. Capes, April D. DeConick, Helen K. Bondis, eds., Israel's God and Rebecca's Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity, and Larry W. Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion (1999).

The word "kyrios" and its Semitic equivalents were already in use among first-century Greek-speaking Jews as the substitutes for the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh. See Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (2003 Pb. ed.), "Jesus as Lord," pp. 108 et seq.). By then, "the Hebrew/Aramaic Old Testament had been translated into Greek, and that translation, called the Septuagint, became the near-universally used version across the Empire." (Brad East, "Who is the Lord?") Thus, Hurtado concludes that the use of "kyrios" in early Christian worship and texts, in connection with Jesus, indicates that he was seen as uniquely divine not long after his death, and within a particularly Jewish meaning and context rather than as a result of a later Hellenization of Christian beliefs and practices. Hurtado stresses:

The point I want to emphasize is not only that the christological use of kyrios in early Pauline Christianity had translation equivalents in Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christian circles of earlier decades, but also that the religious meaning and functions of the application of kyrios to Jesus in Pauline circles were shaped by this earlier practice of appealing to the risen Jesus as "Lord" as a feature of the devotional life of Aramaic-speaking circles. That is, there was a shared religiousness, and not merely an inherited vocabulary.

Lord Jesus Christ (2003 Pb. ed.) at p. 111.

Of course, what precisely the term "kyrios" or "Lord" meant to the early Christians and what its meaning and use should be today, are topics that will continue to spark debate among historians, theologians, church officials, liturgical commissions, and anyone else who may want to kibitz on the subject. Nevertheless, it seems clear that "Lord" is at the heart of nearly two thousand years of Christian devotions and worship, and with them, understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

By invoking Jesus as "Lord," we do not pray to Jesus as a separate divinity. Instead, we "worship God in Jesus' name and through Jesus." Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship, p. 107. What is expressed is our desire for and understanding of our relationship with God, through Jesus, not the creation of some kind of patriarchal or kyriarchal structure through which males or masters or overlords dominate over females, slaves, and servants. Use of the words "Lord" and "Father" simply speak to that relationship rather than our relations with others:

In this light, Christians do not properly approach God as an expression of some ill-founded sentimentality about God's 'daddy-hood.' Christians properly call God 'Father' neither to make God 'sire' of the world or of us, nor because we want to deify fatherhood and maleness, but instead precisely because we enter into Jesus' relationship to God as Father. We are to consider ourselves as enfranchised into Jesus' relationship with God.

Ibid., 109.

To read the traditional language of Christian worship otherwise is to distort and idolize it. From this perspective, Hurtado finds the feminist critique helpful to the extent it points to this kind of misreading and the terrible social consequences that inevitably result:

Some modern feminist criticism is both unfounded and yet also instructive for Christian worship. It is unfounded to claim that to reverence and address God as 'Father' and to reverence and refer to Jesus as 'the Son' necessarily means to privilege maleness and to give it transcendent validation while denying this to femaleness and motherhood. This sort of feminist critique presumes that all worship is the straight projection and divinisation of creaturely attributes such as maleness, and that the object of the worship is some idealised version of the attributes of the worshipper. On this assumption, the demand is logically that both maleness and femaleness should be divinised. Otherwise, women have no such idealised object with which to identify themselves. Were these assumptions totally correct, the demand would appear to be compelling.

Properly informed, however, Christian worship of the Triune God is not (or at least is not supposed to involve) the deification of creaturely characteristics. Christian worship is not supposed to be the projection of our own attributes into ideal, divine status. This would be a deification of the creature, a self-worship, which is admittedly all too accurate as characterising human 'religiousness.' But from the standpoint of Biblical tradition, any such de facto divinisation of the creature manifests a distance from the effectual revelation of the true and living God. Worship that is offered in response to the revealed, true and living God should seek to avoid any deification of the creature.

Ibid., 111. Thus, in Hurtado's view, the fault lies not with the language used in worship but rather our understanding of it and the way we manifest it in our lives:

Perhaps one important way for Christians and others to tell if particular Christian worship really is 'in Spirit and truth' in this sense is to discern whether reference to God as 'Father' is matched in our lives by a privileging of maleness, a feudal-like hierarchy of one creaturely characteristic over others. If our lives show a preferential treatment of maleness, for example, it may well be that Christian worship has been allowed to devolve into an idolatry that is no less damnable in spite of its use of Christian terminology (indeed, Christian distortion of the revelation of God should be seen by Christians as double reprehensible). Particularly, if reference to God as "Father" is seen as justifying the privileging of the male gender, then this certainly shows a serious failure to understand the Christian theological rationale and meaning of the term 'Father' as a form of address to God. In this situation, the feminist critique of 'Father' rings true and is a judgement to be received gratefully.

The heavenly 'Father' should be worshipped, not as an extension of ourselves, as justifying patriarchy, but worshipped truly as the one God who is categorically transcendent over the creature. That is, as 'Father' only through Jesus Christ. This God transcends creation and thereby reveals and judges its inadequacy in representing God, as well as our abuse of our creaturely features such as gender. But at the same time this transcendent God, precisely by being transcendent beyond creaturely attributes, is able to affirm, validate and redeem the whole of the creation (Rom. 8:18-23), including our maleness and femaleness (Gal. 2:28-290). Given the gender-inclusive shape of God's redemption, it is important as Christians to ask ourselves whether this equal validation of male and female is evident in our lives, our families, and our wider relationships, whether the inherent value of the creation (inherent to creation as God's beloved creature) and the equal importance and worth of male and female are demonstrated in our church life? Theology can play a role in helping us to guide us to right living (though, to be sure, the right living to which Christians are summoned requires a real transformation and not merely instruction). But it is also true that the character of our particular Christian living is in turn a good indication of how we really understand and mean what we profess to be our theological beliefs. That is, our living is a very good reflection of how 'good' our theology really is!

Ibid., 111-112.

Of course this kind of analysis begs the question of whether such language is or has become easily misunderstood because of the long history of its use and abuse in support of privilege and domination. If so, there certainly are good arguments for expanding the use of words and titles for God and the persons of the Trinity -- not to eliminate or substitute one set for another but to help teach and inform people what the words are intended to mean "in Spirit and in truth."   I also am not convinced that the Father-Son language is the only way to articulate the nature of our relationship to God through Jesus or to represent those two elements of the Trinity. Nevertheless, there is something to be said for correcting misinterpretations of traditional language rather than simply abandoning it.

Whatever arguments can be made for substituting gender-neutral terms in some instances and adding words referring to females in others,  they do not apply very well to the use of "Lord." First, the word "Lord" is not gender-specific as is "Father," "Son," and pronouns that are exclusively male. "Lord" is more like "Senator," "Governor," or "Mayor" -- titles and positions that once were held only by men but now can be claimed by women, as well.

Second, "Lord" has a special significance when used in conjunction with Jesus and Christ. "Lord Jesus Christ" and "Jesus Christ our Lord" are different ways of translating the Greek phrase first used as a confession in Christian devotions and worship. In other words, from the very beginning of Christianity, it has meant confessing that "Jesus Christ is Lord." Therefore, it makes little sense to suddenly decide in the 21st century that "lord" is an obsolete feudal term that should be eliminated from Christian worship because it can invoke images of oppressive power and authority.   While that may be one particular, limited meaning of the word, the longstanding and continued use of kyrios and "Lord" in reference to Jesus has a particular meaning of its own, which predates feudalism and is clearly distinguishable from any kind of reference to earthly princes and powers.

The difficulty some may have with the word is that it can be viewed as supporting the ideology of one side in the current conflict within and about the Episcopal Church. For those who brandish passages like John 14:6 ("I am the way and the truth and the life. None comes to the Father except through me"), as weapons in their self-styled holy wars, the word "Lord" is a torch raised triumphantly on behalf of a Christianity that proclaims it is the exclusive path to salvation (and the hell with everyone else). While so-called High Christology is shared by others, as well, the provocateurs seem to want to claim it as their own, and use it against those who might have different views, especially if they can be baited into into invoking radical feminist theology and demands for social justice.

Personally, I find nothing edifying about discussing this issue for the sake of yet another skirmish with the defenders of the Faith Once Delivered.  I do not view the new Holy Men and Holy Women as some kind of "Trojan Horse" (a charge apparently renewed in the recent call for "Openness in the Process of Liturgical Change"). I see nothing wrong with using a variety of language, especially in incidental prayers such as the collects for lesser feast days and holy days. Nevertheless, I sense that there may be some cause for concern, some danger that the significance of "Lord" may get lost in any dust up that might occur along the usual fault lines.

What is at stake is not simply Tradition or what might be lost were we to relegate the Kyrie to the rubbish bin, along with all the music that so hauntingly voices its lament. It is the ritual acknowledgement of all that is most high -- whether conceived as the Lord God or Lord Jesus Christ, the Ground of All Being, or a Power Greater than Ourselves that Can Restore Us to Sanity. It involves submission to that higher authority, a recognition of our shortcomings, an offering of our best selves, and a commitment to placing God's goals and purposes above our own.

Instead of binding and oppressing, naming Jesus as "Lord" liberates all those who might be bound by the claims of those with earthly power, status, and wealth. Following Jesus is to choose one's own lord and master in the service of all of humanity. And while some may question the significance and efficacy of physically bowing, kneeling, or lying prostate, the reverence, devotion, and humility embodied by these acts remain essential in our approach to God and understanding ourselves in relation to God. In today's world, especially here in the U.S., where so many are suspicious of and resistant to all authority but their own, it is difficult to imagine how any word other than "Lord" can better convey a power higher than ourselves, to whom we can freely submit and strive to serve with gladness and singleness of heart.

Lords and Ladies in Church

2010-04-25T16:56:00.030-04:00

It is strange to be spending yet another Sunday morning home in bed (not because I want to but because I am taking special care with a broken leg). There was a time when Sunday was the high point of my week, when I entered the holy space I found in church, bowed my head in silent prayer, confessed my sins, and emptied myself so I could offer myself up to God's will and purposes for my life. I used to hear and ponder each word of the liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, holding one or another up to a different light each time, wondering how I could have closed my heart and mind to the traditional words and images for so long. I fed my hunger and quenched my thirst for God in the Eucharist, beginning on my knees, imagining tears running down my cheeks and my face grazing on the hem of Christ's robes, thinking of the Prayer of Humble Access, whether spoken or not:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou are the same Lord, whose property is to always have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

And when it was over, the hymns ringing in my ears, the shadows of my soul giving way to light, being raised to a shaky but quiet confidence in my ability to cope, yet again, with whatever came my way, then I could relax and smile, for a change, seek out especially those I had not seen since the week before, find out what had been going on in their lives or simply chatting about whatever people chat about when they can stop and rest and not have to immediately rush off to the next appointment or task at work or home. As I got to know people better, I would learn more of their struggles and joys, getting to know each better as individuals. But from the beginning I had this sense of deep companionship with so many who seemed to be there for the same reasons as I, because they loved it so.

Somehow I lost that long ago. At first I thought it was simply some diminishment in the zeal and focus I had as a newly converted Anglo-Catholic, who had only recently returned to any kind of church, after more than two decades of a conflicted devotion to the secular humanism of the halls of academia. But I must confess, as time went on, it was as much a function of finding myself, of all people, suddenly thrust into the role as clergy spouse - one that never, in my wildest dreams, I imagined playing, which, unfortunately led me to not play it much at all. As Jim would repeatedly and correctly point out, I had no cause for discomfort or dissatisfaction among the people of the parishes where he served. While I'm sure there were some, perhaps many, who were and/or are critical of how I behaved or, to the extent they knew me, of my opinions and beliefs, thankfully no one told me how they felt or acted in any way that made me feel unwelcome or uncared for.

Nevertheless, somehow I could never entirely lose my awareness of what church was like before compared to what it was like afterwards. No matter how hard I tried, I could not forget the joy and anticipation I used to feel when it was wholly my choice to go to church, when my efforts to get there, despite fatigue or boredom or the struggle to get young children up and dressed and get on the road, despite some quarreling and fussing, were all my own, when no one would really care but me whether I got there or not, when the sense of wonder and satisfaction of making yet another week, of filling up my heart and mind with "good things" and letting go of all the grunge was something I could bask briefly in, during coffee hour and the rest of the day. And then, of course, there was the knowledge that people used to seek my opinions on church matters, wanted me to serve on committees and councils, listened closely to what I had to say, and taught me how to do the same for them, to interact on delicate topics, to share our faith stories, all of that rich life of being fully part of a congregation -- not to mention having a pastor who just might, if I tread carefully, listen to what I had to say as well.

All that changed, seemingly overnight. Yes, it was largely due to my own thinking, not what others on the outside demanded. I always felt I had to be in church every Sunday at at least one service (and felt guilty when I did not do two - though rarely went to two), had to be on time (though as the years went on, I didn't always even manage that), dressed and groomed reasonably well, and be sure not to walk through the doors cursing my children or in a foul mood because they (or I or all of us) behaved so badly on the way to church. Once I got to church, there was always the dilemma of where to sit, what to say, and what to do. Although I shied away from (shirked my responsibilities?) acting as The Rector's Wife, nevertheless, there were always little things - like if I sat anywhere in at least the front half of the church, people would stand or sit or kneel following my lead (an odd sensation for someone as self-conscious as me, which always blew my efforts to convince myself that no one was really looking at me) - a dangerous thing because with my ADD-addled brain, my mind could easily drift and I would be rudely awakened by the fact that I could not rely on others to cue me as to what to do because if I got it wrong, chances are that most would follow. Then there was the hostess thing - I could not do it, had no experience with that sort of thing, was used to years of avoiding having anyone visit my home, let alone entertaining (due, in part to my natural introversion, in part to years living with my first husband, an alcoholic who never recovered to the point of not living in squalor and filth or conforming to social niceties). I froze in fear, let others continue with what they had done before the new rector came, and, at times, hid behind those women who had done it all as second nature when they were wives or daughters of clergy.

In both parishes, I finally retreated to the choir stalls, despite my obvious lack of vocal skills, and embraced both the company of the choir members and the music directors and our collective love of music (not to mention the incidental benefit of being able to wear just about anything or the same thing week after week under my choir robes). While I did have to worry about hiding my voice, no longer did I feel like I was The Wife -- I was just another member of the motley crew that comprised the church choirs (thank God for them, each and every one!). Yet it still was hard, in fact almost impossible, to recapture what I once felt in corporate worship, the time spent deeply contemplating the words and letting the music sink into my soul, being emptied and then filled with the Holy Spirit, my life and week renewed all at once, with others experiencing much the same thing. Instead I was focused on having the next piece of music ready, not allowing my mind to drift very far, trying to recall the trouble spots in the music, thinking about my breathing (though often not getting it right), lifting my body to get as much breath as possible, and trying not to get my choir robes tangled in the kneeling rail or dropping a hymnal or prayer book to the floor.

Truth be told, Jim did not get it, not at all. He thought I was stark raving mad. Typically, once he discovered he could not "fix" whatever problem I was having (and yes, as a wise and experienced counselor, he often had good advice about many things -- though he also often did not have the patience or insight with me as he had with others - inevitably), he just didn't want to hear about it anymore. Before we were married, he promised me he would stick with me (or rather I would tag along with him) on Sundays after services or at other church social occasions, knowing my fear of crowds and disease among those I don't know well. But it soon became clear to me that after more than 25 years as a parish priest, he had it down, could "work the room" like a Chicago politician and do it well, making each person feel even his passing attention. So I stood back and let him go, even if it meant hugging a wall somewhere or leaving sooner than I should have. And although he told me time and time again that I could go to church or not, in our parish or elsewhere, I kept going, every Sunday I was in town, come hell or high water. And at times I contemplated, and even made a few efforts, at finding a spiritual director who could help me get my prayer and worship life back on track, but I never followed through. So for days, weeks, and finally years, I went through the motions and tried to make myself content with the glimmers and glimpses of the divine that came through at times, despite my inattention, and kept a running silent monologue in my head directed to God, but seldom found the time or space to stop and carefully listen to what God might be saying to me in response.

Every once in awhile, especially when we talked about Jim's upcoming retirement, I'd think about what I might do once I was "free" of my status as rector's wife. I knew that where we would live would depend in large part on whether there was the kind of Anglo-Catholic church he would like to join. I wondered whether I would really want to join him there or find my own place, maybe even in another tradition - Quaker, Unitarian, Orthodox or Roman Catholic.

Yet here I am, today, swept off my feet, as if struck by Dorothy's tornado, thinking that, after all, there really is no place like "home." And by "home" I do not mean simply our parish, which finally has become truly home in more ways than I can describe (though I may always have some difficulty there with the ghosts of memory flooding in at unexpected times). I mean back home in the Eucharist and the Episcopal liturgy. The hunger and thirst are very much with me again, in palpable ways.

It remains to be seen whether it is as real as I imagine - or rather, more importantly, whether I will finally follow through as I ought and need to do. But while I can still indulge in flights of the imagination, I recall that passage from Kathleen Norris that struck me so keenly when I first returned to church in my late 30's, after nearly twenty years of wandering in the wilderness:

“When some ten years later I began going to church again because I felt I needed to, I wasn’t prepared for the pain. The services felt like word bombardment – agony for a poet – and often exhausted me so much I’d have to sleep for three or more hours afterward. Doctrinal language slammed many a door in my face, and I became frustrated when I couldn’t glimpse the Word behind the words. Ironically, it was the language about Jesus Christ, meant to be most inviting, that made me feel most left out. Sometimes I’d give up, deciding that I just wasn’t religious. This elicited an interesting comment from a pastor friend who said, ‘I don’t know too many people who are so serious about religion that they can’t even go to church.’”

“Even as I exemplified the pain and anger of a feminist looking warily at a religion that has so often used a male savior to keep women in their place, I was drawn to the strong old women in the congregation. Their well-worn Bibles said to me, ‘there is more here than you know,’ and made me take more seriously the religion that caused by grandmother Totten’s Bible to be so well used that its spine broke. I also began, slowly, to make sense of our gathering together on Sunday morning, recognizing, however dimly, that church is to be participated in, not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be? Now, on the occasions when I am able to actually worship in church, I am deeply grateful.”

-- Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993) (pp. 94-95).

This brings to mind the discussion that has been going on among some of the proposed removal of the word "Lord" in our prayers, sparked, in part, by Fr. Dan Martins' recent post, An Openness in the Process of Liturgical Change. I'm afraid the lawyer in me tries to avoid the process issues (I get weary of shop talk, at times), and it is still not entirely clear to me what is being proposed and to what extent any changes would be optional and, regardless, which would likely be widely implemented. I am simply dumbstruck at the idea of such changes. Yes, I know all about Prayer Book idolatry, and I listened carefully to what Jim, the once dyed in the wool Anglo-Catholic, had to say about the 1979 Prayer Book wars, how he insisted on making the changes, as required, in his parishes, and how he said he finally came to prefer the new Rite II Eucharistic prayers, both the language and, more importantly, the theology reflected in them.

But, but, but..........   First of all, I first came to the Episcopal Church in retreat from sudden and radical changes I was experiencing in my first church home, after the years in the wilderness, an ECLA Lutheran congregation. The new pastor, who had come, in part, as a result of my vote for him and recommendation, as member of the Search Committee, had decided to change, among other things, the way the congregation took Holy Communion (standing, by intinction, after filing down the aisles "like the Roman Catholics," as the good Lutherans saw it, instead of kneeling at the extraordinarily long altar rail they had in their lovingly constructed modern Scandinavian sanctuary), decided to eliminate entirely the Prayer of Confession in the liturgy, and with it, more or less banished the use of the kneeling rails in the pews. In private talks with the pastor, I learned that his theology was greatly influenced by Tillich, he had a negative experience with high liturgy as a child in a foreign country (his parents were missionaries) attending an Episcopal school, and that the changes he proposed were ones he could defend with great vigor and authority based on "solid research" and recommendations by the latest experts and consultants on Church Growth.

In the end, I can honestly say I did not become confirmed as an Episcopalian simply because I was annoyed with the Lutheran pastor and preferred Episcopal worship. I spent a long time struggling with what I should do, torn between my love of and loyalty to the people of the Lutheran community, who had welcomed me and my family with open arms when I most needed them, and the way my heart and mind were flooded with the words of the Book of Common Prayer, how those words opened so many windows to the Christianity that I fought so hard against for many, many years, worried about Christian and American exceptionalism, patriarchy, intolerance, and what seemed to me the odd obsession with the violence of the Cross and the fuzzy, barely lukewarm, underwhelming story of the Empty Tomb (which only reminded me of the shivers I got from Lake Michigan winds on the Easter Sundays of my youth).  All that fell away, bit by bit, and once seemed to come tumbling down, with the sounds of the bells and the Mathias Gloria and the lights coming up during Easter Vigil. Yet I asked myself over and over, was it all theatre, aesthetics, a love of music, and a too-easy willingness to be taken in by it all?

In the end, it was not so much the Episcopalians who drew me in but my Lutheran friends and family, who urged me to follow my own piety, who joined me many times in worship at the Episcopal church, and came to appreciate, at least in part, what I found there. And every day, every week, it seemed I found something new, in the Psalms I used to read silently before mass, in the lectionary readings, in those many moments in prayer when my mind cleared of all that was troubling it and I either heard God speaking to me or I was enveloped by a sense of peace, warmth, and clarity, like I had never known before.

During most of this time I was scarcely conscious of the rector, who happened to be Jim, or of his excellent sermons. Due largely to my experience with the Lutheran pastor (who, despite all, I regarded as a friend, a good teacher and theologian, liturgical matters aside, and a source of wisdom and resourcefulness in dealing with my family problems), and partly due to my natural desire not to want to follow anyone's lead (at least no one human), my focus was on the Episcopal liturgy and all I could find to read about the Anglican church and its theologies. The Oxford Movement fascinated me, and I loved the idea of combining what struck me as a Romantic view of Catholicism, which nevertheless aimed at the best of it -- the emphasis on the senses in worship, seeing, hearing, tasting, and feeling, an unapologetic embrace of beauty and ritual -- all aimed at taking that experience of holiness, in awe and humility, out into the world to serve the poor and the needy, with grace, humility, and gladness of heart.

Whether I got any of it "right" is certainly debatable. But what I definitely got wrong was that the Episcopal liturgy I loved was any safer from radical changes or clerical tampering just because we all professed to be joined in Common Worship as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, rather than any singular theologies or rigid doctrines. I had no idea what "low church" was or that it even existed. I had no clue that there were evangelicals or charismatics, let alone Calvinists, schismatics, those still recoiling at the very idea of women clergy and bishops, not to mention, in the 1990's, the ever widening rift occurring over the issues of same-sex love and marriage. And I had no idea that the Episcopal Church had its share of tyrants and oversized egos in the ranks of clergy and bishops, some of whom made their Lutheran patriarchal counterparts look like Ward Cleavers in comparison.

The one thing the Episcopalian Anglo-Catholics had that the Lutherans did not was an unabashed delight in and reverence for the use of things - the stuff - (what Maria calls the "Holy Hardware") in our liturgies and our worship spaces. We - or at least some of us - could unapologetically have icons, votive candles, colorful vestments, delicate lace altar linens, and complex music galore. We could chant the Great Litany, have our crucifix on Good Friday, along with the Solemn Reproaches (yes, cleansed of anti-Semitism). We knew very well that all these things, and the sights, sounds, and smells that go with them, are not to be exalted or worshipped themselves but rather are windows that can reveal the God among and with us. It's not that we can't let our hair down, take to the streets or the woods, the cities or fields, and follow Christ anywhere and everywhere he may lead us. But we are not afraid of words and images, exploring the light and shadows that fall from each, placing our doubting Thomas' fingers into their wounds, and trusting our own senses, as we confront our God directly through them, without too much concern for what the clergy or anyone else says about we are supposed to think about it all.

Well, at least that's my own take on it. And I was heartened to read what I took as similar thoughts in Cecelia's reflections on Saints and Intercessions. Strangely enough (or maybe not), there seems to be a deep connection between Norris' Protestant women of the Great Plains with their worn Bibles and kneading bread dough and the Roman Catholic women with their rosaries and devotion to Mary. They know, through heartache and childbirth, through brutal weather and grinding poverty, who their Godde is. And, to be quite frank, they don't give a shit what he, she, or it is called, whether their statues were created and erected by the patriarchal minions of the Vatican or their Bibles given to them by hell and brimstone preaching Calvinists. They work with what they have, and they hold their re-creations and re-imaginings dear, even at times when they may not fully recognize their own artistry and the subversion of authority that it sometimes requires.

The irony is that here in the Episcopal Church in the U.S., many of us pride ourselves with the power and influence the laity has in church affairs, notwithstanding our hierarchical structure. Progressive leaders in the House of Deputies and on Standing Committees and vestries throughout the church have had a large and important influence on how we try to steer our way through the current challenges and obstacles posed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and many others in positions of authority in the wider Anglican Communion.

But when it comes down to it, many of our clergy (not to mention bishops) continue to run things like little Napoleons, at least when it involves matters of liturgy and worship practices. Yes, of course, many have considerable knowledge and expertise, gained through education and experience. Many, however, really do not, having spent little or no time in seminary studying liturgics under the guidance of someone thoroughly informed and educated in such matters.  But that is hardly the point (or perhaps one that has been lost long ago).

What I find most disturbing, even or especially among those clergy I admire most, is their all too easy confidence in what they need to do to discomfit their parishioners, especially when it comes to moving the "furniture" and "props" around and changing the "script" from time to time.   The assumption is that people in the pews are children and/or sheep that do not know what they need and must be herded and, at times, disciplined by taking away what comforts them. Christ, in their view, called us to leave our things behind and follow him, whether hungry or thirsty, and any one who clings to the status quo is to be mocked and vilified. And here we are, decades away from my first encounter with the Church Growth gurus advising the Lutheran Church, full of the seeds of destruction of the so-called Church Planters, some of whom genuinely want to reach out and bring the unchurched into entirely new communities, in which they can feel at home and invested in, but others are all too quick to engage in slash-and-burn agriculture, ready and willing to exploit the natural tensions between clergy and laity, and encourage both clergy and laity to expel or shun anyone who stands in the way of change (which is always translated as necessary "transformation").

Am I crazy or paranoid, just yearning for something that never was or whose time has passed, lost in a state of spiritual immaturity, have allowed myself to get lost all these years in my husband's shadow? Perhaps. But I wonder if I am the only one who came back to church not because it was cleansed of all the images and symbols and words I once found so off-putting, but because I wanted to finally explore all of them, with sometimes reckless abandon, to find, if I could, how they held such power for so many for so long, or simply how I could refashion or re-envision them in my own way of relating to God. And what about all those who have stuck with the church from childhood on, who have gone through all sorts of personal trauma and turmoil, relying on the words and rituals they know so well? How did the faithful become the enemies of the future of the church? The obstacles to personal and institutional growth and transformation?

Do you think I am exaggerating? Aside from the third-hand scuttlebutt I used to hear from around the diocese, and the countless books and conference materials Jim brought home from the experts, I have been alarmed by some of what I read between the lines in these articles. Their basic ideas are quite sound, their goals are certainly admirable and well founded in the Gospel, but if one reads and listens carefully, there are signs of increasing disrespect for laity or anyone who asks questions or in any way wants to preserve traditions and customs in the church.

Sometimes it is quite subtle. I think much of it comes from the new recognition that the cause is pretty much lost as far as reconstituting or revitalizing mainline churches in anything like their former forms. The anxiety and urgency for change seems to be increasing exponentially as church membership, participation, and financial resources decline year by year, with the consequences now hitting especially hard in the wake of the financial crisis.

I understand these feelings all too well - I lived with a clergy person who worried and despaired over it every day of our lives together and, in fact, spoke of it at some length during the two-hour drive we had together the afternoon of the day he died. I have read and thought and fretted over it myself for some time. I don't have the answers - or at least none that anyone wants to hear. It may be that church as we know it will die, just as predicted by many, and maybe, just maybe, despite all these last-ditch efforts at engineering a different outcome, it will be o.k. Maybe we cannot control the social and economic changes that have brought us to this juncture. Maybe we should not try, at least not if it means deliberately destroying what has been so powerful and meaningful to people in the past, even if our buildings are emptying and the heads bowed in prayer are getting grayer every day.

I do not want to project my own likes, preferences, and perceived needs onto my parish, wherever it may be, or on the church at large. I certainly am well aware of the dangers of doing that, have struggled long and hard over these issues, and will continue to do so. But on the other hand, I feel the need to stand up and ask some tough questions of those who now say, in effect, that we need to give up the notion of church as a social institution with any kind of regularity or influence in our daily lives and communities, that we must become bands of committed true believers, like first or second century Christians, freed of all connection to structures of power and authority, ready and willing to subvert the world order and focus on Christ-directed Kingdom building, as we should have been doing all along.

I "get" what many of you are saying - in fact, that is largely why I left the church in my teens and twenties, in retreat from the smug, exclusive social clubs of the 1950's and early 1960's, with our Sunday clothes, hats, and white gloves, and WASPish manners and superficial morality. But you know, if it had not been for those years, when I only attended church because it was expected of me, and my parents only sent me because it was expected of them, I most likely would not have been willing to try it again later, or had any notion that individual "spiritual journeys" are of little worth without the mutual support and nurture and call to action that comes from living in community.

I know we cannot turn back the clock, and it was not all that great to begin with. But both commonsense and the more I read about the long process of secularization in the West, the more convinced I am that we must seek a truly social solution to the problem of the decline of churches. Arguably the decline is not the result of dramatic changes in mores or beliefs but rather the fact that large segments of our society here in the U.S. (and in Europe) are no longer structured around religious institutions. Although Americans have maintained a great deal more religiosity than Europeans, for various reasons, I think we have been hit hardest by increasing mobility and dislocation from our original homes and families. As one sociologist has put it, we are now seeing "the effect of geographical and social mobility in breaking up dense communal relations, permeated by religion, and in breaking up the unity of the generations." (Professor David Martin, Cambridge lecture, 2005).

Perhaps the one thing from the past we do need to try to recreate are "dense communal relations, permeated by religion." By this I do not mean going off and living in isolated, segregated communities. But I do mean truly embracing the idea and goal of living as Christians in community the best we can in our diverse world. We may no longer have the same kind of social, economic, geographical, and family ties to bind us as did our grandparents and great grandparents. But we do have new ones, arguably as strong or stronger, even when "virtually" linked, than the old ones.

I am not sure how this may all play out in terms of the nuts and bolts of organization, meeting face to face, and what implications there are regarding property ownership and maintenance. But what I am fairly certain of is that we are shooting ourselves in the foot when we so cavalierly talk about dispensing with those who want the so-called "status quo" and when we turn our parishes over entirely to the whims and desires of clergy and bishops who back up their prejudices and frustrations with local conditions with so-called expert advice on what the church must do to survive.

Some of this cavalier attitude, or words that can be taken as supporting such an attitude, can be found in the following articles:

The Ending, Dying Church - Rev. Mark Bozzuti-Jones
Faith Matters, Where Did the Mainline Go Wrong? - Walter Russell Mead
Quit Thinking of Your Church as Family - Anthony B. Robinson
Expecting Too Much Too Soon - excerpt from this article by Dan Hotchkiss
Membership Down - Dr. John B. Chilton (with observations from Thomas Brackett)

While they speak compelling words of inspiration, what they strike me as doing is attempting to herd people off into smaller and smaller groups of "true" and zealous Christians, separating the wheat from the chaff. While the new and improved church may welcome people of all ages, colors, sexual orientation, and socio-economic classes, it has little patience with or desire to keep anyone who does not present herself or himself as a "mature" Christian (often taken to mean those who will go along with any and all change supposedly for the good of The Other, as dictated by those in charge, whether it be an individual or group that has taken over).

Although the goals are worthy, I wonder if we will lose something important if we become so impatient and frustrated that we are not willing to work at keeping or building communities "permeated with religion" that have a mix of ages and degrees of "spiritual maturity." And part of creating and maintaining communal relations must rest on some measure of stability in our liturgies and the theological terminology used in corporate worship.

Aside from the "process" and the policies that may ensue from it, I would hope that many of our clergy and consultants would allow a measure of "transformation" in themselves, which would respect laity in general and so-called "popular" religious practices in particular. If the Ladies, old or young, want to kneel before "The Lord" as they always have, mutter the rosary while the priest is speaking, well, why the heck not?

Let the Sunshine In

2010-04-25T11:08:00.002-04:00

A fond goodbye

2010-04-25T11:02:00.000-04:00

What Jim might have said had he had the time to say goodbye:

There is a rhyme by Clarence Day which says what I want to say: 'Farewell, my friends, farewell and hail; I'm off to seek the holy grail; I cannot tell you why; remember, please when I am gone, 'twas aspiration led me on; tiddly-widdly-toodle-oo, all I want is to stay with you, but here I go, goodbye.

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P.S. For anyone who wants ready access to albums with selected photos of Jim (same ones posted before - someday I will find better ones), they are public at Facebook here and here.

The use of religious symbols - Thoughts from a young seminarian

2010-04-03T15:38:00.003-04:00

Webster's Dictionary defines a symbol as "something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; especially a visible sign of something invisible." Etymologically the word 'symbol' can be traced to a Greek work which means to throw together or simply place together for the purpose of comparison. A symbol then is something through which two realities are related to one another; and in attempting to understand symbols we must try to come to some understanding of this relationship. But while this may provide an understanding of the function of symbols -- i.e., what they do -- it still does not define what they are.

Perhaps the best way to define the symbol is to contrast it with other representative forms that, like the symbol, stand for or point to something beyond themselves.

IMAGES (pictures, statues, photographs)
Images imitate what they represent; whereas symbols need not resemble the thing which they symbolize -- they need only to suggest or associate.

GESTURES (shrugging the shoulders, bowing the head)
Gestures express or embody their meaning as spontaneous, visible extensions of inner attitudes. While many gestures are symbolic, not all symbols are gestures or involve action.

SIGNS (dinner bell, traffic sign, smoke)
Signs announce some fact or give notification. Their role is practical or instrumental, they have an intellectual appeal and call for an immediate response.

Each of these representative forms may take on a symbolic nature and/or may point to some particular aspect of the symbol, but they do not point to the peculiar nature of the symbol nor are they definitive in every situation. A symbol is a representation which indirectly reminds of or refers to some other reality, serves as a vehicle for the conception of that reality, and actually and effectively participates in that reality. A symbol may be arbitrary in which case it is established by common consent as opposed to having a natural or historic relationship with that which it represents: e.g., a key represents power or possession or a cross represents the Christian faith. A symbol may be evocative, in which case its meaning is suggested by engendering certain attitudes or feelings rather than by any direct statement: e.g., the American flag. Since symbols need not imitate what they represent and since they usually refer to something that is in a different and higher category, they are ideally suited for expressing religious truths.

Baron Friedrich von Hugel was pointing to this in his statement, "I kiss my daughter in order to love her as well as because I love her." He kisses her because he loves her. Love requires an expression, a way of showing itself, of making itself felt; and a kiss is one way of doing this. But what of the other part of the statement? Kissing can express love, but can it create love? Probably not. But perhaps von Hugel is saying that his love for his daughter will grow as there are more outward expressions of it. The kiss is a symbol of love -- it enables him to communicate this love to his daughter who can in turn respond to it, thereby enriching that love. And at the time that he kisses her, the kiss is love.

Man lives by symbols; and it is probably true that it would not be possible to live in any real sense without them. Suppose that two people want to exchange ideas on a subject. Their ideas are 'spirtual' -- or at least non-material -- as is the desire to share them. These ideas, then, can only be shared through some symbolic device. The individuals can speak or write to each other. The spoken word is an outward and audible symbol, the written word an outward and visible symbol of the ideas conveyed by it. In the absence of symbolic device, the two minds will never meet. Indeed there are those who would posit that this capacity for symbolization is what distinguishes man from the rest of creation.

Man's conquest of the world undoubtedly rests on the supreme development of his brain, which allows him to synthesize, delay, and modify his reactions by the interpolation of symbols in the gaps and confusions of direct experience, and by means of verbal signs to add the experience of other people to his own. [F.W. Dillistone, Christianity and Symbolism, p. 23].

In the sacraments the Christian community has its peculiar symbols which are both formative of the community and necessary to its life. These symbols are the means of communicating to its people the reality and experience of the Risen Christ. Each of these sacraments is in a special way an extension of the Incarnation into the various needs and concerns of human life.....

James M. Jensen, Evanston, Illinois, May, 1972, from "A Five-Week Adult Study Course on Christian Initiation," a Project Submitted to the Faculty of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary

Into that dark night

2010-04-01T05:14:00.005-04:00

Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602, National Gallery of Ireland

Denial of St. Peter, Caravaggio, 1610, Metropolitan Museum of Art

And some day I'll know that moment divine....

2010-03-14T07:13:00.000-04:00

Sermon - Palm Sunday 2004

2010-03-12T07:13:00.003-05:00

Palm Sunday 2004
Grace Church, Utica

For reasons that are not easy to fathom people have always been attracted to the scene of tragedy. Years ago, in the American West, when a criminal was to be executed, entire families would gather with their picnic baskets to watch the hanging. We like to think that humanity has progressed beyond that, but I’m not at all sure it’s true. Even today within hours after a tornado cuts through some town, you’ll often find traffic jams as the curious drive through to see what’s happened. But then that’s quite tame compared to more recent pass-times. We send the men and women of our armed forces off to war, while people here at home pop popcorn and watch the actual battles on television.

Evidently we’re regressing. In the Gospels we’re told that most of Jerusalem gathered on Golgotha to witness Rome’s ugliest form of punishment. Crucifixions drew huge crowds. This day there are three— three men who have been convicted and condemned, tied and nailed to rough wooden crosses. The scriptures say that the people stood by watching. Even “....[Jesus’] acquaintances [and] the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching....” Jesus of Nazareth is dying. He is the one on the middle cross— he’s the preacher, the miracle worker, the prophet. Some believe that he is the Son of God, the Savior. But for now he is dying before the eyes of the crowd.

In a national poll taken several years ago people were asked what they thought would happen if Jesus came back. A majority felt that we would most likely kill him again, but that we would do it more quickly this time. Perhaps you find that surprising. People are drawn to Jesus, you say. We’re drawn to him ourselves. Yes, but there’s also something in us that is threatened by him, something in us that wants to hide from him, or maybe just get rid of him.

Early in Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus’ ministry has only just begun, we read that the Pharisees “...immediately conspired... against him, how to destroy him.” (Mk 3:6) Why? Why that kind of reaction? Jesus said it was because of their hardness of heart. You see people of that day believed that the heart was the center of thinking and feeling— not our heads but our hearts. They believed that the heart was the center of our will. Jesus said that their hearts had grown hard.

When he comes to offer us new life, Jesus also tells us that we have to be willing to change, to risk some of the earthly things to which we’ve always clung for security. That’s where our hardness of heart gets us into trouble. We tend to stiffen up at the idea of venturing out into something new. Often, we just walk away from it— and not necessarily because we place little value on our religion.

Remember that the two groups of people who were most opposed to Jesus were very religious people. The first group was the Sadducees. Their lives were centered in the religious institutions of Israel. The Sadducees had status and prestige, they were financially well-off, and they were absolutely inflexible in their interpretation of the Tradition. So when Jesus came into their midst and began talking about a relationship with God that wasn’t based upon the observance of the law but upon love and trust, the hearts of the Sadducees grew hard— they dug in their heels. They wouldn’t consider that kind of change because it would mean moving too far beyond the Tradition. It would also mean giving up a great deal of their own power and prestige.

The Pharisees were a little different. They were the legal experts— they knew Jewish law backwards and forward. They knew exactly what the law required and they would allow no less. On the other hand, neither would they offer any more— to God or to anyone else. They valued their own righteousness above everything. They expected recognition for it— from God as well as from other people. The Pharisees were also Israel’s first nationalists; if their first love was their own righteousness, then their second love was for their country. And they believed that their nation would be protected by God as long as the people would be faithful in observing what the Law required. So when Jesus came along healing a crippled man on the Sabbath day the Pharisees saw this as a threat to the security and well-being of the whole nation. Why? Because it was contrary to Jewish Law to do any such thing on the Sabbath.

There’s a story about the courtship of Moses Mendelssohn, a well-known 18th century Jewish philosopher. Mendelssohn was a small, hunchbacked man who fell in love with a beautiful woman. Several months after they met Mendelssohn visited her father and asked him how she felt about the possibility of marriage. The father said, well, the truth is that she’s very frightened of you, because you’re a hunchback. So Mendelssohn asked if he might see her just one last time.

He found her doing some sewing. She avoided looking at him during their conversation, which eventually came around to the subject of marriage. The young woman asked Mendelssohn if he believed that marriages were made in heaven. And he said, “Oh yes, in fact something very unusual happened to me. You see, when children are born, they call out in heaven, ‘This boy or this girl will get this or that one for a husband or wife.’ When I was born my future wife was announced, but then I was told that she would have a terrible hump on her back. And I shouted out, ‘O Lord, a girl who is hunchbacked will very easily become bitter and hard. A girl should be beautiful. Lord, give the hump to me, and let her be beautiful.”

The young woman was deeply moved. She saw Mendelssohn in a whole new way.

In assuming human flesh in the person of Jesus, God also embraced our human imperfections— our weaknesses, our failings, and our sin. He did it in order to destroy their power over us, and so that, by grace, we could become the people God calls us to be. Jesus experienced the depths of human suffering so that we could be assured of God’s presence with us in the midst of our own.

The Gospels tell us that the people who gathered at Calvary taunted Jesus, that they hurled insults at him: Save yourself! If you’re the Messiah, come down from the cross! The chief priests, the Scribes and the Pharisees said, `Yes, if he’s really the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross.’

Thank God he didn’t! And because he didn’t come down from that cross you and I can receive the strength to overcome our own hardness of heart. Because he didn’t come down we can see God and each other in a whole new way. And it’s that new way which is the true way, the one that will bring us to life, both in this world and in the next.

© James M. Jensen

Sermon - Epiphany VI - February 15, 2004

2010-03-12T07:13:00.000-05:00

Epiphany VI — February 15, 2004
Grace Church, Utica

Today’s Gospel lesson is one that is comforting, but also disturbing. It is a mixture of blessings and admonitions. What is particularly bothersome is that the conditions and situations that are blessed, don’t really seem blessed at all; those that carry warnings, are very enticing. This is something Jesus frequently does in Luke's gospel. It seems as if Jesus is setting out to do what one famous preacher described as “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” The word “blessed” can quite appropriately be translated as “happy.” The word “woe” is used as a warning. There is a sense of doom about it. Jesus seems to be saying, “you who are really in hard places are blessed.” And, “you who are comfortable are doomed.” And let’s face it, this isn’t particularly good news for those of us who have a tendency to seek comfort and entertainment in our lives. Is poverty a prerequisite to being happy? God forbid, is being well-fed a sign of doom?

There is a story about a person who felt each of the messages in this gospel in a very personal way. It’s about a man who belonged to a congregation in the United States that did a number of shot-term mission projects in Latin America. In this particular instance, the mission work involved the funding and building of a medical clinic in a very poor community. The people of this community had no access to medical care— not even the most basic emergency services. There wasn't even a place to buy aspirin. A few years earlier, one visitor to the community reported, “if a sick child doesn't get well because it is loved and prayed for, then that child doesn't get well.” It was this observation that motivated the leadership of the parish to build the clinic.

So, money was raised, parishioners volunteered their time and talent to make the trip, and the clinic was built. For the first time ever, this village had a basic resource for health care. Lives were saved and changed; and it was done in the name of Christ.

A family that lived in the village decided to thank the people who had come there to build the clinic. They decided to have a meal in their honor. This family was very poor. Their home consisted of three non-mortared walls of cinder blocks. The roof was corrugated metal, laying on poles, held down by rocks. The kitchen was outside and consisted of a hearth with a grate and a clay oven. There were no chairs, no table. The plates were metal.

In contrast, the food was glorious. There was chicken and rice, beans, well seasoned avocados, a fresh salsa, tropical fruits, and sugared pastries. There were fresh, hot, hand-made tortillas. And there was Coke and even a bottle of rum to celebrate.

During the meal this parishioner from the United States realized that the cost of the food was equal to more than six weeks of income for the people hosting the party. His first thought was to give the hosts the money as soon as the meal was finished; but as he thought about it, he realized that this would be very patronizing and would dishonor the hosts. The next thought was to give the money to the village priest so that later on he could slip the money to them. But again, upon reflection, he could only conclude that action would also be insulting. Finally, he decided to simply enjoy the meal with profound appreciation and gratitude.

Later, in reflecting on this experience, he said, “It was the greatest honor I have ever received. That family spent six weeks of income to thank and honor me. No one else has ever come close to that. I realized that these people were the richest family I had ever known. They are so rich that they could spend six weeks of income on a banquet to honor people that they would never see again in this world. I only spent about a month's worth of income to celebrate our daughter’s wedding— a marriage that has given me grandchildren who are the dearest things in my life. How poor and stingy I am. My hosts, on the other hand, are rich and generous.”

In Christ, God is like those poor people of that Latin American village. Jesus, Lord of all, makes himself poor, even to accepting the worst kind of death, in order to generously shower us with love and forgiveness. What do we make of this? How do we respond?

First, we must accept that God’s ways are not our ways. God’s wisdom seems foolish and contradictory to most of us. God freely and unconditionally gave us love and forgiveness in a lavish fashion— not because we did something for him. In fact God's giving of love and forgiveness coincides with a horrible offense against God, in Jesus’ death on the cross. How different from the way most of us are. We try to reward those who do us great service, often in the cheapest way possible. If we’re honest, we’ll admit that we tend to seek bargains in our expressions of gratitude.

Secondly, There is no way we can repay God for this gift of unconditional love. There is also no way that we can earn or deserve it. It defies logic. But, it seems to be God’s nature to love the worst, most notorious and evil sinner in history as much as the most sacrificial saint.

Finally, since we can't really understand it and really can't deserve God's love, we are called to sit quietly and enjoy it--- to accept it, humbly and graciously. It’s only as we accept that we are absolutely, unconditionally, loved by God and then live in that love, that we can begin to gain some understanding of Jesus’ teaching and then begin to live with some of the freedom of those rich, but poor people. Then, and only then, can the paradoxical, seemingly contradictory teachings of Jesus begin to make sense to us. Then and only then can we truly be blessed.

© James M. Jensen

Sermon - Proper 6A - June 12, 2005

2010-03-12T07:11:00.002-05:00

Proper 6A — June 12, 2005
Grace Church, Utica

In a recent church publication one of our bishops was quoted as saying that the Church today is more divided than a cut-up birthday cake. He went on to say that the various groups of people represented by each slice are all convinced that they and their cause, whatever it is, speak for God. The result, of course, is a great deal of turmoil, with a host of opposing forces all claiming to represent the cause of righteousness. It’s the work of one of the demons that has always plagued people of faith, a demon that gives us the desire to change everybody else into our image of what being a real Christian is all about.

A few examples....

You have the so-called pro-life people, versus the pro-choice people. The “pro-lifers” carry on vehement demonstrations against those they consider to be murderers and God-less heathens. The pro-choice group opposes those they regard as religious bigots who want to make their anti-abortion stand the only choice available.

There are the advocates of gay rights, in favor of the ordination of gay and lesbian people, who also believe that the Church should bless marriages or commitments between people of the same-sex. They tend to look scornfully on those whom they would characterize as narrow-minded biblical literalists who are still stuck in their homophobia. Then you have the people who continue to embrace the traditional arguments against homosexual behavior, who look at gays and those who take up their cause as shameful and immoral people who could not possibly know anything of God or of God’s will.

There are the Charismatic folks who think that the best way to glorify God is to hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer and otherwise let them fly-around at will accompanied by spontaneous utterances of various kinds. They tend to get disgusted with the stiff and formal worship of traditionalists, particularly their stained-glass music, seeing them as people whose spiritual lives are stunted and whose minds and souls have been hopelessly warped by professional musicians. On the other side of the spectrum you have the people who are moved and inspired by classical music, who view all those “turned-on Christians” as folks who have more than a few loose screws and whose musical taste has been forever ruined by “renewal music junkies.” However, they remain confidant that when we all get to heaven there will be no more sounds of “Kumbaya,” but only the glorious strains of Bach and Buxtehude, and Solemn High Mass with plainsong that never ends. After all, if God had wanted Folk Masses or Jazz Masses or contemporary Christian music, Jesus would have had a guitar and an electronic keyboard at the Last Supper.

And then, of course, there are the feminists, who want to change all the words we’ve ever used to talk about God, and drive most of the men in the Church over a cliff— following the example of Jesus when he healed a man who was possessed and sent all the demons into a herd of pigs. The arch-nemesis of every feminist is the traditionalist who is convinced that God can only be imaged and represented in male terms, can only be worshiped with the proper Elizabethan “thees” and “thous,” and the misogynists among them who believe that Adam would have been just fine in the garden if God hadn’t blown it by creating Eve.

And so it goes. If you think I’ve exaggerated things to the point of being ridiculous then I’d have to say you’ve been insulated from a great deal that’s going on in the Church today— for which you should probably be very grateful. But there’s an underlying issue here, and it can surface almost anywhere— within a parish, a family, in the work-place, for that matter in any situation in which we must live and work with other people. I’ll put it to you in the form of a question: How do we develop our own sense of values, have a commitment to them, and yet remain open to other people who may not share them? Can we be comfortable with ourselves and our own perspective on things, without feeling compelled to declare everybody else “wrong?” And an even more basic issue, are we often so concerned about being “right” that we are forgetting how to respond to people with love and respect?

These are serious questions, and they are becoming very critical for the Church as it attempts to respond to issues in our common life. I suspect that many of them are issues that will never be resolved once and for all, because no matter what decisions are made somebody or a group of somebodies is going to be dissatisfied and convinced that there’s been a big mistake.

Given the fact that there may never be unanimous agreement on some things, how do we, with so many diverse points of view, have any real sense of community? How do we continue to believe and give witness to the fact that we are one in Christ? We might take a clue from today’s second lesson, in which St. Paul writes to the Romans:

While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person— though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

The point is this: the only way we’re going to have any peace with God is to recognize and accept our reliance upon God’s grace and to let go of any silly notions of becoming virtuous through our commitments to the right things or right causes. It is not correctness— not political correctness, not religious or liturgical or theological correctness— that will make us worthy to receive the blessings of life in Christ; they always come as God’s gift, given to us freely, even though we are not worthy or deserving of them.

Let’s be honest. By the standards of the Sermon on the Mount there isn’t a single saint who ever lived who was free from sin. One commentator has written that: our self-derived morality is like the silhouette of a giraffe— lofty in the front, but far lower in the rear. And it’s true for every one of us. There isn’t a single Christian, living or dead, who has any room to boast. We all have our flaws.

The Gospel truth is that at the foot of the cross we all stand on level ground, and God has acted on our behalf in spite of our ungodliness. That means we stand on the same ground as those we oppose on any issue. It’s a truth that ought to keep us humble— humble enough to accept ourselves and each other despite our deep-seated differences. It should remind us that no human virtue entitles us to Christ’s healing, sacrificial love; and no human flaw is great enough to put us beyond the Lord’s reach.

If we believe that Jesus lived and died “for us and for our salvation,” then we need to come to grips with the truth that he did it for the pro-choicer and the pro-lifer alike; he did it for those of us who are straight and those who are gay; he did it for the traditionalist and also for those who live on the edge. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. May he give us the grace to see that we are all lost, and that he is the only one who can show us the way.

© James M. Jensen

Sermon Advent I -— December 2, 2007

2010-03-12T07:10:00.000-05:00

Advent I — December 2, 2007
Grace Church, Utica

Every so often, while looking through a magazine, you’ll run across one of those cartoons that shows a barefoot man with long hair— probably wearing a tattered robe of some kind— standing on a corner holding a sign that reads, “THE END IS NEAR.” We usually smile, and probably recall a previous experience with somebody we’ve always thought of as a religious nut.

Or you’ll be driving down the highway and see a sign along the way that reads: “JESUS IS COMING. PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD.” And we chuckle.

Most of us don’t think much about those things; we’re not particularly concerned about the end of the world, and we’re not very worried about Judgement Day. Events like the attacks of 9-11 shock and frighten us— but only for a brief time. For the most part, we’re just too busy, too wrapped up in our own agendas. We take solace in our belief that life, like “Ol’ Man River”, will just keep rollin’ along.

But every year, just like clockwork, Advent rolls around; and we hear these Gospel lessons that speak of the Lord’s second coming. So what are we to make of it? Is it something we should dismiss as the misguided idea of times past? Remnants of another culture and another world view? Well, it’s not quite that simple. Every week in the Nicene Creed we affirm and give assent to the Church’s Faith that Jesus “...will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” So regardless of what our feelings and opinions might be, and regardless of whether or not we’re comfortable with it, one of the central beliefs of the Christian Church down through the ages has been that the Lord will return, and there will be an end to human history as we have known it.

This morning I’d like to say not only that I believe it’s true, but that it has some important implications for how we live. In fact, you might compare it to the secret ingredient in a recipe— the one that in the final analysis makes all the difference.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says:

“For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

Now what’s wrong with eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage? Well, nothing’s wrong with it. The problem says Jesus, is that “...they knew nothing....” They knew nothing until the flood came. They knew nothing about what was going on around them, or why. In other words, they knew nothing about what God was up to; they had no awareness of God’s presence, and they took no account of God as they ate and drank and got married, and did whatever else they did. They were secular-minded people. They lived life as though it had no vertical dimension. They lived their lives cut-off from God and they pretended that there was no accountability.
Jesus goes on to say:

Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal togther; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

And here’s the secret ingredient. To all appearances the two men in the field will be alike. No difference will be apparent from the outside. The same with the two women at the mill— the way they work and the results they get will be the same. But here’s the difference: One goes about life with a knowledge of and love for God, and the other doesn’t. One eats and drinks and marries, and does it all with an awareness of the presence of God in his or her life; the other just eats and drinks and marries, and there’s nothing more to it. And while it may all look the same on the outside, it makes all the difference in the world in a person’s outlook and sense of purpose in life.

Just like food without salt or bread without yeast, you know there’s something missing when it’s not there. This secret ingredient, which of course is nothing secret at all, gives us a view of eternity. It makes us aware that all of life, everything that happens in it, has a particular end in view. That end is our salvation— living eternally in God’s presence. It also opens our eyes to the truth that God’s eternity doesn’t begin sometime later down the road. We’re already in it. And the choices we make each and every day determine whether or not our lives give witness to that truth, and whether or not we experience that reality..

Christians are called to live with that eternal viewpoint. It’s a spiritual reality. It’s not something your can weigh on the scales. You can’t dissect it with a scalpel. You can’t photograph it with x-ray equipment. One man, chopping weeds with his hoe, will have it; the other man, working just as hard and maybe doing just as good a job, may not have it. You can’t always tell. But it makes all the difference in the world in helping us to keep things in perspective, in giving us a sense of direction and motivation when things around us seem to be falling apart.

One theologian has said that preparing for the Lord’s second coming is a little like preparing for death. Well suppose one morning you feel a lump on your body. You go to the doctor and you find out it’s malignant. You’re told that at the most you have six months to live. Won’t that affect how you look at the farmland as you drive down the road? The way you savor your food? The way you talk to and with other people?

Well, six months, six years, six decades... not one of us knows how long we’re going to have on this earth. The truth is that this is the only day we know for sure that we’re going to have. So how small of me— on what could be my last day— to spend my time raking other people over the coals. What a waste, on what could be my last day, to spend it in anger and bitterness. How sad, on what could be my last day, to miss opportunities to do loving and thoughtful things.

On the other hand, what a privilege, on what could be my last day, to be living with a conscious awareness of God’s presence, both in my life and in the lives of those around me. What a breath of fresh air to be honest and open with people, loving and being loved, forgiving and being forgiven. What a pleasure, on what could be my last day, to respect the dignity of everyone I meet, no matter who they are or where they’ve come from.

This is the only day we have, for sure. What a privilege and what a pleasure to live it with a view of eternity— knowing that we are loved and valued by God for who and what we are, that God has a purpose for us, and always looks at our weaknesses with the compassionate eyes of His Son. And it’s that view of eternity and our place in it that can save us from merely existing, with no sense of purpose or direction.

Pray that the Lord will keep us alert and watchful, so that we’ll always be ready for Him— both today, when He comes in the common things of life, and tomorrow, when He comes in glory.

© James M. Jensen

In Praise (not) of Praise Music

2010-02-15T11:21:00.006-05:00

For better or worse, Facebook allows one to make short, sometimes snarky comments by simply joining a "group" that exists purely to make such comments. I'm afraid I did that the other day by digging through the groups and finding one that said "Praise Music Sucks!" While that was not likely to trigger as many yea and nay votes as Farmville or Mafia wars, I'm afraid it did touch a nerve among some who have enjoyed it or associate a particular song or style with a significant spiritual experience - some who graciously but pointedly (and correctly) called me out on it. To the good discussion we had there, I'd like to add the following.

It is no secret that I have strong, sometimes too strong, feelings about liturgy and music in church. It comes, in part, from the fact that for a very long time my only strong connection to church and religion was through music. My earliest deeply spiritual experiences (if I may call them that) were in places like Orchestra Hall in Chicago where, for example, I heard more than once Bach's St. Matthew's Passion (Georg Solti conducting, I believe, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Christa Ludwig, etal. singing). My tenuous faith in God was rooted in music, religious and otherwise. While there was (and is) much about my Methodist upbringing that gave me the creeps about organized religion and what-a-friend-I-have-in-Jesus piety, the one thing I loved about it was the hymns and the tradition of congregational singing (everyone sings - talent or no - from the pews - Lutherans I've known were pretty good at that, too). So for the decades when I dropped out of church altogether, toyed with atheism out of a sometimes militant anti-organized religion attitude (driven partly by the antisemitic and racist tones of some of that earlier Methodist upbringing, which in turn engendered a prejudice against U.S. Southern culture, which I associated with it), what kept me coming back time and time again was music and literature (some will recall my delving into Melville, Shakespeare, Nietszche, and Dostoevsky - ah to be young and to take oneself SO seriously!).

What finally brought me back to church was, first and foremost the birth of my son, the happenstance of meeting for LaLeche League and later a non-denominational children's play group at a Lutheran church (the family tradition of my first husband and father of my children), and an extraordinary Lutheran pastor. But what really hooked me for good was the liturgy and music - first in an oldstyle, sung Eucharist Lutheran setting, later in a somewhat Anglo-Catholic Episcopal setting with a deep tradition of Anglican music.

For many, many years now I have struggled with the way I have clung to "my kind" of liturgy and music - to the point where even Jim, who very much liked what I liked, thought I carried it too far. Yet as we increasingly talked about where we would live in retirement, the very first thing he thought about was where he could find one of the few progressive Anglo-Catholic parishes remaining or at least something not too Protestant as long as it had a "decent" music program. A top contender was the cathedral in Buffalo (and how we loved to tell people that we might retire there, of all places, rather than someplace idyllic further south or even north - though Maine was also in contention). I was happy to follow his lead, in that respect (although I looked forward to the opportunity to visit and maybe even consider joining non-Episcopal churches if only to feel I had a choice again or might want to escape the drama of As the Anglican World Turns).

But now all those abstract discussions and daydreams have come crashing into reality. Now I don't have to leave my parish family as I would have had Jim lived (a former rector needing to stay far away from his or her old parish - what's that called? oh yes, Good Church Order). So if I stay in this area, that may settle things as a practical matter - family is, after all family, blood is thicker than water or even liturgy or music!

But for me it will never be all about where or with whom I worship on a regular basis. I will always struggle with how much of my faith is grounded in what some may see as trappings or mood music and decor. Jim could weave it all into his understanding of incarnational theology, which saw the face of God in music, in vestments, incense, and above all in the Eucharist, but none of that superseded or diminished encounters with the face of God in other human beings (though I would add the non-human as well - possibly a bit of pantheist lurking somewhere) - it was all of one piece, and there was no question that for those who chose it, so-called High Church was not only compatible with mission and outreach and mutual support in community but was something that strongly supported and nurtured faith and spiritual formation.

While I may make the occasional snide remark about Praise music or other clap-happy developments (as I see them from my biased and admittedly not entirely open-minded perspective), I do so not simply to advocate my tastes and preferences or even to preserve them for others who feel the same way, it is because I am deeply disturbed by comments from clergy, bishops, and even the Presiding Bishop, about the need to move away from traditional Anglican liturgy and music to save the church, which as we all know (but Progressives are loath to admit it), is declining in numbers and influence daily, no matter how many spurts of growth here and there (mostly in large urban and suburban areas). We're supposed to all "open our eyes and our ears" and "discover" that in our multicultural society that most people are not "into" Anglican chant, Renaissance music, or even "modern" English church music with organ music and classically trained choirs, so we must give up what some of us love all for the sake of reaching out to others who are not like us.

Well, I've been down that road in the Lutheran Church and left because of it. I can't claim that it was right to leave a community I loved because it was overtaken (for awhile, at least -a bloody and awful ten years with something like 6-7 pastors, interim and "permanent") by the bishop's staff and their party line, based on focus group research of the unchurched (real scientific stuff like asking people with no experience with church or classical music whether they "like" or "prefer" it or might even be put off by it - without ever having been in a church and experienced it with others - and based on the assumption that someone is only going to walk into a church building based on a good marketing campaign aimed at convincing them it suits their spiritual and musical preferences and needs). I also realize that there is a great deal of truth to the notion that TEC and like mainline churches will, in fact, die if they insist on being exactly as they once were, in terms of music, liturgy, governance, and parish culture. But.... what disturbed me 15 years ago with the Lutherans and more recently with the Episcopalians is that our churches are peopled with those who are so invested in the institution that they cannot conceive of the possibility that maybe it should grow or die "naturally" and that in the meantime what should be nurtured are healthy communities, in whatever size or setting they find themselves, and that there is no global, quick fix or salvation (earthly) for all by certain kinds of programming.

What "works" in one place will not necessarily work in another. In some places people and events will produce entirely new ways of doing and being church, and that is fine and good. But it seems crazy to me that we cannot do better at respecting and leaving space for the old, as well. More important, it seems to me that churches should be, as much as possible, cleansed of those influences that manifest themselves in corporate-style image-making - everything aimed at the appearance of change, innovation, forward-thinking, along with increased market share, funding, participation, etc. To some extent every generation attempts to remake Christianity into what people think will finally bring about the Kingdom of God on earth or herald the Second Coming or whatever. People love to slough off the old, seemingly as if cleansing in the waters of baptism, being Born Again anew. But now in the 20th-21st century, with all our anxiety, super-rapid communications, and cut-throat Western competitiveness, pride, and can-do spirit, we seem to be shooting ourselves in the foot time and time again, scrambling to be the one with the best and truest route to the Future and back to God, but only producing the scattered debris of failed efforts and empty church houses from which the old church faithful have been cavalierly driven.

I guess I'm trying to get at two different, but somewhat related thoughts. First, I do question and struggle with my attachment to certain kinds of liturgies and music, knowing there must be people equally attached to or inspired by very different kinds, and in the end, it really should not matter what style one follows. Yet what I "like" is more than a preference and is deeply meaningful and an integral part of what I understand my lived out faith, the part that engages in corporate worship and private devotions, to be. How do I keep all that in proper perspective, what indeed is the proper perspective?

Second, on a policy level, when and where and how should I or anyone else stand up for what others seem blissfully ignorant of -- that some of the old traditions and ways continue to be meaningful not just to aging Baby Boomers like me but also to young people and others who are drawn to more vertical-style worship and the particular kinds of communities that engenders? It's partly a matter of preserving something I find valuable, but it's also seeing the music and liturgy issues being part of larger tensions we have in TEC due to what sometimes seems like rampant clericalism (many clergy taking it on, after years of blaming lay people for it) and the overall push-pull that exists in a hierarchal church such as ours. Of course the flip side of that is that sometimes the bullies are from the laity, as well. But then, when is it bullying, when it is speaking up for something one finds meaningful, how much mix can we all support and tolerate without it turning into mish-mash?

I don't have the answers to these questions, but I very much appreciate all those who have thrown in their two cents worth on it because they are questions I will continue to ponder. My natural bias and experience is contrary to preachers using the pulpit for anything but an intelligent and humane shedding of light on the Scripture readings, to bringing people together to the Table, to feeling and tasting the Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and having all that bind us together, enfold us in God's love, peace, forgiveness, and prickling of consciences to do more and better in our everyday lives, to reach out to care for and attend to others, to each day try to best lead the lives God calls us to live. As much as my mind loves to study the Bible, theological tracts, philosophy, science, etc. and relate it all the best I can, and listen to what others have to say about such things, when ideas and ideologies overtake the enterprise, when obedience to self-proclaimed leaders and self-styled prophets, to church growth gurus, to higher ups for the sake of their position and supposed authority become primary, then it is the music and poetry and deep-in-one's-bones meaning of the Incarnation that sustains and inspires me, despite all the rest.

Alas poor blog

2010-02-15T09:22:00.039-05:00

It's been a long time since I've been here. I especially regret having missed some wonderful comments and messages that I have failed to respond to. I've just had strange and mixed feelings about being here (as if this was a "real" place!) - my once semi-hidden, semi-anonymous outlet for my yearnings to write and make sense of things, the occasional rant, or simply a place to bookmark something I've read or want to read more about it. But then it suddenly became the place where my husband, Jim (the priest and hidden source of much, but not all, of my information, thoughts, and feelings about the Episcopal Church) resided, as well, or at least the fact of his death, the onslaught of memories, and the many people whose lives he touched. Then of course there were the sermons. Although I only selected a few (I still need to go through all the others, which mercifully have been saved for me - thank you Bruce!), to have his clarity of thought and expression in the same cyberspace as my often murky wordiness has been rather intimidating. So, I thought to move his words and maybe even the news of the funeral to another blog, but never found the time or the motivation to do so.

But these are, really just excuses - with some measure of truth to them - but nevertheless, as dear Lisa pointed out to me on Facebook last night, what I've really been doing is hiding out there. For the past three months [ironic salute to my mom - who remembers and invents countless "anniversaries" - yesterday, Valentine's Day was the 3rd month anniversary of Jim' death - oh how she would weep and wallow over that one], I've been reading or at least glancing at all my usual favorite bloggers writings, rarely commenting, and only occasionally marking up those that really grab me by posting them on Facebook. But writing - what I have wanted so desperately to do from the beginning - has scared me.

I didn't want to simply write on and on about Jim (did enough of that on Facebook as it was), not while I felt I had no control over what would pour out. It wasn't that I wanted to keep any of it private for my own sake (my personal life is pretty much an open book to anyone who asks and often to many who don't). It was that it seemed presumptuous and self-centered to just vent without some semblance of control and meaning-making for the sake of others. I recalled, among others, Kristen's remarkable blogging journey through her cancer (also influenced by this post) and Sharon's through the death of her husband and I didn't think I could come even close to the way they shared their anguish and joy through good writing. And also an NPR radio interview with an author, one I heard shortly before or after Jim's death - someone who had suffered a brutal rape, which she wrote about in both a memoir and a novel - explaining how what she wrote for publication was not for "therapy" (to the extent she needed that, she got it from actual talk therapy and, in writing, from private journaling).

Such thoughts were probably rather silly - me, a writer? not just another blogger out there blogging sometimes self-indulgently and sometimes making a little sense about something and sometimes just venting and not caring who reads or listens or that no one might? But having delusions of grandeur or whatever about wanting and needing to write well and not giving in entirely to the need to emote, vent, and process (i.e. "therapy"?), has been something of the fragile self I've been trying to preserve while taking my time weeping and gnashing teeth and alternately dreaming of life hereafter, either here on earth or someplace where I will find Jim again in some way. If I am to finally accept that I could still have many years left on this earth and the need to not only partially reinvent my everyday life but also embrace new possibilities, like maybe finally taking the time to read and write as I've always wanted, and emerging from the shadow of what seemed like Jim's constant criticism of my mental and verbal activities (which I only realize now was just part of daily friction between two vastly different personalities - not rejection or dismissal but simply natural weariness with something he appreciated in only small doses or at a distance when he could talk to others about my thoughts and accomplishments) - then maybe that self can grow and speak once again.

Well, he certainly was and is right about my over-thinking things. I should just write and stop worrying about whether it is the old me, the new me, whether I talk about Jim too much or not enough, whether or not any of the new or recent readers agree with my views. I am at least past the point of doing any deep or protracted weeping and wallowing myself (and, yes, as many, especially Jim, have liked to point out, I have some of my mom's flair for drama), so the rest will just be me, warts and all, the sometimes hot-headed, unrepentant, skeptical, and passionate person, ever stepping towards the Left in matters political, civil and religious, but often dancing or stepping outside everyone's boxes or just stopping by the roadside staring at the sun and the stars and letting the wind pass through and over me.

So, bottomline, thank you Lisa, I'm ready to write again. I have no idea what will emerge, will not wait to make any definite plans or try to shape this place one way or another. I just need to start thinking and talking again, and those who are bored or offended can, well, just change the channel or forever ignore.

The Altar Guild said I could take this sign home and keep it.

2010-01-24T17:57:00.000-05:00

I'm putting the sign on the table between the two birettas. Thanks to everyone on Facebook (sorry MP) for the great suggestions on how to work with this decorating scheme - changing colors in the vases and/or flowers according to liturgical season. I just wish there was some way to make use of the scarlet interior of the biretta on the right.

Funeral Blues

2010-01-20T18:15:00.002-05:00

Sermon

2010-01-15T13:41:00.002-05:00

EASTER VII — May 28, 2006
Grace Church, Utica

Life is busy with entrances and exits. People come go; they arrive and they depart; people are born and people die. In most societies both the time of birth as well as the time of death are marked with rites and ceremonies. Births and deaths are registered because they affect other people and have public importance. New arrivals are greeted and fussed over; new departures are prayed for and mourned.

When people depart this life, we no longer have direct contact with them. If they were close friends or loved ones, we mourn their loss. This was where the disciples found themselves following the crucifixion of Jesus; it’s why they felt so shattered and forsaken. His death was a literal hell for them because it seemed to give them a future without hope. But then death did not have the final word. Their faith was renewed and their hope reborn when they experienced the Lord’s resurrected presence. That renewal was important because those appearances would last only a short time. Eventually Jesus would return to the Father, the God from whom he had come. Ascension Day marks that time of the Lord’s return.

When we consider the Lord’s Ascension, the first thing we need to be clear about is that this is something that has to do with God. It is not about gravity, or the physical location of heaven, or any of that. It is about God. In fact, even though it comes toward the end of the Easter season, the meaning and significance of the Ascension is more closely aligned with Christmas. At Christmas we celebrate the Incarnation--- the Christian belief that in the person of Jesus, God assumed human flesh and lived among us. At the Ascension it all comes full circle. To use the words of the Creed, the one who ‘for us and our salvation came down from heaven,’ now returns to his place of honor with the Father.

At Christmas everything that is divine became fully human in the person of Jesus. At the Ascension, everything that is human, became, for all eternity, a part of the divine--- a part of who God is. You see, it was not the spirit of Jesus, or the essence of Jesus, it wasn’t the invisible part or the idea of Jesus, that ascended to the Father. It was the resurrected body of Jesus: a body that the disciples had touched, a body that ate and drank with them, a real, physical, but gloriously restored body, bearing the marks of nails and a spear. This is what ascended, and what is, now and forever, a living, participating part of God. In fact, we can say as a matter of faith that the Ascension changed who God is.

It is important to really take to heart what the Ascension says about being human. Sometimes we’re uncertain about the value of our humanity and what it means to be human. We’re sometimes unsure about our bodies, about our human passions and inclinations. We don’t like to accept our limitations, or the fact that someday we’re going to die. We don’t know what to make of the pain we go through in our interpersonal relationships, or the struggles, joys, and setbacks that always seem to be a part of our search for God. We are often baffled by the power that our feelings and emotions seem to have over us. All of these parts of being human, and so many others, we frequently treat as less than holy, as somehow separated from our spiritual and religious lives.

Taken together, the Incarnation and the Ascension remind us that being human is a good thing. It is an important thing, a wonderful and yes, even a holy thing to be a human being. It’s so important and wonderful and holy that God did it. Even more, the fullness of God now includes that humanity. The experience, the reality, and the stuff of being a person is so valuable that it became a permanent part of God's life.

This is not to say that everything about us or everything we human beings do is wonderful and holy. But it is very clear that in the eyes of God it is a wonderful and holy thing to be a human being. This is one reason we should treat ourselves, and each other, with care and with respect. The Ascension, the fact that God has brought into himself one who is fully human, stands as a reminder that human beings are sacred, and must not be taken lightly or abused.

The Ascension also means that God knows what it’s like to be a person in a very different way than God knows what it’s like to be anything else in creation. God knows what it is like to be a human being because God remembers--- and I don’t know any better way to express it. God remembers.

When we approach God, when we try to share our lives with God, it is important for us to know that we are dealing with one who knows and who remembers what human life is like, one who knows and remembers in a very personal way. God remembers what it’s like to hurt and to laugh, to pray and to hunger, to be lost and afraid, to celebrate and to mourn; God remembers what it’s like to live and what it’s like to die. God knows this in the only way that really matters as far as relationship is concerned. God knows because God has been there.

So we can approach God with both confidence and joy. When we turn toward God, we are not only dealing with the Creator of the universe and the ruler of all time and of eternity; we are also drawing near to the one who lived our life and shared our fate. We are coming near to one who knows us and who cares.

There’s an ancient story about God’s original problem: where to place his most precious possession--- his own image. He called three wise counselors, to listen to their suggestions. The first advised God to put his image on the top of the highest mountain on earth; but God declined. The second proposed that God should put his image in the depths of the deepest sea; but again God declined. The third suggested the far side of the moon; but God smiled to himself and said that even there human beings could reach it. Then God came to his own idea: “I will place my image where people will never think of
looking. I will put it into their hearts. There, it will never be discovered.”

The image of God, the light of God, is in the place where we rarely look: in our own heart. God’s presence is within us, not as a hiding place, but that we might discover him in the closest possible place. And so it was that St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “He withdrew from our eyes that we might return to our own heart to find him.”

You don’t need to search the heavens to find God. God’s presence and God’s kingdom are as close as your own breath. Indeed as Jesus told us himself, God’s presence and God’s kingdom are within you.

© James M. Jensen

Sermon

2010-01-15T13:40:00.000-05:00

CHRIST THE KING - November 25, 2007
Grace Church, Utica

Among the ways that people try to understand life and the world, and their own place in it, some have occasionally seen it as a continuing series of actions and reactions. For example, a young man asks a young woman for a date. Then he waits for her response: will she say “yes” or “no?” A politician campaigns for public office. How will the voters respond? Will he win or lose?

In reading the Gospels, we find that the reaction to Jesus, the response of people to his preaching and teaching, was always mixed: some positive, and some negative. On the positive side were the crowds, the common folk who were inspired by his words and often spellbound by his miracles. On the negative side were many of the religious leaders who saw Jesus as a threat to their own prestige and authority. They tried to publicly discredit Jesus with trick questions about the scriptures. Failing in that effort, they turned to a level of hatred and violence that resulted in the Lord’s crucifixion.

Right up to the very end, even in the Passion narratives, we have a story of mixed reaction. Pilate’s wife is apprehensive and fearful. She has a dream about Jesus and urges her husband to have nothing to do with these efforts to have him executed. Pilate’s own reaction is that of a coward. He listens to all the evidence and then washes his hands of the whole thing in an effort to absolved himself of any guilt. He believes that Jesus is the victim of jealousy and trumped-up charges, but he’s afraid of the Temple leaders and their ability to cause him trouble.

On that hill called Golgotha, the reaction continues to be mixed. Some people are just curious— they’ve come to watch what’s going on. Others make fun of Jesus and mock him. According to his followers he’s supposed to be a king. But what kind of king looks like such a failure? And if he really is a king, then why doesn’t he use some of his royal power? If he’s God’s son, then why doesn’t God do something?

One of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus is just plain angry. If Jesus is the Savior, then why doesn’t he save all three of them from this inhumane death? It’s quite different with the second thief; he responds with that plea of faith: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Times really haven’t changed very much. Human responses to the life and ministry of Jesus are still mixed. Some respond with fear and apprehension, some with cowardice, and some with anger and cynicism. Some people say that it doesn’t really matter what you believe about Jesus— or if you believe anything at all.

There are still those who mock, because they think faith in anything or anyone is silly. And the anger can be very real too. If Jesus is the Savior he claims to be, then why doesn’t he save us— save us from cancer and heart attacks, from poverty and prejudice? Why doesn’t Jesus do something about the mess that the world is in? How can he be aware of it and not act?

At the beginning of his ministry Jesus was confronted with temptation. Following his baptism he went off alone, into the wilderness, to grapple with the temptation to use his power and authority in ways that would give him huge crowds and notoriety, but which did not represent the Father’s plan or will for his life. That temptation returns, with the force of a thousand demons, in those taunts from soldiers, echoed by that first thief: “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself [and us as well]”

But the kingship of Jesus is not reflected in grandstand plays and the flexing of muscle. It is reflected in his willingness to share and experience human life in all its fullness— the good, the bad and the ugly. Jesus’ kingship is shown in taking upon himself all the evil, humiliation and suffering of this world, and then, by his resurrection, destroying their power. In the end his regal pronouncements are words of mercy and compassion: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

It was this compassion that was seen and felt by the repentant thief. There was no jeering or railing from this man, only a simple request: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Think about that request: Jesus, remember me. If Jesus's death was to be just that— his death, the end of everything— then it would have been pointless to ask him to remember anything. Dead men have short memories. But the repentant thief caught a glimpse of this king. He could see the divine nature of Jesus reflected in those words of mercy and compassion— a prayer uttered on behalf of all those responsible for his agony. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And that same divine love and mercy are extended to this repentant thief, as Jesus says to him: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

“You will be with me”— words spoken originally to a condemned man minutes before his death, but words that convey the promise intended for all who would become Jesus’ followers. It’s a promise that can bring hope to situations in our own lives that might otherwise seem hopeless. “You will be with me.” How can Jesus make such a promise?

In this morning’s second lesson from the letter to the Colossians, St. Paul wrote:

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created.... He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven....

Jesus is not just a good man and a great teacher. He is the Christ, the Messiah, the one who can save because he is the embodiment of God’s very being. And that means he is both Lord and King. He guarantees that no evil can have any ultimate power over us; his promise is that we will always be with him— today, tomorrow, and for eternity. That promise is renewed each and every time we come to this altar to receive him under the sacramental forms of Bread and Wine.

Leave your uncertainties and suspicions behind, and come to the King’s table. Receive in your hands the Bread of Life; and touch the Cup of Salvation to your lips. Live in confidence and in peace, knowing that his reign has only just begun, and that we will be with him and he with us— today, tomorrow, and for ever.

© James M. Jensen

Snow by night

2010-01-04T04:50:00.005-05:00

Grace Church Wedding

2009-12-20T13:28:00.012-05:00

Thanks to Jean and Tom Morris, who shared these photos of Jim celebrating the wedding of their son Adam and bride Katie this past year.

This, of course, is our favorite, at the reception before saying grace - Fr. Jim as only he could be, master of ceremonies and sometimes stand-up comic.

More reception photos in black and white:

(ok, the dress did not fit anymore - why didn't he tell me???? - but never mind, someone actually captured on film how I felt about da guy)

The Offering of the Priesthood

2009-12-10T20:47:00.009-05:00

Sermon given by Fr. Jim Jensen for the ordination of Fr. Jim Heidt (December 2007):

If ever there was a day for which fervent prayers of petition and intercession had been offered, certainly it’s today. And if perseverance is any measure of vocation, then there should be no doubt about the vocation of Jim Heidt.

The journey to this day took a few detours. Those detours stand as a cogent reminder of one of the reasons that discerning God’s will can be difficult. It’s because God often shapes and molds us in ways we would avoid, if given a choice.

But, here we are. We have come together in joy and thanksgiving, to join with our Bishop as he ordains Jim a priest in Christ’s Holy Catholic Church. As we prepare to do that, I believe it’s wise for us to pause for a moment to consider just what that priesthood is about.

The Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer tells us that the ministry of a priest is...
...to represent Christ and his Church, particularly as pastor to the people; to share with the bishop in the overseeing of the Church; to proclaim the Gospel; to administer the sacraments; and to bless and declare pardon in the name of God.

In the ordination liturgy, following the laying-on-of hands, the Prayer Book directs that the ordinand be presented with a Bible, “...as a sign of the authority given... to preach the Word of God....” Thirty-five years ago when I was ordained in the Diocese of Milwaukee, it was customary for the Bishop to present, along with the Bible, a chalice and paten as a sign of the priest’s authority to administer the sacraments, and, in particular, to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. This was referred to as the “delivery of the instruments’--- the instruments of priestly ministry. We used to joke about it, observing that if you considered the daily life of
most parish priests, it would be more fitting for the bishop to present a toilet plunger and a broom. Which is simply to say that ministry is one of those areas of life where there is often some incongruity between theory and practice. It’s just a plain fact of life that parish priests spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with matters that have nothing to do with priesthood.

But we come here today in the midst of Advent— a season of hope and expectation— so let us pray that the ideal is still something for which we can strive, and that it can, by God’s grace inspire Jim’s commitment, and ours as well, to the Church’s mission: to restore all people to God and to each other in Jesus Christ.

As I was thinking and praying about this sermon, there were two passages of scripture that came to mind. The first is found in the 20th chapter of Luke’s Gospel. It is the Lord’s admonition to: “Beware of [those] who like to walk around in long robes....” Clergy can be prone both to vanity and over-sized egos. The fact that we get to wear the fancy clothes and occupy the most prominent seats in the house doesn’t help in that regard. It’s but one of the reasons we need to remember that it is baptismal ministry that is primary and basic to the life of the Church, and it is only when and where clergy and laity both believe and embrace that truth that the mission of the Church can be advanced. Those of us who are ordained, while exercising ministries that are essential to the Church’s life, do so to support and empower the ministry of the all the baptized, the vast majority of whom are lay people. Without them, our ministries have neither context nor purpose.

The other passage, found in the 21st chapter of Luke, centers on the Lord’s description of a poor widow who comes to make her offering at the Temple. It’s a small offering— we usually call it the widow’s mite— and Jesus’ observes that while others had given out of their abundance, this widow gave out of her poverty. I believe there is truth here that has everything to do with ministry and priesthood.

Priesthood is about the offering of sacrifice. In the Old Testament it was the priesthood of the Temple, and it offered animal sacrifice. Keep in mind, however, that it was not the slaying of the animal that was at the heart of the sacrifice, but rather the offering of life to God; the slaughter was simply a necessary prerequisite. It was the offering of life, represented in the animal’s blood, that constituted the sacrifice.

For Christians, Jesus made a monumental and crucial change in all that. He offered himself. As the letter to the Hebrews reminds us:

But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Heb. 9:11ff NAB)

Priesthood has to do with the offering of sacrifice; but what we are called to offer is not the life of an animal. As disciples of Jesus, we are called to offer ourselves. Jesus did it perfectly and completely; that is why he is our Great High Priest.

The Christian priest stands before the gathered community to be an icon of the priesthood of Christ. So it is the priest who is given the privilege of presiding at the celebration of the Eucharist, offering the Bread and Wine to God that will become the Body and Blood of Christ, both to re-present the Lord’s sacrifice on the Cross, and to feed the People of God for their ministry in his name.

But the priesthood is given not only, and perhaps not even primarily, to those who are ordained; it is a gift given to the Church, to the whole Body of Christ. So the person ordained also stands before the community as an icon of its corporate priesthood. And priesthood has to do with offering, the offering of life, the living of life, to the glory of God. Life is offered and lived to the glory of God when it is lived fully, and when it is offered and available to God to be used as a vehicle of divine love and grace. Christian priesthood involves speaking the words and doing the deeds of divine compassion and forgiveness. In doing so we enable others to see in and through us the face of Christ, because we have become the hands and feet and lips of Christ in this world. This priesthood belongs to the whole Body of the Faithful; it is the priesthood shared by all the baptized.

And what do we have to offer? In and of ourselves, both lay and ordained, all that we have is the widow’s mite. What we have is our own limited and fallible humanity— imperfect and broken, flawed in so many ways, prone to making stupid and idiotic mistakes, seemingly unable to offer the perfection that God has the right to expect. But the incredibly Good News of the Gospel is that this is precisely what God wants. God wants the imperfect, broken and flawed human beings that we are, to reach out to the world, because each and every human being on the face of the earth is made of the same stuff, experiences the same challenges, and must deal with the same flaws.

It’s all symbolized in the widow’s mite— it seems like so little. But it’s not the amount that’s important, it is our willingness to offer who and what we are and have. That is our call; and that is how we exercise our priesthood.

James, my brother, today apostolic hands will be laid upon you for the office and work of a priest, to serve the Good Shepherd, the one who lays down his life for the sheep. Remember as you minister in his name, that there is only one Good Shepherd, and it is not you! You are called to serve him, you are not called to be him. Neither are you called to lay down your life for the sheep. Jesus did that, and he’s the only one who can. What we as priests are called to do is to lay our lives at the feet of Jesus, and to do what it is that he calls us to do.

Some might say that this is a bit of semantics, but I don’t believe so. The Church can be a bottomless pit of needs and wants, of people pulling at us from every side. And it can all look urgent. It can all look worthwhile. It can all look like ministry. We could give a thousand lives to it, and it wouldn’t be enough.

Priests are not called to save the world. That, too, has already been done. Our job is to lead people to the Good Shepherd, because that is where they will find green pastures and still waters. And he is the one, the only one, who can restore their souls.

The Lord asks you today, “James, my brother, do you love me?” And as you respond, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” he gives you your ministry: “Feed my sheep.” May the Lord bless, guide and strengthen you, today and always.

© James M. Jensen

Last glimpse

2009-12-04T16:16:00.003-05:00

Last photo of Jim, taken at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Chenango Bridge, Saturday, November 14, 2009, shortly before he was stricken with chest pains and died approximately two hours later.

(Sent by Lynda Helmer, who wrote: "This attachment is a photo of Jim. My brother was the photographer for Dorothy Pierce's ordination and, by the grace of God, happened to snap this photo. It was taken of Jim literally moments before he became symptomatic. I love the photo because it really shows him doing something he really loved to do....celebrate a new ministry.")

Rejoice in the Lord alway - Looking ahead to Gaudete Sunday

2009-12-04T06:07:00.010-05:00

Advent III-B — December 14, 2008
Grace Church, Utica

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances;
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

If we were to take our cue from the angels, then the closer we come to Christmas, the more our hearts will be filled with joy. The news the angels brought to those unsuspecting shepherds keeping watch over their flocks, was a message overflowing with joy. I think it’s fair to say that the heavens had not had as festive a celebration since the time of Creation.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that “Joy is the serious business of heaven.” The song of the angels testifies to that truth. But what about things here on earth? Joy may be fine in heaven, but there are a lot of circumstances and realities in this life that seem to place angelic joy above our reach. Beyond the light of Christmas lies the shadow of Good Friday. The baby born in Bethlehem, will become the man who will die in agony on Golgotha. Yes, God comes into our world on Christmas, but what kind of a world is it? Finding joy is not always an easy task. Some people do it by escaping into Santa-land fantasy. For others, however, it’s a depressing time— depression often brought on because of the contradiction they experience between the joy they hear about and the real world in which they live.

The Third Sunday of Advent has traditionally been known as “Gaudete”— a day to rejoice. That word, “gaudete” is a Latin word, the first word in the traditional introit or entrance hymn for today’s liturgy. On this Sunday we’re just past the mid-point of Advent, and we’re invited to anticipate the joy of Christmas. This mood is reflected in the lessons that are read, in the rose-colored vestments that are used, the flowers, and in the rose or pink candle on the Advent wreath. The more popular designation of this day, of course, is “Rose Sunday.”

In the second lesson St. Paul urges us to rejoice, always. We might well wonder how that is possible. If we’re among those who find it difficult to muster up some joy for a day or two at Christmas, how can we even think about rejoicing always?

Paul is speaking here not of a superficial kind of happiness, but of a quality of joy that is much deeper and more profound— an enduring joy more lasting than contrived ‘holiday cheer.’ He’s referring to the kind of joy that can be ours when we know in the depths of our souls that God is here and at work among us. It’s a joy that springs from the hope which is ours, a hope rooted in the certain faith that God’s purposes are being worked out in this world, and that God’s will will not be thwarted.

When you read about the early Church, it’s impossible to miss the joy that rings throughout every aspect of its life. In its liturgy, in its theology, and in its ongoing life even in the midst of persecution, the keynote is joy— the joy that comes from knowing Jesus as Savior and Lord. We’re told that the early Christian martyrs even faced death with joy— offering thanks that they were given the privilege of dying for the faith. They knew, not only in their minds but more importantly in their hearts and souls, that they were on the winning side. The battle had been fought, and in the resurrection of Jesus it had been won. They knew in their hearts that victory was theirs.

Today I fear that our religion often comes across to the world as gloomy and somber, because the world often hears Christians speaking more of sin than of redemption. Let’s admit that it’s tempting to spend our time wringing our hands over the darkness in the world and keeping ourselves in a perpetual state of despair over the state of the human race. But that temptation is a manifestation of our pride— the pride that continually tempts us to take sin more seriously than we take God’s forgiveness, to be overly impressed with our limitations to the extent that we virtually overlook the greatness of what God has done and is doing among us. That’s the reason we often miss the joy of the Christian life--- because our vision gets foggy and we lose sight of the fact that God is here and continues to work out his purposes.

Of course it’s true that God’s Son came into the world because of our sin. But that wasn’t the only reason. Christmas means more than simply the first tragic step to the Cross. For God to assume our flesh and share in human life was an essential component of the world as God envisioned it. In sharing our flesh Jesus drew all of humanity to himself. The early Fathers, the theologians of the Church, used to speak of Christ being made human so that we might share in his divinity. We might think of our spiritual growth in terms of allowing the divine spark in us to shine more brightly so that it can radiate more of the life and love of God.

The source of Christian joy is the mystery of God’s active, searching and creating love. If that’s true, then when God comes to us in the birth of Jesus, how else can we respond but with joy and thanksgiving? Paul can call us to rejoice always because he has known and experienced God’s liberating and transforming power in his own life. Paul had spent a number of years trying his best to rid the world of every vestige of Christianity; but his life was changed and he was transformed into an apostle and evangelist for the cause of Christ.

There is a painting by a Dutch artist, entitled The Numbering at Bethlehem. It depicts a typical mid-winter scene in a Flemish town. The streets are covered with snow; a wreath hangs over the door of one of the shops where a merchant and a buyer are haggling over prices. A young man flirts with a girl out on an errand. A farmer and his wife butcher a pig for someone’s dinner. A laborer struggles with an overloaded cart of firewood. In the background children are skating on a pond. A crowd of people are standing in front of the local tax office to be counted for the census and to pay their taxes. It’s a typical, everyday scene of mid-winter life in the village.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Numbering at Bethlehem. 1566.
Oil on panel. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium, www.abcgallery.com.

But if you look closer, you see down toward the bottom of the canvas, in the middle of the street, unnoticed by everyone, a humble man carrying a bag of tools, and leading a small donkey who is trudging through the snow. Sitting on the donkey, shivering from the cold with an old blanket thrown over her shoulders, is an unassuming young woman. It’s Joseph the carpenter and his young wife Mary, come from Nazareth to pay taxes. Emmanuel— God with us.

And isn’t this the way that God usually comes, not only on Christmas, but each and every day, moving in silently, without fanfare, coming into the midst of life in all of its ordinary and everyday events. Here is God— in the love and friendship that people give to each other, in the strong hands and hearts that hold us up when we’re about to fall, and yes, in the birth of a baby— here is God touching us and loving us and bringing us the joy of salvation.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances;
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

And I Saw a New Heaven

2009-11-21T17:07:00.008-05:00

"And I Saw a New Heaven" is being rehearsed by the Kingston men and boys choir in this excerpt from a documentary about the parish's efforts to raise funds for a new organ. Grace Church Utica people will know why this is particularly apt for giving you a flavor of what the music was like at the Requiem Eucharist. This was the main anthem sung at the Offertory.

The Eucharist of Christian Burial
In Thanksgiving for the Life of

The Very Reverend James M. Jensen
November 28, 1946 - November 14, 2009

7:00 P.M. November 19, 2009

Grace Church
Utica, NY

Prelude

Sonata in g (Opus 1, No.3) John Loeillet (1680-1730)
Adagio J.M. Molter (1696-1763)
Ave Maria Bach/Gounod (1818-1893)
Fanfare J. Cook (1918-1984)

Entrance Hymn 379 'God Is Love, Let Heaven Adore Him' Abbots Leigh
Entrance Hymn 208 'The Strife Is Oer' Victory

Psalm 46 Anglican Chant sung by the choir M. Luther (1483-1546)

Gospel Acclamation Gelobt sei Gott

'Be faithful until death, says the Lord,'
'And I will give you the crown of life.' (Rev. 2:10)

Offertory Anthem 'And I Saw a New Heaven' E. Bainton (1880-1956)

Offertory Hymn 625 'Ye Holy Angels Bright' Darwall's 148th

Eucharistic Prayer B

Sanctus (S 128) W. Mathias (1934-1992)

Memorial Acclamation (S 138) M. Robinson (b. 1943)

Great Amen (S 146) M. Robinson

Christ Our Passover (S 154) D. Hurd (1950)

Lamb of God (S 158) H. Willan (1880-1968)

Communion Anthems 'The Lord Is my Shepherd' T. Matthews (1915-1999)
'E'en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come' P. Manz (1919-2009)
He that shall Endure to the End F. Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
'Rejoice in the Lord Alway' Anon

Communion Hymn 516 'Come Down, O Love Divine' Down Ampney

Recessional Hymn 207 'Jesus Christ Is Risen Today' Easter Hymn

Postlude 'Fantasy in G Major' J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

Musicians

Bruce G. Smith, Organist and Choirmaster

Choir of Grace Church

Bertram Bookhout, trumpet; Janelle Bookhout, oboe; Sarah Hoffman, bassoon; Timothy Davis, organ; Elinor Hadity, soprano soloist; T. J. McAvaney, violin; Susan Sady, organ.

See also the Utica Observer Dispatch coverage of the funeral. (Don't miss the line from the homily about the "chicadee rector"!)

A long but wonderful day

2009-11-20T15:14:00.025-05:00

Yesterday was a very long but strangely wonderful day. I tried not to think about it beforehand - just kept pushing myself to try to get ready in time because there was a good chance (as Jim often half-joked about) I'd be late to his funeral, punctuality not being my strong suit. I also pushed out of my mind any thought of how I would get through the long hours from noon to 7:00, first at the funeral home and then at the visitation and reception at church. Although I can write up a storm and talk your ear off one on one, I'm truly an introvert. Put me in a crowd (more than three people), and I clam up, panic, or just get overly anxious. I know I can "handle" just about anything I put my mind to, but getting through most social occasions, especially involving people I don't know well or not at all, is quite a chore. Needless to say, I was not born to be a rector's wife.

All I wanted out of Thursday was for people to gather and make their peace with Jim's departure. For me, I was just going to plod through, be a trooper, and then let my emotions swell with the glorious music and, I hoped, cry my eyes out.

It didn't work out that way - not at all. For days now (and again today) I've had this big knot and deep ache in my gut. I have difficulty sleeping, especially from about 1 to 4 a.m. And at times I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. But yesterday afternoon and evening suddenly a great calm settled inside. I don't know that I did a great "job" greeting and meeting people at the church, but I was relaxed and truly enjoyed it -- looking into each person's eyes, reading their pain and concern, listening to their words, and marveling at some who told stories of their times with Jim. There were people from downtown restaurants and diners, waitresses and owners, who told me how much they enjoyed his good humor and cheer. There were children, young choristers and teens, both the boys and girls high school varsity soccer teams and their coaches, local Roman Catholic clergy, and those from various denominations who had been recently working with Jim in a series of community organizing meetings under the auspices of PICO. Parishioners came, not just from Grace but from area churches, whom Jim had listened to and supported in many ways, and there were all the Episcopal clergy and staff, with whom he had shared his wisdom and counsel and given much care. There were tears and many, many hugs. No one told me anything I did not know already about Jim and how he affected people, but it was as if the whole of his life outside of me and our family appeared in the flesh before me.

At the core of Jim's convictions was the Incarnation. He once explained Anglo-Catholicism to me as deeply rooted in the notion that we could see, touch, and taste God. The mystery of the Real Presence in the Eucharist was one and the same as the face of God we see in each and every one of us and in the greater Creation that surrounds us. Worship and prayer that involves kneeling, standing, crossing and genuflecting, songs and music, candles and incense are a physical expression of our faith, as is feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, and caring for those who are abandoned. All that somehow came together for me Thursday afternoon, in the vast expanse of sanctuary, with the votive candles and Sr. Mary Gabriel's icon, where Jim's body lay in the nave, as people came one after one to kneel beside him and say their goodbyes.

This was so unexpected. In the past, to the little extent I ever contemplated Jim predeceasing me, I was ambivalent about the role the church would have to play in his funeral arrangements and what I formerly thought would be the focus on his personhood as priest, which might well eclipse the man who was and is my love, my life, and husband. But what I experienced on Thursday was not an "either / or" but a richness of "and"s. Each person reflected a layer of who and what Jim was in life, and the glorious celebration that followed was for the man and priest who was one and the same.

Revelation

2009-11-18T15:50:00.004-05:00

Borderless World by Chuck and Peg Hoffman. Acrylic on canvas, Sept 2008, 30 x 30 inches.

Proper 28-B - November 15, 2009
Grace Church, Utica

From today's Old Testament Lesson we hear these words:

There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence.

And in today's Gospel reading, Jesus says,

When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.

Some Sundays in the Calendar of the Church Year have specific names attached to them: like Palm Sunday and Trinity Sunday. If we were to give this Sunday a name the most appropriate would be Apocalypse Sunday.

The word, apocalypse, in its Greek form, means "a lifting of the veil." So it's a word that has to do with disclosure and revelation. In one sense, of course, all of Scripture is a revelation. We believe that Scripture is God's Word to us, that through the scriptural writings, God's Word for us is revealed. But there is a more particular sense of apocalypse associated with the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, as well as the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament. The book of Revelation, traditionally attributed to the Apostle John, is a vision of "the end" of all things, the end of time. The graphic scenes of crisis and judgment, of the separation from good and evil, of devils from angels, of the righteous from the unrighteous -- with the monsters and beasts on one side and the saints and the Mystic Lamb of God on the other side -- it's all a dramatic and vivid presentation of the struggle that goes on between the forces of good and evil, both in our individual lives and also in the world at large.

If you think about it, every age, every historical period has these moments: wars, plagues, great disasters; the sudden end of an era, the conquest of a nation, or the fall of an empire. The movie Apocalypse Now revealed the horrors of war in Vietnam. A more peaceful and more amazing Apocalypse was the sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989; the whole world changed in a few months without a shot being fired. Then of course there were the events of 9/11, when we all wondered if the world might be coming to an end.

There are also more personal experiences of an apocalyptic nature. A crisis comes -- a loss, an illness, a financial setback, a death -- something that tests, reveals and uncovers our true character. In some instance, you might say that these experiences lift the veil on our soul, sometimes just to our own eyes, and sometimes for all the world to see.

While all these revelations may bring new and startling things to light, life nonetheless goes on. As the angel told Daniel, "Many shall be purified and made white and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand." Some people, some of the time, gain new insight. At other times, we continue to be left in the dark.

But what about the end, I mean the real, final end of all things?

In the opening chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, at the time of the Lord's Ascension, Jesus and his apostles are gathered together at a place outside Jerusalem. They asked him, "'Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? He replied, "it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority."

It was not theirs, and it's not ours, to know the dates and times. Yet scripture clearly points to the fact that there will be an END, a closure, a reconciliation of all things in heaven and earth. We see it in nature all the time; and we see it in human life as well. At least as far as our earthly life is concerned, you and I will come to an end in death. A hundred years from now, not one of us here this morning is likely to be breathing and walking around on this earth. And yet, as commonplace as death is, the death of each and every human being, is, nonetheless, a deeply moving moment, an apocalypse of its own before God. We know from our own experience, that everything in life has its own Alpha and Omega -- it's beginning as well as its end. Scripture affirms that this is true of all creation.

But scripture and the Christian Faith make one more important affirmation. In the grand vision of heaven found at the end of the Revelation to John, a voice from the throne proclaims "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end" (21:6). It is our belief, it is the truth that we know by faith, that the beginning and the end are not just events in time and space. The beginning and the end cannot be separated from the one who is, in His own Divine Being, the Alpha and the Omega. God is not only the source and beginning of life; God is also the One who stands before us at the end. That's because our end is not determined by the deterioration and obliteration of death. At the end, there is God.

Remember what C.S. Lewis told his friend, when he was asked what happens when we die. Lewis told him that death would be that moment when God throws his arms around us and says, "At last, I've got you."

And what will we find? We'll find that any questions and doubts will fade away, as we meet God face to face. Which is simply to say that when things fall apart and time runs out, God's love remains and God's eternity breaks in. The word to us is wake up and live; watch and pray! Jesus Christ is truly the Living End -- the One in whom there is a new Heaven and a new Earth, a City of God, where we will at last be home, safe and sound, forever.
_______________________

This was the last sermon Jim wrote. He finished it on Friday, November 13, 2009 - he was to preach it on Sunday, November 15,2009. I found it lying on his desk in his office today.

More memories

2009-11-18T11:34:00.006-05:00

Thank you Joan, for these

A few words

2009-11-17T07:30:00.010-05:00

I hesitate to add any words here, as I would like to freeze time and not go forward, leaving Jim's photo up top, his sermons below, and forever be silent here. Soon I must take his clothing and vestments to the funeral home so he can be dressed and prayed over. I don't want to go ahead, but I must, and am so very thankful for all who have been with me, near and far, to help me, the children, Alison, John, and Greg, and Bonnie (Greg's mom and Jim's wife for many years), to get through what lies ahead. Please continue to keep us all in your prayers.

I cannot begin to name all the names I would like to thank now, but I must name a few: The Rev. Sarah Lewis, who will be dressing and praying over Jim today; Bishop Skip Adams, who anointed him and prayed over him Saturday at the hospital, was with the parish and me Sunday, and will be celebrating the Requiem Eucharist on Thursday; Jim's very good friends and colleagues, Fr. John Wingert, who will give the funeral homily and Fr. George Greene, who will be assisting along with Sarah Lewis; Fr. H. Alan Smith, who left the ordination service to be with Jim and me at the hospital during Jim's final hours; Mike Killian and Lisa Firsching, our wardens, the vestry, and Bruce Smith, our choirmaster and organist and pastor and friend to us all. As for the rest, I'd have to name every member of the parish, including the choir, and a whole host of friends and family, near and far. Please know I have felt your love and support and it has meant so much to me.

I also wanted to give special thanks to my online friends and church community, especially Fr. Jonathan Haggar, Fr. Terry Martin, and June Butler (Grandmere Mimi), among others, who alerted so many to our tragedy. Jonathan, I cannot begin to tell you how much Jim must have appreciated you closing down your site at OCICBW on the weekend in his memory. That was such an incredible honor and something that must have made him leap for joy on the slab - seriously! For a long time I used to just occasionally send him links to your posts, which he enjoyed, but later he came to read you more regularly, when he could find the time. Jim also had a quick wit, an earthy sense of humor, and a special love for bog standard folks, as he was also from a working class family and community (Racine, Wisconsin and Newcastle, U.K. may have much in common). He recognized you as a priest's priest - one who knows all that us lay people can never quite grasp about what being a priest means to you, your sense of humility and unworthiness unspoken, the dutifulness to God, all his people, and their needs, never mind the slings and arrows of life in the Church. And you made him laugh, as you have done for so many, about things that might otherwise make us cry. In fact, thanks to you, just the other day when Jim was talking about retirement (which he so rightly feared he'd never make), he smiled and said that maybe what he'd want to do is blog like you and Fr. Christian Troll (this from the man who resisted reading blogs for a long time and, I think, dared not look at my own, and mainly only read The Lead, which he loved and appreciated a great deal, for "real" news and commentary - thanks to you, Jim Naughton).

There was so much more I wanted to say now - musings in the middle of the night (as I am still not sleeping well at all) - but I don't remember them exactly now. Someday maybe I can pull them altogether. For now, let me just say briefly, that what I've learned so painfully and beautifully the last couple days is how glorious is the Church, the Body of Christ (which, forgive my heretical views includes Christians and non-Christians). In the past I have been often critical of the institutional church (which despite the lowercase "c" encompasses "ours" and lots of "theirs"). While we may have gotten past the Crusades and the Inquisition, Christian institutions still have much to answer for in the way of harm they have done, rather than good. But, as I once was more cognizant of when I first returned to church 20 years ago, after a time in the unchurched wilderness, the church's flaws stem from our humanity, and to criticize church or religion in general is to miss the point that it/they are the best we have and what makes us want to be our best, as close as we can to what God wills for us. Religious communities may be declining in numbers in the West, but they are essential.

Ah... descending into my usual wordiness and drifting into netherlands. I don't have the right words for this now, maybe I never will, but these last few days, no doubt the most painful of my entire life, have shown me Christ incarnate. I used to give Jim a hard time about not wanting to talk much about theology, doubt, belief, etc. with me, which I nevertheless understood because his ESFJ just did not communicate easily or well on such matters with my INTP, and, more practically, he needed time off from the pastor gig once he got home. But the core of his Anglo-Catholicism - incarnational theology (yes, with the smells and bells but without the misogyny and homophobia of some) - is what I've been seeing and feeling this week. All I can say is, thanks be to God.

Jim at Reagan's Baptism, Grace Church, Utica, 2009, courtesy of the proud grandfather, Chris Williams

The Very Rev. James M. Jensen 1946 - 2009

2009-11-15T01:22:00.013-05:00

The Very Rev. James M. Jensen, 62, of New Hartford, Rector of Grace Church, Utica and Dean of the Utica-Rome District of the Diocese of Central New York, died suddenly November 14, 2009.

Fr. Jensen graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1969. He graduated from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois in 1972. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1972 at Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin. He served parishes in Greenville, MI, Joliet, IL, Delavan, WI, DeKalb, IL and Hinsdale, IL prior to becoming Rector of Grace Church, Utica in 2001.

Fr. Jensen also served the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York as a member of the Executive Board and the Standing Committee.

The funeral will be held on Thursday at 7 PM at Grace Church, Utica where a Requiem Eucharist will be celebrated by the Rt. Rev. Gladstone B. Adams, III, Bishop of Episcopal Diocese of Central New York . Calling hours will be on Thursday from 3-6 PM at Grace Church.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Grace Church Music Fund or the Society of St. Margaret – Haiti.

***************
UPDATE - From the parish:

UTICA, N.Y. The wardens, Vestry and congregation of Grace Church ask the Utica-area community to join us in prayer as we mourn the passing Saturday of the Very Rev. James M. Jensen, Rector of Grace Church since 2001.

Father Jensen died at Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, N.Y., near Binghamton after being stricken while attending an ordination service in Chenango Bridge. His wife Kathryn and members of the clergy were with him.

He was 62. Father Jensen was the 11th Rector in the history of Grace Church, founded in 1838 in Utica. Grace Church is located at the corner of Elizabeth and Genesee streets.

The Right Rev. Gladstone B. Adams III, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York, traveled from Syracuse to Grace Church Sunday morning to support the congregation at both the 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. Masses.

Bishop Adams pointed to the beginning of Sundays second reading from the letter to the Hebrews, which talks of priests standing day after day at their services. He said it reflected Father Jensens commitment to Grace Church.

He loved being a priest, the bishop said in addressing the congregation at the 10:30 a.m. Mass. He loved being your priest. And he loved you.

Bishop Adams counseled the congregation members to minister to each other in our grief.

Father Jensen was called to be Grace Churchs Rector in spring 2001 following an extensive nationwide search. He served previously at parishes in the mid-west.

During his 8 years at Grace, Father Jensen showed a deep love and commitment to the people of the parish. He gave great support to the music program, to the churchs Christian Education programs and to various community missions, which include a thrift shop on Devereux Street. He was extensively involved in ecumenical efforts with other Utica-area religious leaders and served in several diocesan-level roles including Diocesan Dean for the Eastern District, which includes the Mohawk Valley.

During his tenure, Father Jensen oversaw mergers with St. Georges Episcopal Church in South Utica and St. Pauls Episcopal Church in North Utica.

Susan Ulrich, Directress of the Grace Church Altar Society, had served on the search committee that helped bring Father Jensen to Utica.

He was an outstanding priest in all the capacities in which he served, both in the parish, and in the Diocese, Ulrich said. He guided the Altar Society members in their work through the myriad of liturgies over the year, always in a caring manner and with a wonderful sense of humor. We all feel blessed to have had him serve as our Rector, for what we now realize was much too short a timeframe. He will be missed immensely by all of us who had the pleasure of knowing and working with him.

Observer-Dispatch

Fr. Jim R.I.P.

2009-11-15T01:14:00.003-05:00

Jim was reluctant to publish his sermons, in part because he never thought he got them quite right. I mean to save as many as I can from his office, but here are a couple I persuaded him to send to me, which I could not publish before:

EASTER III — April 6, 2008
Grace Church, Utica

High on the list of life’s frustrations are those situations in which things have not turned out the way they were supposed to, and at the same time they’ve gone beyond the point that we can do anything about it. I’m thinking of those times when there isn’t another chance, when the damage done is beyond repair or when something has passed the point of no return. These can be painful experiences, that often have a note of finality about them. They compel us to admit that certain doors are closed.

These times serve as a dramatic reminder that as far as this life in concerned, there is little that lasts forever. It’s true about our physical lives, but it’s also true about opportunities, hopes, and dreams. None of them are immune from death. Just like any other death, when hopes and dreams die we grieve; and our grief involves a mixture of feelings— among them both regret and anger. I suspect that’s as good a description as any of the emotional state of the disciples as we meet them, in this morning’s Gospel lesson, on the road to Emmaus.

For some time now, they had been followers of Jesus. Their hearts had been warmed by his presence; they listened as he would preach and teach; they had learned a great deal from him; and they had seen him heal people— restoring them to wholeness and strength. They believed that all of God’s promises were about to be fulfilled.

But beginning with Palm Sunday, everything went wrong. Even before Good Friday came, it was obvious that Jesus was going to die— and not only would he die, but it would be the agonizing and humiliating death of crucifixion. In some ways one of the most haunting sentences in all of Scripture is that one we hear today: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

As with other deaths, when dreams die we mourn. We mourn our disappointments and our failures— we mourn our own sense of responsibility and feelings of guilt. In the Emmaus story it’s the disciple Cleopas who says, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” “We had hoped....” How often those words are spoken.

We had hoped that he would finish school.
We had hoped that the new job would work out.
We had hoped that the biopsy would be negative.
We had hoped that at least in the Church we would find
love and acceptance.

What do you do with a broken dream? The answer never comes easily. Sometimes we keep asking the question and the answer doesn’t seem to come at all— we feel as though we’re left to sink in disappointment.

But today we meet Jesus’ disciples on their road of broken dreams, and the miracle is that in the midst of it all God is preparing them for the greatest experience of their lives. They’re about to experience the Resurrection— they’re about to come into a fuller understanding of who God is and how God acts. Needless to say, they weren’t ready for it. They were too wrapped up in their own despair to even notice it at first. But God loved them enough to use the disappointment and bitterness that they felt to prepare them for that Resurrection experience.

Spiritual writers down through the centuries have described God’s way of hollowing out our souls that they can be filled— filled with God’s own life. And that’s exactly what happened with those disciples. Their grieving was a kind of hollowing-out so that they could be filled with the power and love of God.

They didn’t recognize Jesus at first, because they were so wrapped up in themselves— in their own despair and self-pity. Fortunately, they did have enough presence of mind to extend what in their culture was considered common courtesy to a stranger. They invited him to stop and eat and spend the night with them. And that’s when the reality of the situation could break through. Once they made the first gesture toward something and someone outside of themselves, the miracle could take place. Jesus broke bread with them, and they recognized him. Resurrection became real for them when they forgot about themselves for a moment and became concerned with someone else.

Life in this world is a curious blend of highs and lows. Sometimes we feel on top of it all because our hopes and dreams come true. And then there are those times when it just doesn’t work out the way we planned. We’re all entitled to mourn those broken dreams— but only for a brief time. Then life has to go on. When it does, there are always important choices to be made. It can be a life that is controlled by things that are broken and dead, or it can be one that finds its focus in the new opportunities that God provides. Resurrection is a gift that God offers— but as with any other gift, it’s one that we have to receive and accept before it can bring us any joy.

To believe all that— to believe in God’s power to bring life and hope out of the ashes of despair doesn’t mean going back over old ground to resuscitate the old dreams; it means letting them go so that we can embrace the new possibilities that God holds before us. The Emmaus story reminds us that God is in charge of things, and that death and destruction will never have the last word. But as usual, God is going to bring it about in a way that’s unique.

Resurrection is the Good News about life, but resurrection doesn’t come on our own terms. It comes when we’re open to the new things that God has in store for us— when we’re willing to listen and watch for them so that we can embrace them and make them our own

The joy of the Christian life is rooted in the truth that in all things God works for good with those who love him; the promise of the Christian life is that in the power of God’s Holy Spirit all things can and will be made new.

© James M. Jensen

Easter Day 2009

2009-11-15T01:10:00.001-05:00

Easter Day 2009

If you were an artist, and were asked to take brush in hand to do a painting of Easter, what would it look like? What would you see in your mind’s eye, as you prepared to paint? Chances are quite good that somewhere in the painting the sun would be breaking over the horizon. There something about sunrise, about the dawning of a new day that speaks to us of Easter. It’s a feeling so natural and so deep within us that we really expect Mother Nature to cooperate. If Easter Day should actually be overcast, or, heaven forbid, raining— or snowing— there’s something in us that wonders if God forgot to check the calendar.

Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you: Easter should be bright, cheerful, and overflowing with light. Dark, gloomy weather is all right, maybe even fitting, for Good Friday, but Easter means life, and life is reflected in light.

And yet, as logical as all that may be, it is not the way the story unfolds in the Gospel of John. Just a moment ago we heard these words:
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalen came to the tomb.... (Jn. 20:1)
“While it was still dark..”

John the Evangelist was an artist— an artist with words and images. He wasn’t using words casually when he began this account of the first Easter. He was painting a verbal picture for us, preparing us for what was to follow.

The contrast of light and darkness is a theme that John used throughout his writing. In the opening verses of his Gospel he tells us that God’s Son came into the world as light, that this “...light shines in the darkness...” and that the darkness has not been able to overcome it. But now, as we come to the end of his Gospel account, it looks as though darkness and fear have indeed gained the upper hand. Mark writes in his Gospel that when she came and found the tomb empty, Mary Magdalene fled in fear, because she believed that someone had stolen the body. And she was frightened beyond belief.

Fear— and the darkness that fear embodies— is a dominant theme in history. Fear is a common human emotion. Authorities tell us that infants have two primary fears: fear of falling and fear of loud noises. Gradually that number multiplies. We fear our fellow human beings even as we fear being alone. We are afraid of both the past and the future. We worry about what we can see as well as about what we cannot see. Anxiety comes on us about ourselves and about our loved ones. We sometimes dread living almost as much as we dread dying.

Mary Magdalene was apprehensive, she was fearful, and for good reason. After all, Jesus was her dearest friend, a friend who had cared for her as no one else ever had. Jesus had taught and shown her more about God than she had ever known before. He had helped Mary to understand herself. He had brought out the best in her, and loved her unconditionally. Because of Jesus, Mary’s heart and soul had come to share a dream of new possibilities for her life. But that dream came crashing down around her when Jesus was so violently put to death and buried. In the midst of her grief she at least wanted to pay her respects, anoint his dead body according to Jewish custom, and hopefully get some closure on this whole tragic mess. But now she couldn’t even find his body. What was all this about? What was going on? What was she going to do?

Mark’s gospel tells us that Mary fled. That’s natural, isn’t it? We often flee when we’re afraid. Then we become more fearful because we’re fleeing. The problem is that there is no escape from fear. We have to face it and overcome it.

We live in a time when people are fearful. Our national economy is in deep crisis. People have lost jobs. They’ve lost the security they thought they had for retirement. For many, the American dream seems like a cruel joke. The future is one big question mark. While people may tell their children that all will be well, deep inside many are fearful.

While this may not be a time for optimism, as people of faith we do have every reason to be hopeful. The Christian Faith is not a prescription for “pie in the sky” optimism. The optimist believes that better days are coming. The person of faith believes that God is coming. Our hope is not in the future, but in the God of the future, the One who holds history and all of us in the palm of his hand.

The Gospel is not based upon wishful thinking or blind optimism. The Gospel is rooted in faith and trust placed in God: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Sarah, Ruth, and David; the God of Mary and Joseph, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This God has a track record. Hope is neither an emotion nor sheer idealism. Hope is the blessing that comes to a heart and soul grounded in faith and commitment— the belief that the God who built a nation out of a band of suffering Hebrew slaves, who led them through the wilderness to a land of promise, who later rescued them from exile in far-away Babylon, and who sent from their ranks Jesus of Nazareth, whom we Christians know as the Messiah. This God is our refuge and strength. He is our Redeemer and our Lord. Ours is a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

What does resurrection mean? What does it look like? Listen to these words from Frederick Buechner:
I cannot tell you... what I think I would have seen if I had been there myself. But I can tell you this: That what I believe happened and what in faith and great joy I proclaim to you is that he somehow got up with the life in him again and the glory upon him. I was not there to see it anymore than I was awake to see the sunrise this morning, but I affirm it as surely as I do that by God’s grace the sun did rise this morning because that is why the world is flooded with light.

The disciples experienced the risen Christ so surely, so dynamically, that the change in them was comparable to what had happened to Jesus himself. They were transformed, given new life, and went forth to share it with the world.

In St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, there is an inscription acknowledging Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect. It concludes: “If you seek his monument, look around you.” If you are seeking sure signs of Jesus’ resurrection, look around you; look at history; look around you at the lives of ordinary mean and women that have been transformed and changed by grace and resurrection power. Neither the Church nor the New Testament scriptures would exist, if it were not for the absolute certainty of Jesus’ followers that they had experienced his resurrected presence. The fear that had threatened to overtake them was dispelled, and they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus had Risen!

The resurrection is not a fact to be proven. It is an experience to be shared. And when it is, your entire life will become a joyous and never-ending “Alleluia!”

© James M. Jensen

Jacques Ellul on Propaganda

2009-09-14T17:28:00.006-04:00

This was written some time ago (1965), by Jacques Ellul, who has been described as "a French philosopher, law professor, sociologist, theologian, and Christian anarchist." Not sure how I missed him back in the '60's and '70's when I was enamored with French philosophers, but it seems that he has some valuable insights into how most citizens respond to and filter the news:

In the world of politics and economies, the same holds true. The news is only about trouble, danger and problems. This gives man the notion that he lives in a terrible and frightening era. Man cannot stand this; he cannot live in an absurd and incoherent world (for this, he would have to be heroic, and even Camus, who considered this the only honest posture, was not really able to stick it to it); nor can he accept the idea that the problems, which sprout all around him, cannot be solved, or that he himself has no value as an individual and is subject to the turn of events.

The man who keeps himself informed needs a framework in which all this information can be put in order; he needs explanations and comprehensive answers to general problems; he needs coherence. And he needs an affirmation of his own worth. All this is the immediate effect of information.

And the more complicated the problems are, the more simple the explanations must be; the more fragmented the canvas, the simpler the pattern; the more difficult the question, the more all-embracing the solution; the more menacing the reduction of his worth, the greater the need for boosting his ego.

All this propaganda — and only propaganda — can give him.

… An analysis of propaganda therefore shows that it succeeds primarily because it corresponds exactly to a need of the masses. Effective propaganda needs to give man an all-embracing view of the world, a view rather than a doctrine. Such a view will first of all encompass a general panorama of history, economics and politics. That panorama allows the individual to give proper classification to all the news items he receives; to exercise a “critical” judgment, to sharply accentuate certain facts and suppress others, depending on well they fit into the framework.

News therefore loses its frightening character when it offers information for which the listener already has a ready explanation in his mind, or for which he can easily find one. Man is doubly reassured by propaganda: first, because it tells him the reasons behind the developments which unfold, and second, because it promises a solution for all the problems that arise, which would otherwise seem insoluble.

This and more from Jacques Ellul's Propaganda at Edge of Grace (emphases and ellipses from Edge of Grace). See also, a brief summary of Ellul's views on propaganda at Source Watch, and another excerpt from his book here.

Whether one is talking about health care in particular, politics in general, or even disputes within institutionalized religion, it seems that more and more people in the U.S. are falling into one kind of "all-embracing world view" or another. Those comprehensive views are not free of association with "doctrines," but they do seem to be the glue that holds everything together, that keeps their adherents from thinking critically about how or whether the pieces all fit, and drives the myopic quest to restrict one's news sources and relationships to those cocooned one's own "all-embracing" view.

Of course this is not limited to right-wing or conservative views. Progressives have their own mind-set and concerns that can spawn knee-jerk reactions and alliances, as well as their preferred news sources and relationships. But it seems that progressives are far less successful at integrating people into their global views and institutions that support them, perhaps because fear more often impels digging in and defending the status quo (and/or supposed Golden Ages past). How do they address these kinds of needs?

"he needs explanations and comprehensive answers to general problems; he needs coherence. And he needs an affirmation of his own worth."

Fearfulness about the end of Creation, global-warming, pollution, uncertainty, mystery, and insignificance in the face of corporate giants, do not provide the kind of comforting coherence or sense of order that most people crave. Or so it seems.........

Do you think he means it?

2009-08-18T13:30:00.002-04:00

Just received this in an email. Would like to believe him but... not much to show for this so far in terms of real action (though this was welcome, if late), and then there's the pesky thing about health care reform and his commitment to the single payer option. But, FWIW:

Dear Friend:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I appreciate your perspective.

Every American deserves equal protection under our laws, and neither Federal nor state law should discriminate against any American. The issue of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) rights has all too often been used to divide our country. We must treat all of our citizens with dignity and respect, and stand united in our protection of equality--a founding principle of our Nation and a moral imperative.

I continue to oppose a Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and support the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. We must also extend the over 1,100 Federal marital rights and benefits to same-sex couples, because every American should be able to visit a loved one in the hospital, transfer property, and receive equal health insurance and other employment benefits.

My Administration is committed to addressing a full spectrum of issues important to the LGBT community. We can reduce discrimination by strengthening hate crimes statutes; supporting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; ensuring adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation; and opposing discrimination in public accommodations. To combat HIV/AIDS, we need policies that support people living with this illness and increased funding for prevention, care, and research. I also support repealing the current Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in a sensible way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security.

Please join me online to learn more about my civil rights agenda at: www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights. Together, we can create a more open and tolerant society that protects and values all people.

Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

"The Game" and other good reads from Religion Dispatches

2009-08-15T08:35:00.004-04:00

Latest good reads, having discovered http://www.religiondispatches.org/

Excerpt from the book review "Why David Sometimes Wins: What We Must Learn From Cesar Chavez" by Frederick Clarkson:

Chavez compelled his top leaders and organizers to participate in Synanon’s fiercely confrontational encounter group technique he called “the game.” Ganz describes it as “an intensely political kind of group therapy. In emotionally aggressive sessions with 10-15 persons, participants verbally attacked each other to air problems” for periods of one to three hours.
Ganz concludes, “Chavez transformed UFW deliberations into a controlled, exclusive and judgmental process in which one’s loyalty was constantly on the line.” Chavez sought to make “the game” as central to the practice of the union as it was to Synanon. In the Spring of 1978, Chavez required 200 staffers to travel as much as five hours to attend weekly sessions.
The UFW degenerated into a “community of unpaid cadres, loyal to a single leader, governed by groupthink rituals, and enjoying the apparent efficiency of unquestioning obedience.” Ganz continues, “It’s unclear how Chavez hoped to reconcile Dederich’s vision with that of a democratically accountable union organized to represent workers—especially when the UFW thrived on diversity, contentiousness and creativity. In fact, he could not.”

In a sustained frenzy of political paranoia, Chavez fired or drove out the committed veterans who had brought the UFW so far. Control became concentrated in the hands of Chavez family members and dependents.
In short, Chavez “scrapped the strategic capacity that the UFW had taken years to develop,” and the UFW stopped organizing and “moved into the kind of advocacy, services provision and public policy work that other nonprofits had done for years.” Even after Chavez’s death in 1993, the UFW never regained its capacity for organizing. At its height, the UFW had 70,000 workers under contract; today that number is no more than 5,000 and the UFW serves mostly as a hub of a network of nonprofit agencies.
Ganz does not explain why Chavez came unglued or how Dederich came into his life and was able to wield such influence in the union. But in telling the truth about the matter, Ganz plants a red flag on the problem for those who come later. This is important in part because what happened with the UFW in many ways epitomizes what we saw in the 1970s, when many religious, political, business, and psychotherapy cults employing similar techniques wreaked havoc in the culture. Some of this continues to this day, including programs modeled on Synanon, and it remains a dark social and political undercurrent that most of us choose not to see, let alone address.

Other articles of interest and excerpts:

Women of Opus Dei Explain “True Feminism” By Kate Childs Graham

"In fact, these women are trying to suggest that what seems like sexism isn’t really that at all."

Lies, Intimidation, and the Insurance Industry: The Republicans Have Lost Their Minds By Frank Schaeffer

There is no daylight between the Republican Party, the health-care insurance industry, far right leaders like Dick Armey, the legion of insurance lobbyists, and now, a small army of thugs. All we're missing is actual uniforms, otherwise we now have a full blown American version of the Nazi Brownshirts.
No, I don't believe that these people are about to take over the country. No, the sky is not falling. But the Republican Party is. It is now profoundly anti-American.

Far-Right Evangelicals And The Campaign Against Obama
By Frank Schaeffer

Far-right evangelicals don’t see America as just another country, but as a battleground and springboard for world conquest in the name of Christ. In that the evangelical left and right agree: from Wallis to Dobson, they all believe that God is on their side; they may differ on precise issues but they all believe in some form of American exceptionalism.
The reason for this is that intellectually lazy political players of the kind who lead the evangelical movement crave power, or to be close to power, just like the people who run C Street. These are the same folks who have been putting together the so-called National Prayer Breakfast; they are the “professional Christian” hangers-on running around Washington DC putting together Bible studies and all the rest.

If they were just interested in serving Jesus they would be called to places like Peoria or the East Village once in a while. But they’re really only interested in being close to power; without having to do the hard work to actually run for electoral office or get boring bureaucratic jobs inside the government. The radical religious right are the ultimate camp followers. They’re latching onto government for a free ride while decrying it. They want to overthrow the present order from the inside in the name of God.

Sotomayor, Evangelicals, and Racism
By Michael J. Altman

Far-right evangelicals don’t see America as just another country, but as a battleground and springboard for world conquest in the name of Christ. In that the evangelical left and right agree: from Wallis to Dobson, they all believe that God is on their side; they may differ on precise issues but they all believe in some form of American exceptionalism.
The reason for this is that intellectually lazy political players of the kind who lead the evangelical movement crave power, or to be close to power, just like the people who run C Street. These are the same folks who have been putting together the so-called National Prayer Breakfast; they are the “professional Christian” hangers-on running around Washington DC putting together Bible studies and all the rest.
If they were just interested in serving Jesus they would be called to places like Peoria or the East Village once in a while. But they’re really only interested in being close to power; without having to do the hard work to actually run for electoral office or get boring bureaucratic jobs inside the government. The radical religious right are the ultimate camp followers. They’re latching onto government for a free ride while decrying it. They want to overthrow the present order from the inside in the name of God.

The Truth Alone WIll Set You Free

2009-08-10T21:24:00.001-04:00

"The modern world, as Kafka predicted, has become a world where the irrational has become rational, where lies become true. And facts alone will be powerless to thwart the mendacity spun out through billions of dollars in corporate advertising, lobbying and control of traditional sources of information. We will have to descend into the world of the forgotten, to write, photograph, paint, sing, act, blog, video and film with anger and honesty that have been blunted by the parameters of traditional journalism. The lines between artists, social activists and journalists have to be erased. These lines diminish the power of reform, justice and an understanding of the truth. And it is for this purpose that these lines are there."

Chris Hedges, from "The Truth Alone Will Set You Free"

Compare and Contrast

2009-08-05T12:16:00.005-04:00

I am working on writing up some thoughts on human sexuality that have been percolating since earlier this summer, but have miles to go before I can pull them together. For now, I would just like to share these excerpts from statements on human sexuality from the Episcopal (TEC) and Lutheran (ECLA) Churches. The first, is from the Episcopal House of Bishops Theology Committee, issued in 2003 (full text here). The second is the original April 2009 proposal to be considered by the Lutherans at their assembly this August (full text here).

As a caveat, I am not endorsing either one. Nor am I attempting to address the particular political contexts in which they arose, the persons involved in their drafting, prior or subsequent statements by other persons and entities within (or without) those institutions, or proposed legislation concerning same-sex marriage, blessings, or relationships. The point I want to make here is simply the focus on sexual conduct and particular "expressions" of physical intimacy in the Episcopal document and the much broader biological, psychological, and social context attempted by the Lutheran document. While the latter is not perfect, by any means, (it, for example, leaves room for various "traditional" views on same-sex relations and does not appear to adequately address the needs and experiences of single persons), it seems to go much further than many Episcopal discussions (at least those I've seen) in addressing human sexuality across the board, not just across the spectrum of sexual orientation and identity but also in terms of the broad range of circumstances and relationships in which sexuality may be implicated.

Please note that I am NOT faulting excellent work done by some (not at all -- more about Tobias Haller's Reasonable and Holy later -- one of the best discussions I've seen anywhere). What I am saying is that in at least some forums, it seems to me that discussion among Episcopalians often pays too much attention to sex acts and erotic desire and their relationship to marriage and what that has to do with ordination and the episcopate in our church - mainly due to the way our conservatives keep trying to frame the issue - instead of thinking more broadly in terms of what sexuality is for individuals and society as a whole. Sexuality take away procreation amounts to something much more diverse and significant than "erotic desire" - homosexual or heterosexual or otherwise. And at some point I think we need to look beyond the virtue and ideal of long-term partnerships, same-sex or mixed-sex, and look at where the values implicit in that ideal plays out in everyday lives, among children, teens, adults, and the elderly, among friends, lovers, spouses, and acquaintances -- also what role civil law should play in all this, recognizing that social and cultural values and institutions are not and should not be church-bound.

In short, I think that at least in terms of these two particular documents, the Lutherans are much more grounded in the real world, as well as further along in terms of a theological understanding of current realities (at least in Western culture). (And yes, I know there is another committee -- membership only recently disclosed --- working on a new statement for the HOB due to be issued in 2011).

So... FWIW..........

____________________________________________

The Gift of Sexuality: A Theological Perspective
Report of the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church - 2003

4. The Complex Gift of Human Sexuality

[4.0] Sexuality is a fundamental and complex aspect of human nature, which we bth use and abuse. As Christians we believe it is part of God’s good creation and intended to be a source of blessing and joy for human beings. We also believe sexual desire and behavior can be an occasion of sin leading to personal unhappiness and social disorder.

[4.1] The links between love and sexual pleasure testify to the way in which sexuality blesses human intimacy. Sexual intimacy has a public and social dimension as well. When healthy and well-ordered, our sexuality and sexual expressions contribute to the health and stability of individuals and society. Levels of sexuality and intimacy are factors in all human relationships and receive a range of expressions along a spectrum of relationships, from friendship to family in its various configurations. Within the context of marriage healthy sexual intimacy supports the couple and the possibility of children and their care and nurture.

[4.2] Yet this great and mysterious gift is often the cause of pain to individuals and suffering throughout society. Human beings are most vulnerable in sexually intimate relationships. Our sexual lives can be very fragile and complex. When disordered, sexual behavior can destabilize human society and become a means of exploitation and damage. The staggering divorce rate in the United States, the proliferation of serial marriages, and the increase of promiscuity, especially among the young, attest to the varied struggles many experience around sexuality.

[4.3] Why did God give humankind this wonderful and often overwhelming gift? If we thought it was solely as an aid to intimacy and pleasure, we might come to a particular set of conclusions. Alternatively, if we believed it was solely designed as a means of procreation, our conclusions might be of quite a different character. Our conviction is that God’s gift of human sexuality embraces all of these goods, which are perfected in a yet higher reality, namely, making present in creaturely life a self-sharing and mutual fidelity that images the divine life and nurtures and protects both partners involved and the well-being of the social order.

[4.4] Holy Scripture teaches that God gave sex as one of the means for married persons to share themselves with each other (1 Cor. 7:3-5); for procreation (Gen. 1:28); and to be an icon, on the human level, of the relationships between God and the people of
Israel, and Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:25-33).

[4.5] We also recognize there is a range of sexual identities among human beings, and a portion of the population experiences itself as having a homosexual orientation. As Christians, we affirm that persons of all sexual orientations are created in the image of
God, and they are full members of the human family. The Church vigorously denounces discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation, and we call upon all members of our society, and especially members of the body of Christ, to honor their baptismal vow to respect the full humanity and dignity of every human being (BCP 305).

[4.6] If we have correctly discerned God.s purpose in giving us the gift of human sexuality, and if there are those both within and outside of the Church who experience themselves as exclusively homosexual in their sexual orientation, difficult questions inevitably arise as to what patterns of sexual intimacy are most congruent with the holiness of God’s self-giving life. In particular, many are asking, with attendant pastoral concern, whether some forms of homosexual activity might be open to God’s blessing in ways the Church has not previously recognized. Does the Church remain persuaded that all expressions of homosexual intimacy are sinful, or are there conditions under which we might be able to recognize that intimacy as a source of God’s blessing, just as is true in some, though not all, expressions of heterosexual intimacy?

[4.7] If some, though not all, expressions of homosexual intimacy might be open to the blessing of God, might they also be open to the blessing of the Church? If so, which ones? Under what conditions? Would the Church.s blessing be considered in any sense a marital blessing? Parallel or analogous to marriage? Or something else? And if something else, what?

[4.8] If some, though not all, expressions of homosexual intimacy might be open to the blessing of God, and the blessing of the Church, is it thus appropriate for the Church to ordain as .wholesome examples. certain non-celibate homosexual persons? Again we would have to ask: which ones? And under what conditions?

[4.9] These questions are controversial in part because they challenge the Church’s traditional understanding of human sexuality which can be summarized as follows: Holy Scripture nowhere condones homosexual practice; in fact, a few passages of Hebrew Scripture and of letters of Paul explicitly proscribe homosexual acts; marriage is defined as the joining together of a man and a woman; marriage is the only appropriate setting for genital sexual intimacy; the norm for singleness, as for marriage, is chastity; but in the case of singleness that norm means abstinence.

___________________________________________

Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust - April 2009
Recommended proposed social statement for action by ELCA Churchwide Assembly August 2009

III. Trust and human sexuality

God loves human life so much that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). We know, therefore, that God’s love embraces us totally, including our sexuality. We also know that God created each of us not only as individuals, but also as people who live in a variety of social communities and contexts. In response to God’s love for us, we seek life-giving relationships with others and create social structures and practices that support such relationships.

The complexity of human sexuality

God created human beings to be in relationship with each other and continually blesses us with diverse powers, which we use in living out those relationships. These include powers for action, reasoning, imagination, and creativity.

Sexuality especially involves the powers or capacities to form deep and lasting bonds, to give and receive pleasure, and to conceive and bear children. Sexuality can be integral to the desire to commit oneself to life with another, to touch and be touched, and to love and be loved. Such powers are complex and ambiguous. They can be used well or badly. They can bring astonishing joy and delight. Such powers can serve God and serve the neighbor. They also can hurt self or hurt the neighbor. Sexuality finds expression at the extreme ends of human experience: in love, care, and security; or lust, cold indifference, and exploitation.

Sexuality consists of a rich and diverse combination of relational, emotional, and physical interactions and possibilities. It surely does not consist solely of erotic desire. Erotic desire, in the narrow sense, is only one component of the relational bonds that humans crave as sexual beings. Although not all relationships are sexual, at some level most sexual relationships are about companionship. Although some people may remain single, either intentionally or unintentionally, all people need and delight in companionship and all are vulnerable to loneliness.

The need to share our lives with others is a profound good (Genesis 2:18). The counsel to love and care for the neighbor is not a command that is foreign to our created natures; rather, reaching out in love and care is part of who we are as relational and sexual beings. Even if we never have sexual intimacy, we all seek and respond to the bonds and needs of relationships.

Sexual love—the complex interplay of longing, erotic attraction, self-giving and receiving defined by trust – is a wondrous gift. The longing for connection, however, also can render human beings susceptible to pain, isolation, and harm. The desire for sexual love, therefore, does not by itself constitute a moral justification for sexual behavior. Giving and receiving love always involves mixed motives and limited understanding of individual and communal consequences.

The sharing of love and sexual intimacy within the mutuality of a mature and trusting relationship can be a rich source of romance, delight, creativity, imagination, restraint, desire, pleasure, safety, and deep contentment that provide the context for individuals, family, and the community to thrive.

Though sexual love remains God’s good gift, sin permeates human sexuality as it does all of life. When expressed immaturely, irresponsibly, or with hurtful intent, then love—or its counterfeit, coercive power—can lead to harm and even death. Too often lust is mistaken for love, which in turn becomes the rationale for selfish behaviors. When infatuation, lust, and self-gratification take the place of the responsibilities of love, cascading consequences result that can be devastating for partners, children, families, and society.

In recognizing the many ways in which people misuse power and love, we need to be honest about sin and the finite limitations of human beings. We also recognize the complexity of the human and societal forces that drive the desire for companionship, for intimate relation with another, for belonging, and for worth. The deep interconnectedness of the body with the mind and spirit suggest the complexity of such situations. The biblical narratives both rejoice in the splendor of sexual attraction (Song of Songs 4) and are candid about the harm that can result from human sexuality (2 Samuel 11; 2 Samuel 13; Matthew 5:27–30).
. . . .

IV Sexuality and social structures that enhance social trust

Marriage: shelter and context for trust

Trust is a quality of relationship that, while never perfected, is nurtured and reinforced over time. The trust and mutuality afforded by marriage can make marriage one of the most beautiful, abiding, and transformative forms of human relationship. Depth of care, matched to an intimacy of touch, creates relationships much stronger than simple and momentary erotic interest. Sexual intimacy, together with promises of fidelity and public accountability, nurtures bonds that allow people to thrive and provides a rich context for the care and support of children.

Marriage is a covenant of mutual promises, commitment, and hope authorized legally by the state and blessed by God. The historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions have recognized marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman, reflecting Mark 10: 6–9: “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one put asunder.” (Jesus here recalls Genesis 1:27; 2:23–24.)

Lutherans have long affirmed that the public accountability of marriage, as expressed through a legal contract, provides the necessary social support and social trust for relationships that are intended to be sustained throughout life and within changing and often challenging life situations. In this country, pastors carry both legal and religious responsibilities for marriage. In carrying out these responsibilities, pastors hold and exercise pastoral discretion for the decision to marry in the church. In the community of the church they preside over the mutual promises made between a couple seeking the lifelong, monogamous, and faithful relationship of marriage.

Marriage requires constant care and cultivation. It is intended to protect the creation and nurturing of mutual trust and love as one foundation of human community. It is a binding relationship that provides conditions for personal well-being, the flourishing of the partner, and the possibility of procreation and the nurturing of children. It is also intended to be a blessing to the community and the world. Because of promises of fidelity and public accountability, marriage provides a context of love, trust, honesty, and commitment within which a couple can express the profound joy of relationship as well as address the troubles they encounter throughout life.

Christians believe that marriage is not solely to legitimate physical sexual intimacy, but to support long-term and durable communion for the good of others.23 It is a communion within which the play and delight of physical love are crucial expressions of the depth of trust, and in which lovemaking can be a tender and generous act of self-giving that tends to the joy and pleasure of the other.

The public character of marriage also implies a civil responsibility. Marriage is intended not only to protect the people who are married, but to signal to the community their intention to live a peaceful and mutually fulfilling life, even as they endeavor to strengthen the community in which they live. The public promises of marriage between a man and a woman, therefore, also protect the community by holding people accountable to their vows. Fidelity to promises blesses all who depend on this trust within and beyond the marriage.

The Christian commitment to marriage recognizes that sin enters all relationships, both within and outside the institution of marriage. All marriages fall short of intentions and difficulties are inevitable, both because of the different needs and desires of the two individuals, and because of sin, which places the anxious concern for self before the needs of the other. Infidelity to marriage promises betrays the intimate trust of the partner, the security of the family, and the public trust of the community.

Precisely because marriage is the place where deep human trust and needs abide, it also can be a place of great harm. Many experience neither love nor trust within marriage. Harming another emotionally, physically, or spiritually, including through the misuse or abuse of power, is a profound injury. It is also a betrayal and violation of the shelter and trust that are intended within the marriage relationship. Particular care must be taken to support and find safe haven for all who are at risk within a marriage. This includes those whose sense of self is destroyed or damaged within the marriage relationship and, therefore, whose ability to act or advocate for their own health and safety may be inhibited or lost.

This church recognizes that in some situations the trust upon which marriage is built becomes so deeply damaged or is so deeply flawed that the marriage itself must come to a legal end (Matthew 9:3–12). This church does not treat divorce lightly nor does it disregard the responsibilities of marriage. However, in such situations, it provides support to the people involved and all who are affected. Divorced individuals are encouraged to avail themselves of pastoral care, to be assured of God’s presence, forgiveness, and healing, and to remain in the communion of the church, recognizing the all-encompassing mercy of God.

This church will provide supportive pastoral care to those who are divorced. Further, it believes that those who wish to remarry may gain wisdom from the past and may be assured of the Gospel’s freedom, in the midst of brokenness and forgiveness, to enter into their new responsibilities in joy and hope. This church will tend pastorally to the special concerns of blended families, children of divorced parents, and to the particular tensions that may accompany family breakdown and transition.

Despite its awareness of the presence of sin and failure in marriage, the Christian tradition places great emphasis on the value of marriage for a husband and wife. It is in marriage that the highest degrees of physical intimacy are matched with and protected by the highest levels of binding commitment, including legal protection. It is in marriage that public promises of lifetime commitment can create the foundation for trust, intimacy, and safety.

Both the couple’s intent in their lifelong promises and the civil requirements for marriage are important. Mutual promises of enduring care and fidelity, made before God, allow a couple to open themselves to each other. They permit the sharing of profound and tender affection as well as deep vulnerabilities and anxieties. The legal contract creates a public arrangement within which a couple may safely and equitably share their assets and resources, arrive at joint decisions, anticipate children, protect and nurture them, and plan for a shared future.

The church’s historical experience supports its confidence that solemn promises, made before a company of witnesses who ask for God’s blessing on a man and a woman, have the power to create a unique framework within which two people, a new family, and the community may thrive. Consistent with that experience, this church has confidence that such promises, supported by the contractual framework of civil law, can create a lifetime relationship of commitment and cooperation.

It must be noted that some, though not all, in this church and within the larger Christian community, conclude that marriage is also the appropriate term to use in describing similar benefits, protection, and support for same-gender couples entering into lifelong monogamous relationships. They believe that such accountable relationships also provide the necessary foundation that supports trust and familial and community thriving. Other contractual agreements such as civil unions also seek to provide some of these protections and to hold those involved in such relationships accountable to one another and to society.

. . . .

V Sexuality and trust in relationships

Sexuality and self

Both sexuality and trust are fundamentally relational and grow out of the web of family ties and social interaction. Healthy, trusting relationships shape confident, healthy, and responsible people. We bring our failings, imperfections, and sin with us into our relationships, but part of living out the calling and freedom of the Christian in those relationships includes being the best we can be as individuals. This requires appropriate care for all aspects of a person, including the body.

We are sexual beings from the beginning of our lives. The ancient psalmist envisioned the divine mystery of our embodied lives long before science investigated our biological and genetic complexity: “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). The realities of our sexual bodies are visible in physical features and powerful in less visible characteristics.

This means much more than that we are born with male, female, or sometimes with ambiguous genitalia. Our cells carry sex chromosomes and our endocrine systems infuse our bodies with hormones. In ways that are still not fully understood, we develop strong gender identities at a very early age. While there is still much to be learned about the biological complexity of human beings, we have come to understand that this complexity suggests a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities.

Sexuality and gender are features of each person’s very being. This is both a discovery and a gift, and a perplexity and a challenge at all life stages and in all relational situations. The medical and social sciences continue to explore how the range of human sexual identities and behaviors are understood, cared for, and regulated in various cultures and religions.

Sexual capabilities and experiences are part of life for all ages and physical abilities. One can experience the sexual in music, art, literature, and the beauty of people and nature. One can take sensual pleasure in food, touch, sound, smells, and activities. One can find expression for the self and for sexuality through the spoken word, touch, dance, music, and movement.

One does not need to be in a relationship to experience one’s sexuality. Bodies do not suddenly become sexual at puberty and do not cease to be sexual when, for example, there are physical or developmental limitations, menopause, erectile dysfunction, or the absence of a sexual partner. This means that throughout our lives we need to find life-enhancing and appropriate ways of giving expression to this complicated dimension of ourselves.

We all have sexual identities that will find expression in our lives. We have sexual feelings that we are aware of and sometimes need to be negotiated when we are interacting with friends, courting a potential life partner, working closely with colleagues, or sharing our lives with another. Moreover, we must evaluate and respond constantly to the ways in which the sexuality of others is expressed. We must respond to sexual stimuli in the environment, including the varieties of human touch, which may vary from casual contact through flirtatious appreciation to invitations to intense physical intimacy.

A healthy sense of sexuality is related to having a healthy body image. This church teaches that caring for the body and following practices that lead to physical and emotional wellness are part of the stewardship of created goodness.41 It recognizes that a positive sense of one’s own body supports a healthy sense of one’s gender identity and sexuality.

Sexually mature, healthy individuals learn to be comfortable with their bodies and are able to entrust themselves to others. They call frankly upon others to respect and honor their privacy, their bodily integrity, and their wishes concerning welcome and unwelcome touch.

Sometimes, it can be very hard to develop and maintain positive attitudes about one’s body. Too many people struggle for a healthy sense of body as a result of experiences of degradation or shaming by others, including family members and intimate partners. This church will support all in affirming and reclaiming a sense of healthy sexuality.

This church calls attention to the danger of embracing standards of physical attractiveness that exclude many, including the aged and people with disabilities, and which distort the understanding of what it means to be healthy. The young whose bodies are changing and growing may be especially vulnerable to idealized and commercialized images of a “perfect body” that play on insecurities and destructive self-loathing.

A holistic understanding of the interrelationship of body, mind, and spirit challenges such narrow understandings of beauty. It enables us better to affirm the many dimensions of beauty and to celebrate human variety and particularity. This church is committed to affirming throughout life the value, beauty, and health of the human body and human sexuality. It is mindful that physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual wellness contribute to a lower incidence of at-risk behaviors for all people, including youth.

Gender and friendships

This church also calls attention to the immense value of friendship for people in all stages of life. Human life in relationship includes many different forms of rewarding human companionship. Friendships express our longing for human connection, touch, and growth. They allow space for self-revelation in the shelter of various degrees of mutual commitment and regard. The ELCA encourages and celebrates all situations and initiatives that engage people in relationships of friendship and trust, both inside and outside the church community. It also recognizes the importance of strong social support for friendships.

Many of our understandings of our own sexuality and sexual relationships may be formed or nurtured through conversations and confiding in friends. Friendships may help us develop a sense of our own beauty and the integrity of our bodies. As with parents or family members, we may learn from friends a sense of caring and safe touch in trusting relationships. Friendship, like family life, is a trust that can be betrayed, abused, and violated. It also must be recognized that dysfunctional friendships may be detrimental to health, development, and well-being.

This church calls people to be good, trustworthy friends who support one another in mature self-understanding and healthy companionship. Friends together have the shared power and responsibility to contradict demeaning and demoralizing messages from the media about sexuality and to overcome the effects of physical and emotional abuse. Friends also have the responsibility to respect one another’s physical and emotional boundaries.

Community and workplace relationships are spheres of human life in which friendships and companionship can and do thrive. They are also places where trust and distrust mix in complicated ways.

Sometimes friendships become sexual in the narrower sense of giving rise to overtly erotic impulses and stimulation. Erotic interest between adults open to a romantic relationship can be a desired part of the growth of trust and intimacy. Erotic interest can also create conflicts and danger. These have to be faced honestly when one or both of the people involved already have made promises of fidelity to another. The conflicts and dangers have to be recognized, also, whenever one of the involved individuals does not welcome a deeper and more complicated closeness.

Reintroducing distance into such friendships or breaking them off may entail an acceptance of loss that requires courage and maturity. The violation of trusting relationships for sexual purposes is offensive, unacceptable, and, when criminal, should be punished accordingly. A particularly egregious violation of friendship is acquaintance rape.

Commitment and sexuality

Human beings remain sexual creatures for life. As a result, they must cultivate and manage relationships along a spectrum that runs from casual associations to intense intimacy. The deepening of trust and commitment is a lengthy process that requires deliberate attention and effort. Recognizing this provides a way of thinking about how people come to select life partners and about their sexual conduct in that process.

Couples, whether teenage, young adult, mature, or senior, move from a first acquaintance into a journey of increasing knowledge, appreciation, and trust in each other. This journey involves spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical dimensions of self-understanding. When these dimensions develop at similar rates, trust and entrusting are established and secured. When they are out of balance, trust may either not exist or disintegrate.

As trust and entrusting are established in a relationship, physical expression naturally becomes more intimate. That is, sexual intimacy would be expected to follow the same pattern of growth marked by the other dimensions of mutual self-understanding.

For this reason, this church teaches that degrees of physical intimacy should be carefully matched to degrees of growing affection and commitment. This also suggests a way to understand why this church has taught that the greatest sexual intimacies, such as coitus, should be matched with and sheltered both by the highest level of binding commitment and by social and legal protection, such as found in marriage. Here, promises of fidelity and public accountability provide the foundational basis and support for trust, intimacy, and safety, especially for the most vulnerable.

This is why this church opposes non-monogamous, promiscuous, or casual sexual relationships of any kind. Indulging immediate desires for satisfaction, sexual or otherwise, is to “gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16–19). Such transient encounters do not allow for trust in the relationship to create the context for trust in sexual intimacy.

Such relationships undermine the dignity and integrity of individuals because physical intimacy is not accompanied by the growth of mutual self-knowledge. Absent the presence of physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual trust and commitment, such sexual relationships may easily damage the self and an individual’s future capacity to live out committed and trustworthy relationships. Fleeting relationships misuse the gift of sexual intimacy and are much more likely to be unjust, abusive, and exploitative.

Although this church strongly discourages such relationships, it nevertheless insists that every sexual relationship entails responsibility. All sexually active people have the responsibility to protect their sexual partner from both emotional and physical harm as well as to protect themselves and their partners from sexually transmitted diseases and the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy.

. . . .

Worship Spaces

2009-07-21T15:41:00.020-04:00

Lisa and Mimi have suggested we post photos of our home churches. There already are some buried here somewhere (as well as recent ones taken when Shel stopped by while traveling - here). But this reminds me that in my blogging backlog file I have photos from this past Easter that I never uploaded. So here they are, though keep in mind that the place is not really so dark (it just looks that way because I've yet to master my digital camera):

From the website:

Grace Church was organized as a parish in 1838. The first church was a frame building located at the corner of Broadway and Columbia streets. About twenty years later, the current site was purchased by Alfred Munson and given to the parish for “the new church.” With Mr. Munson’s financial backing, Richard Upjohn, architect of Trinity Church, NYC, was engaged to design the present building.

This is a parish of the Diocese of Central New York of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. Episcopalians are part of the world-wide Anglican Communion, a family of self-governing national churches historically related to the Church of England, who remain in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Our worship is focused in the sacraments, particularly the Holy Eucharist (also called Mass and Holy Communion). In the Eucharist we proclaim the great mystery of the Christian Faith: that Jesus Christ has died; that he is Risen from the dead; and that he will come again to save the world from sin and death. The Mass celebrates the sacred mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood. In receiving Holy Communion, we believe that we are receiving Christ himself, because we believe that Jesus is truly present in the consecrated (blessed) Bread and Wine; they become for us the Lord’s Sacramental Body and Blood.

Resilience

2009-05-28T17:28:00.004-04:00

It's been another tough week with a difficult weekend ahead. My troubles, however, are not worth writing about. But in the rush of things I have stopped and wondered about those of others. First, reading White Tiger for book club, a short and not terribly original novel, despite having won the 2008 Man Booker prize, yet it still raised some disturbing questions about survival of the fittest as well as shedding light on the complexities of post-European-colonial politics and culture.

Second, was an unexpected quick read of Elizabeth Edwards' new book, Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities. This was the kind of book that ordinarily might pique my curiosity but one I would never get around to reading. I had already heard more than I wanted about John Edwards' affair, both before and after Elizabeth starting making appearances promoting the book. But her recent interview on the Diane Rehm show caught me up short. There is depth and honesty and complexity to this woman that go beyond even what one might expect from her life story.

The book in some ways was not as revealing as the interview and good deal more painful, but beautifully written. I am glad I read it, and may read it again. It is not in any way a "feel good" or "inspirational" piece but rather a soul-searching memoir. One gets the feeling at the end that "resilience" is a quality she very much has striven for, yet remains elusive. Or maybe it is that my likely romanticized notion of what "resilience" should look and sound like is something too -- well, springy -- for what it really means to fight to live today and another through great tragedy, grief, and incomprehension. Resilience for Elizabeth Edwards is carrying on, not giving up, but that does not mean that things are ever tied neatly or firmly, past, present, or that unknown future.

Someday maybe I can go back and find some of the passages that struck me as powerful and insightful. For now, however, I'll just share this bit about the on-line grief groups, which was an important part of her struggle to deal with her son's death, and religion:

How rare it must be for someone to say, "I deserve this cancer; it is a proper punishment for my sins," or even more unlikely, "God was right to take my child, for I am not pious." We all have to redraw lines and rearrange our expectations of faith in these moments, and it is understandable that we do not come to rest with precisely the same understanding. In my online grief groups, there were Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists, and there were many with no faith at all. We had talked about graves and headstones and cremation and every manner of thing, and so we felt secure enough in this group to talk about this, the most important of things, the likelihood of eternal life and ultimate reunion. But those who needed, understandably to believe that eternal life was absolutely assured perhaps by some ritual in which their child had engaged surely hurt, by their strident insistence on th4e importance of those rituals, those whose children did not conform to their faith. So arguments began among people who had previously understood the rules of the group to be that we would, at all costs, protect one another. I had to wonder, as it happened, what God, looking down on His creation, would think of us. He would, I imagine, be perplexed that we understood so little of what He wanted from us.

Resilience, at p. 115 (Broadway Books: New York, 2009) at pp. 114-115

The Glory of Weakness

2009-05-18T12:53:00.002-04:00

Been experiencing much frustration, fear, and weakness myself lately, so this especially spoke to me when I received it in my email today.

The Glory of Weakness (by Sister Joan Chittister)

“In my weakness is my strength,” Paul writes (2 Cor .12:10). I never understood that passage nor did I like it until, struck with polio as a young woman, I began to realize that if I ever walked again, it would not be thanks to me, it would be thanks to everyone around me who formed the human chain that kept me human. When I could not move, they carried me. When I could not work, they found functions for me that justified my existence. When I could not find a reason for going on, they liked me enough to give me back a sense of human connectedness. When I could not cure myself they cured me of the clay of my limits and turned them into life again. They taught me the glories of weakness.

When I most of all wanted to be strong and like no other time in life found myself defined by my weaknesses, I began to understand the great question of life. If I do not need other people, what can I ever learn? And if I do not need other people, what is their own purpose in life, what is their claim on my own gifts when they need me as I have needed them. The moment I come to realize that it is precisely the gifts which I do not myself embody that make me claimant to the gifts of others — and they of mine — marks the moment of my spiritual beginning. Suddenly, creaturehood becomes gift and power and the beginning of unlimited personal growth.

But personal development is not the only by-product of a holy consciousness of creaturehood. The comprehension of human need, the awareness of human accountability also makes the massacres in Darfur and the poverty in Bangladesh both more understandable and more tragic. To expect God to stop such travesties, to wait for God to solve such sin begs the question of culpability, avoids the accountability that comes with creaturehood.

We do not need God to solve such things. There is no need, no value, nothing to be gained by God’s saving what we will not. “God hears the cry of the poor,” the psalmist reminds us. The psalm says not a word about God changing things, only that God “hears.” And remembers. And waits for us to become more than we are. Like infants born with the potential to be adults, we are each created with the potential to become wholly human, totally mature, completely spiritual people.

— from In Search of Belief (Liguori) by Joan Chittister

From this week's Ideas in Passing. [You can get "Ideas in Passing" by signing up for Sister Joan's email newsletter here.]

Easter - It's Time to Step into the Light

2009-04-12T07:45:00.004-04:00

There is an old story about a rabbi who gathered all his students together very early one morning while it was still dark. He asked them to pay attention because he had an important question to ask them.

The question was this: How could they tell when night had ended and the new day was dawning?

They thought for a while, and finally one student answered: “Could it be when you see an animal and can tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?”

“No,” the rabbi answered.

Another student asked: “Could it be when you look at a tree in the distance and can identify its fruit?”

Once again, the rabbi answered, “No.”

After a few more guesses, the students demanded to know. “Well, what is it then?”

The rabbi replied, “It is when you look upon the face of any woman or man and see that she is your sister and that he is your brother. If you cannot do this, then no matter what the hour, it is still night.”

That teaching is echoed in the First Letter of St. John:

“...I am writing you a new commandment that is true in [Jesus Christ] and in you.... Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. (1 John. 2:8b-9)

Easter extends to each and every one of us the invitation to come out of darkness and into the light of the risen Christ. It is this light that beckons us to stop loitering in the dark, to stop hanging around the graveyards of life, because it is a light that enables us to embrace hope. It suggests that we are too quick to pronounce the last word on other people.

When Jesus conquers death, nobody can be written off as a lost cause.

The two Marys went to the Lord’s tomb on Sunday morning in the same way that you and I, in our grief, might go visit the grave of a loved one. It was there that they experienced the miracle.

As the light of day began to fill the heavens, the son of God was rising from his grave. Jesus rose, he appeared to them and later to his disciples, and the power of Easter began to work in their lives.

In the coming days and weeks, those disciples were transformed from a disorganized band of people floundering in despair, into a unified witness, a powerful group of missionaries who set out to carry the message of Easter to all who would listen.

Everywhere that the good news was heard, the power of Easter began to work in the lives of other people, just as it had in their own. Beautiful things began to happen. Despair gave way to hope; darkness gave way to light; hatred gave way to love; sorrow gave way to joy — and it all happened because the power of Easter began to transform people and work miracles in their lives.

Those transformations and miracles haven’t stopped; they continue to take place each and every day.

Easter happens whenever we dry our tears, brush ourselves off and start over. It happens whenever we have an experience that renews our faith. It happens whenever light begins to shatter the darkness. Easter invites us to open our hearts to the risen Lord, and to let him do for us what he did for those first disciples.

The good news of Easter is that the risen Christ is in our midst ready to infuse the dryness of everyday life with the glory and excitement of God’s new creation. It is the good news that nothing need defeat us, because Jesus’ victory can be ours.

And that’s why Christians throughout the ages have gathered together on this day. In communities large and small, in great city cathedrals and small country churches, people gather to offer their praise and thanksgiving to God for the gift of Resurrection life. Come and join hands, hearts and voices with us, as we declare that he lives!

Alleluia!

[Guest editorial in the Observer-Dispatch]

Urgent prayer requests

2009-04-10T09:33:00.013-04:00

I don't know if anyone reads here anymore. I'm afraid I've barely kept up with others' blogs, let alone my own, of late, for various reasons, none of which are worth detailing. I'm just very tired and dazed but compared to most, I have every reason to count my blessings.

I just got off the phone with a dear, dear friend who is having a terrible time and asks that she and her daughter be put on a prayer list or prayer chain, especially for the next month or two. I won't reveal all the details but let's just say that it's nasty post-divorce stuff with her ex-husband -- she has been doing all that she was supposed to per the divorce decree about trying to sell their home by May, when their daughter graduates from high school and the alimony and child support ends but now he is trying to screw everything up, legally, financially, and emotionally. This is typical behavior from a man who has long been abusive, but at least since the divorce several years ago he was mostly absent from their lives (had nothing to do with his daughter, his only child, for years until a month or so ago). Please pray that they get through the sale of the home and can move away far enough so he will not bother them anymore, and finally find some peace and happiness. Please include Christine and Elizabeth in your prayers.

Pray also for others struggling with financial and emotional hardships, especially those with greater burdens and obstacles created by the current financial climate. The husband in another family I know was missing for several hours last night until they found him alone in his car crying. He has been unemployed now since last fall and is deep in despair. Please pray for M. and his family.

Then there is Rick, who just arrived in Bangkok to teach for 3 years. He was denied tenure in the public school system here and was unable to find any other work. He leaves his family behind here in New York and hopes to make enough money to send back to help support them.

And as always, there is Sophia, who is having a very tough time, as well, but for whom I hope and pray daily will soon find her way forward.

Thank you. This is a sad, difficult time for so many.

Dancing with the Stars - Part I

2009-03-10T12:41:00.007-04:00

This is what goes on around here while I'm working. (No, no, no -- it's not me -- the diet doesn't work that well).

Dancing with the Stars - Part II

2009-03-10T12:40:00.006-04:00

Big Fat Lies

2009-03-07T12:59:00.002-05:00

Webcast of lecture by Gary Taubes at Stevens Institute of Technology, Center for Science Writings, Hoboken, NJ, USA, 2/6/2008 -- "Big Fat Lies"

Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana

2009-03-03T07:21:00.000-05:00

Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana residency at Guideway Elementary School

I saw this troupe perform Friday night. They were wonderful. There are some other videos and YouTube and at the company's website (follow link on name above), but I really liked this one showing them teaching and performing for school kids.

Note remaining 2008-09 tour dates:

March 3, 2009: Hayes Performing Arts Center; Blowing Rock, NC; (828) 295-9627
March 6, 2009: Turnage Theater; Washington, NC; (252) 975-1191
March 8, 2009: Center Stager, Reston Community Cente; Reston, VA; (703) 476-4500
March 10, 2009: Quick Center, St. Bonaventure University; St. Bonaventure, NY; (716) 375-2494
March 13, 2009: The Egg; Albany, NY; (518) 473-1845

A Service of the Blessing of the Sea

2009-02-20T08:26:00.002-05:00

The Cathedral of All Saints - St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.

A Service of the Blessing of the Sea
February 1, 2009 at 5:00 p.m.

Today we celebrate this traditional service of the Blessing of the Sea. It begins with Evening Prayer, then there is a procession to the Water Front, where the prayers are offered for the ships that ply our waters and all who sail in them; for our Navy, for those whose livelihood depends upon the sea, and for all who have perished at sea. The Blessing of the Seat follows and the floral wreath [the shape of the Cross] is placed in the water. We then return to the Cathedral for a closing service

Assembling at the Cathedral for the procession to the waterfront.

The Very Rev. Ashton J. Brooks, Dean of the Cathedral (with biretta)

The University of the Virgin Islands band leads us singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" down the streets of Charlotte Amalie

Reaching the harbor

Prayers for "The blessing of the ships which ply our waters and all who voyage therein," "For those who have gone down at sea," "For the Navy," and finally "The Blessing of the Sea," which ends:

Almighty God who rulest the raging of the sea, stretch forth thine almighty arm to bless our waters and all whose livelihood comes therefrom. Give us a grateful sense of all thy mercies and bring us to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Preparing to place the wreath in the sea

The wreath is placed in the water

Processing back to the Cathedral with candles and flashlights, singing "The Church's One Foundation."

The Morality of Hunger

2009-02-20T07:59:00.001-05:00

I've recently learned, not to my surprise, that I am insulin resistant, a.k.a. pre-diabetes. I have a family history of diabetes but have pretty much ignored it until now because my fasting glucose tests generally have been within normal ranges. However, more recent and thorough testing has revealed insulin resistance as well a fasting glucose level that has increased toward the high end of so-called "normal" according to even ADA diagnostic criteria.

When reviewing these test results with a new doctor, I was told that raging hunger can be a symptom of insulin resistance, with the strange effect that one can eat and remain hungry or become more hungry after awhile. When I got home, I started doing some online research and found an amazing website called Blood Sugar 101 and its companion, What They Don't Tell You About Low-Carb Diets.

While it is not true that all diabetics are overweight or that all overweight people are diabetic or pre-diabetic, for those of us who are both or suspect that there is something strange about our hunger patterns, the information all over these websites is invaluable. Of particular interest to me were the following pages:

Misdiagnosis by Design: The Story Behind the ADA Diagnostic Criteria

You Did Not Eat Your Way to Diabetes

A Diabetes Diet is Different from a Weight Loss Diet

Another good article is the following from the Blood Sugar 101 update blog:

Hunger is a Symptom

Our fat-hating society has transferred all the loathing we used to feel for blatant displays of greed, lust, and pride to a single sin, gluttony. The rest of those erstwhile sins now have transformed into the characteristics of the celebrities we admire.

This has had the unfortunate side effect of making people who find themselves feeling extremely hungry believe that they are suffering a moral lapse--gluttony--rather than recognizing that they are experiencing a medical symptom.

But the raging muchies--the kind of hunger that leaves you at the open fridge shoveling in everything in sight--is a symptom. You can induce it in an otherwise normal person with a couple of tokes of pot. You also see it in millions of otherwise normal women a few days before they get their period.

And sadly, it is a symptom that often emerges along with insulin resistance in people who have the genetic make up that leads to Type 2 diabetes because insulin resistance is a prime factor that leads to raging hunger.

Read the rest here.

There are also links to other helpful webpages and sites, including this:

The Truth About Bariatic Surgery

and... I love this one,

Low Carb Friends Forum - "Food Porn"

Back Home

2009-02-20T07:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been back home with the snows for a week now and once again am buried with work and what life is left when I put it aside. We had a wonderful time in St. Thomas. Our hosts were wonderful to be with and generous not only with sharing their time and their home with us but also allowing us to do what we wanted most -- spend our days at the beach in Magens Bay soaking up the sun, swimming in the ocean, reading books and otherwise relaxing. We ate dinners in and out, attended church and Bible Study at the Cathedral Church of All Saints, went to see Milk at the local movie theater, and attended a Arts Society concert featuring the young British pianist, Richard Ormrod. We also had long talks about life, love, politics, church, etc.

When I go on vacation I take a big bag of books and select volumes more or less on a whim. Often, however, some connecting themes emerge even though my selections are pretty random. What I ended up reading this time were the following: To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (our book club's selection for this month), Brushed by the Butterfly's Wings by E. Scott Tapscott ("Scottie," a friend of our hosts). Taft by Ann Patchett, The Mission Song by John le Carre, and a good chunk of Leap by Terry Tempest Williams.

Someday I might write about some of the thoughts that percolated up during vacation, but alas there is much to catch up on here. Also, my husband and I have begun a strict diet in hopes of not only losing a lot of excess weight but also mitigating some of our health problems that may be caused by or aggravated by the weight and poor nutrition.

I also hope that it will give me more energy, help me get back to exercising (I love to swim laps but the thought of getting dressed, driving to the pool, and appearing in a bathing suit has kept me away for most of the past year), and taking longer walks with our dog, Gracie. Despite what had to be the dream vacation of all time, I am still quite depressed -- not the jump off a building kind (I've learned over the years not to let my mind take me to that place, though sometimes I come close) but rather just feeling tired, flat, dull, irritable, with repressed anger and much cynicism, all aggravated by sleeping too much (been sleeping 12 hours or more at night, even on vacation), going to work in the morning without getting up and getting dressed until late in the day, rarely going out and feeling anxious and uncomfortable around people when I do, taking way too much time to get ready to do anything, etc. If I stop to think about how I feel and have been living, I go to darker places of frustration, hopelessness, and self-loathing, so I try not to think too much -- which causes me to sleep more and more or run to bed and try to. I've been back on anti-depressants now for several months, but that hasn't seemed to have helped much (though I suspect I might be much worse off without them).

So... here's hoping that things will get better with the new diet regime and what I've been learning about blood sugar levels. I've been plotting in my mind a new daily routine that would include getting up early to go walk at the local shopping mall (they open early in the winter for people to walk) followed by mass at St. Margaret's and spending some more time with the nuns, who will be leaving next summer, and then maybe trying to get away to swim at lunch time. But... it's been a week so far and it hasn't happened yet and there is a lot of work to catch up on and to start preparing for attending and presenting at my employer's annual conference in Seattle next month, and there are books piling up to read, and soccer games and practices and tournaments to attend and.... not to mention getting caught up someday with the goings on in the blogosphere (though not sure how much of the As the Anglican World Turns I need to read up on -- like most soap operas, one can pretty much jump in the middle after being gone for weeks and still not miss much). So..... that's the update. La plus ca change and all that.

Megan's Bay St. Thomas V.I.

2009-01-30T15:59:00.007-05:00

Well, if this can't cure depression, I don't know what can. God willing and the U.S. Air flights safely landing, this is where I will soon be. Meanwhile, we're still digging out of the latest snowfall here.

Abigal - R.I.P.

2009-01-30T15:53:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of Abigal. This is Tuxedo, her teenaged cat mate, who is now is all alone with his humans. Abigal died yesterday. She is very much missed.

Inauguration Day Unity - Mad Ones Were One! - Frozen Nut to Frozen Nut

2009-01-22T07:15:00.005-05:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Inauguration Day Unity

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Until I can pull together my own thoughts and feelings about the Day, I think this report by John Oliver will have to do. It's funny to watch this because it couldn't have been too far from where we were.

Update: Just saw this for the first time. Love you Colbert! (Amazing considering that the woman right next to me really did have heavy black eye makeup running down her face). He's wickedly funny but, at the same time, so truthful.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Stephen's Inauguration Breakdown

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

And finally, on a more serious note, Rachel:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy