Sound track for my death bed

How did people ever manage to die without being able to arrange the proper tunes for their exit strategy? Listening on my way in to work this morning to the piece commonly known as (but no more, by me) Albinoni's Adagio, I was caught up in its beauty and realized that this is what I want to hear as I leave this world, to soothe and to serenade and to sweep away my soul in a swirl. Our trusty morning explainer informed his listeners that this was not really a baroque piece at all, but had been finished by a twentieth century composer based on a few fragments of a piece by Albinoni. Rushing in to read more about this, I learned that Remo Giazotto was researching Albinoni, most of whose archival material had been destroyed in the bombing of Dresden, when he discovered a manuscript with the bass line and six bars of melody (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remo_Giazotto). Apparently this was in 1945, though on Wikipedia's Albinoni page it says it was done in 1958, the year of my birth. But in any case, it is interesting that this work, along with Messiaen's Quartet for the End of the Age, also written out of the devastation of WWII, speaks to me so deeply. I guess I am truly a baby boomer, a child who emerged from the fragments of that broken world. Only to crawl through the rubble of this one.

Prayer

God of the nanosecond

Oh God, you are as present in a nanosecond
as in the great rolling waves of eternity,
as present in cramped closet as in the cathedral.
Help me, during this busy season,
to find you in those nanoseconds
and in those infinitesimal spaces.
Amen.

Saturday post on Saturday the novel

Finally finished Ian McEwan's Saturday which Pru wanted me to read. I didn't want to read it most of the way through since it only seemed to increase my anxiety; he did such a good job of describing that lingering fear that has colored our lives since our awakening to uncertainty on 9/11. This wasn't the kind of reading I wanted to do in my few spare minutes for light reading. Give me Pym, give me Howatch, I yearned, but plowed through . Spoiler warning ahead. I didn't know what to expect, having not read any of his books before and when I started a review that said something about how one knows what to expect when reading some other authors and McEwan, I stopped, because I was enjoying not knowing. (Although I did know, from the character's comments on magic realism--that if anything can happen, nothing matters--that this author would probably not have characters start flying out the window, at least, not unless they fell to gruesome death). I feared the worst, deciding, midway through, that his beloved wife would probably be murdered right before his eyes. But the actual ending turned out, after all, to be cathartic and satisfying. But. The idea that listening to someone recite "Dover Beach" would have a powerful effect on a criminal is absurd. McEwan has clearly not taught English. He was not stood in front of a classroom, reciting it, practically acting it out so that the students (adult working class women returning to college!) can hear it, can visualize it and been met with their blank stares, their disinterest, their "just don't get it" comments. All right, this is America. Maybe it's different in England. Maybe it's more like hearing the pledge of allegiance (and for that matter, Baxter probably would have heard it in school even if he'd quit at 16). Maybe there's something about the disease of Huntington's chorea that is supposed to make one especially sensitive to language (explaining Woody Guthrie's talent?)

But still, it is of course the perfect poem to act as a unifying thread in the novel. It functions much the way the recitation of the Wreck of the Deutschland did in Muriel Spark's, The Girls of Slender Means. That classic explored the nature of good and evil in an England traumatized by World War II, and, I would suggest, reaches the same conclusions about the necessity of a gesture towards the good, despite or perhaps because of the predominance of evil. This one probes similar points in the post 9/11 world. Interesting isn't it, that these two great poems of written by Victorian Englishmen should so shed light on these 20 and 21^st century situations. I did, of course, think from the beginning, when Henry spends so much time staring out his window, of "Dover Beach" (can any literate person see someone standing at a window in literature without making that association?). I remembered how my Victorian studies professor had spoken of the motif of staring out windows as an omnipresent theme in Victorian literature, though I can't think exactly what he said about it. Liminality, perhaps: being neither fully in or out… Questions of consciousness were paramount for Victorians. Who is the perceiver? How does perception change the ultimate reality of the object perceived? And so of course windows, those instruments through which we perceive the world, signify these questions, the questions that haunt our neurosurgeon protagonist. Brains look out through eyes, characters through windows. The sea of faith, in Arnold's poem, recedes, but now we know that such a dramatic recession prefigures a tsunami—the return of faith with a vengeance~

Finally, a ribbon magnet I like

this one says "support the industry that produces ribbon magnets"!!

It gets worse

It's not just St. Jonah's that uses the phrase (see previous post). In fact, the offensive phrase "the real instruments of unity" originates from the Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation. I'm not sure exactly what they think they are reconciling, when they are using such alienating language (and sneakily, since most of the gung-ho let's fix the world folks probably don't even know what its referring to).

"The 'real' instruments of unity

Members of St. Jonah's have greeted the Millenium Development Goals with unprecedented glee. It's quite a shock, really, to see everyone so delighted. At last, they keep saying, the convention has given us "the real instruments of unity." Even their bulletin announcements regarding this endeavour contains this phrase. No one apparently stops to consider that sniffing at the instruments of unity, also known as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates Meeting, the Lambeth Conference and the Anglican Consultative Council, is just in the teensiest bad taste. I wish I could say that what they mean is that we all now agree that Jesus was speaking truth when he said, "the poor you will always have with you," but alas, I don't think that's what the MDG-obsessed are thinking. Instead, I suspect they are feeling that they have been given carte blanche in feeding their frenzy of doing-ness, of earning righteousness, and oh happy day, in thumbing noses at historical traditional and what it offers in terms of connection to the larger body of Christ in the world. To think, some of us at some point in our lives, felt this excited about getting to know Jesus.

Using your cell phone for centering prayer

Well that sounds like a joke doesn't it? Isn't the cell phone the symbol of all that so completely distracts us from our life of prayer? Well, I figured out a way to use it so that it helps me! I'm not one of those people, like my husband, who wears wrist watches with all kinds of doodads. As far as watches go, I'm strictly analog. But that means I never have any kind of alarm handy, and so that means that one sneaks looks at the time, when one has set oneself 15 or 20 minutes for centering. Then I realized that my cell phone has an alarm that is easy to use. So now, I can just sit patiently and not worry that I will "overpray." (Not likely!) Of course, this wouldn't work so well if you get frequent calls (I'm not sure if you can turn off the rings and still have the alarm) but since I don't, it's good!

strange days

Father Burt is rummaging around through the cabinets in the kitchen. He says he's looking for something to put holy water in. I almost joke "doing an exorcism?" then stop myself. Why is he looking for something to put holy water in, if not for a purpose along those lines? We find an old pepper jar, and put the pepper in the salt shaker. (If we used the salt shaker, it would be more of an aspergeres!). He wipes it out, gets some holy water from the font, gives it to the woman who is waiting then leaves. He sits down by my desk. "Whew." She is from Venezuela, and her ex-husband has joined a Santeria cult. She said that she and her daughter are "seeing things" around their house. "Things? Like tokens or dead animals?" "No," he says, "like Spirits." "Oooh, cool." Of course, the Holy Water was rather an afterthought: she had originally signed up to speak to a priest for financial help, and seeing as we had no grocery gift cards, asked for this instead. Pray for her!

Still Dualistic

Perhaps the two sides in America (liberal/conservative) can better be framed in terms of whether one finds it more compelling to draw one's identity from a sense of battling power, or from a sense of being a part of a positive force.

Those who see themselves as battling power tend to automatically respond to claims of victimization, and to see governments as necessarily evil, and all oppositional groups as necessarily justified. This view can be supported from the Christian perspective by reference to Jesus' identification with the poor, and his victimization on the cross, and it is a corrective to earlier views which used Christ's missionary mandate as an excuse for imperialistic conquest. However, it tends to idealize the position of victim to the point of neglecting the concept of Christ's ultimate triumph.

Those who see themselves as aligned with a positive force for good tend to belittle claims of victimization, and see the government as deserving unwavering support, thus leaning towards blind patriotism.

What is the solution? How can we draw our understanding of who we are from a balanced perspective of Christians who follow an Almighty God who was willing to become weak? Can we recognize that not all claims of victimhood are equally legitimate? That some, are in fact, simply grabs for power? Can we live in paradox?

When it changed

I snagged the Rector's copy of Theology Today when it came in, and glanced through it before passing it on. I came across this interesting and timely statement by William Cavanaugh:

“This is not an exceptional nation and we do not live in exceptional times, at least as the world describes it. Everything did not change on 9/11; for Christians, everything changed on 12/25. When the Word of God became incarnate in human history, when he was tortured to death by the powers of this world, and when he rose to give us new life—it was then that everything changed. Christ is the exception that becomes the rule of history. We are made capable of loving our enemies, of treating the other as a member of our own body, the body of Christ.”

Cavanaugh, William. “Making Enemies.” Theology Today. Vol. 63, no. 3, October 2006. 307-323.

It caught my attention because I had read something else recently (in Christian Century?) that spoke of the concept of American exceptionalism and I thought that this might be an interesting concept to work with in the American Literature course, which I'll be teaching later in the fall. I think Cavanaugh makes an excellent point that helps us put into perspective the feeling that Americans between the ages of 20-60 felt about the terrorist attacks. Unlike older Americans who remembered Pearl Harbor, we had never experienced an assault on our own land before. (I discount younger people because, as far as I can tell from the kids I know, they were not particularly affected by the images of the towers falling, not being able to distinguish between them and the familiar images of destruction they see in their favorite games and movies). When I read this statement at first I thought it was a shame that Cavanaugh had to use the artificial construct of 12/25 to build the symmetry to make his point. After all, we smart Christians know that Christ wasn't born on that specific day. We could pinpoint an actual date for the Resurrection, why didn't he use that? But then I got to thinking, well, whether or not it was 12/25 (and it certainly wouldn't have been called that then) it was a specific day. And that number symbolizes that. And contemplating how numeric symbol functions, and letting its meaning sink in, in the same way that the numbers 9/11 have sunk in, helps make his statement even stronger and makes me find a source of hope.

Sister Helen

I admire Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, and an advocate for life in all its pathetic manifestations. She did err, however, in signing a political statement, which she has been forced to retract. I think we see here another example of the dangers when we seek political solutions for spiritual problems.

the Gospel according to clipart

Since I am going on vacation, I'm working on the next two weeks' bulletins, so this thought applies to the readings for Sunday, September 3.

The only part of the lection reading that had room for clipart was the Ephesians passage about the armor of God. You'd think there'd be tons of images there: at least these are tangible objects! But I couldn't find anything except little boys dressed up as roman soldiers. I knew I had to be careful with this: anything too militaristic would raise people's hackles here at St. Jonah's. But as I was searching, and re-reading the passage, it made me aware of how Paul is transforming the traditional images of warfare. Essentially, he's looking at the real soldier of his day and saying, yes, you need a helmet, but not one made out of --whatever metal they made them out of them--you need one of salvation. He's seeing equivalents, metaphors and the point is that soldiers of the Lord are not violent warriors. They are peaceful warriors, as yoga and tai chi would have it. It's a term that's been taken over a bit by the New Age folks, but if you engage in a martial arts practice, or yoga which has its warrior pose, you can get a sense for what this means....

Lectionary Thoughts

I haven't been reading along in the Judges passages of the Daily Office lectionary lately: just getting through the Epistle and Gospel, and mostly as always, dwelling on the psalm. But today, since I just had a couple minutes, I only looked at the Judges passage. Coming to it without context, out of the blue, it struck me as very strange. I'm reading along, and somebody's recovered some money and his mother is happy, and she wants to celebrate and express her gratitude towards the Lord and everything seems fine and dandy but hey, wait a minute. She wants him to do what?! Thank the Lord by making an idol? How did this happen? Well, verse six explains it: "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes." Not a happy verse for those of us born and trained in democratic ideology but a sound enough explanation, for those times, as well as for ours. What strikes me about the passage is how normal everything, except for the bit about the idols, sounds. They remembered most of what they are supposed to do, there are supposed to be ephods and teraphim and Levites should be priests, there's this longing to worship, but they have missed or mislaid this huge important part of what the monotheistic religion proclaimed. Aren't we just like that? Full of our process theology and our oh so sophisticated ways of reading Scripture, and grasping on to as much of the rituals as we care to remember, but are not we often missing the reality--the connection with God, and instead creating idols of our own creation?

Little do they know

A glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes here at St. Jonah's.

There are a few clergy persons associated with the church of St. Jonah's. Just for fun we'll call the main two Burt and Ernie. 'Scuse me, that's Father Burt and Father Ernie. Father Ernie, the Rector, leaves on vacation after constructing elaborate calendars showing his time off and the other clergy and staffs' vacation times, etc. Only then at the last minute he realizes he's not really going to come back on the day the calendar says he is, and he asks Father Burt to take the services on Sunday the 27th. (This part is a plausible reconstruction of events, based on the fact that Fr. Burt seemed to know that Fr. Ernie wasn't going to be around before the 29th in an earlier conversation.) Then the trusty Parish Administrator (me, Doc Bubbles), trying to get a jump start on the next week's bulletins since she is going on a long awaited vacation, discovers--horrors--that the second lesson for the 27th, according to our still-in-use lectionary, contains the dreaded passage: "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as you are to the Lord." The only choices given are in the psalms, and of course any priest in his right mind would at least want to pray the psalm that begins "Protect me, O God"! She then checks to see if our female clergy might be preaching that day, which might have a palliative effect on the situation, but no, she's out of town. Her chart shows Fr. Ernie's name in red, which means he told her he wasn't going to be back, so she runs to Fr. Burt to see what he wants to do, and he says "Why ask me, I'm not even going to be here that day?"

Too bad Doc Bubbles is going on vacation, 'cause she might well have come up with a lively sermon--maybe she would focus on the really difficult first sentence of the passage: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." But not even she can jump in so will there be some bewildered people milling about the church on Sunday morning a week from today?

Doc Bubbles makes calls, sorts things out and it seems that things will proceed in accordance with the rubrics after all. Now, stayed tuned to find out whether Fr. Burt decides to make the leap over to the Revised Common Lectionary, which happily omits this nasty bit.

Preposterousness

I swear, I was only googling to find the exact words of a quote I remembered, attributed to George Orwell: "there are some ideas so preposterous only an intellectual will believe them." Don't ask why this came back to mind and why I wanted to verify it. But google only discovered a couple references to the quote. One brought me to Shrinkwrapped's blog which offers some interesting material (by the way, he has been UNable to verify the authenticity of the quote) including the following: Pity the Poor Anti-Semite. Worth reading.

Different viewpoint on Lebanon

I was browsing our local Newman Center's website and found a link to what appears to be a national Catholic online newspaper. This article presents the point of view that Lebanese Catholics and other Christians do not hate the Israelis and they do fear Hezbollah, a point of view that I have not heard around St. Jonah's!

Not your mama's VBS

Churches around the country have gatherings for kiddies in the summer called Vacation Bible Schools. Not St. Jonah's. We have Going Medieval Arts Camp. Children get to craft gargoyles, cut their fingers on pieces of stained glass, and enjoy other features of life in the Middle Ages without being bothered with pesky notions raised by Biblical stories. My stepdaughters even enjoy it, and the 16-year-old has decided she doesn't believe in God. (My approach to managing teenagers is borrowed from the wisdom of appreciating the weather in New England. If you don't like it, wait five minutes. So I say nothing.) She was, to all appearances, a fine and friendly counselor during Going Medieval, even to the obnoxious five-year-old who everyday he insisted he could do something better than the teenagers. But when it was all over she was going to reward herself by making a purchase at the neighborhood comic store. She wanted a button that asked, "I'm sorry. Was it my job to fill your life with joy today?"

Why doesn't audio daily office work for me?

I like podcasts and books on tape. I like reading the Daily Office. I would have thought, when coming across an Episcopal church that offers a daily podcast of the Office that it would be something I could use but I can't. There are maybe two reasons. One, this guy's voice and style. I don't mind the new agey music in the background, that works a bit to counteract the cheesy Christian radio sound that he gives to it, but there's something about his slick delivery that reminds me of the lite Christian radio station back in New Jersey that I listened to in a bygone time. (It's out of Maryland, but there's no hint of the South in his voice.) I tried to get past that. After all, we are supposed to be "saying" the office, not just reading it, my tendency, when I read it alone, and wander off in trains of thoughts on various passages, or dwell overlong on some verses from psalms, shouldn't be what defines it for me as prayer. I can't control the speed when gathered with others to say an Office. And yet, and yet... when I read the words myself, I am praying them. When someone else reads it, I am listening to him pray. It's just different.

Items we gotta have

The Episcopal Media catalog arrived on my desk featuring a page of Community Builder and gift items. Of course the usual caps and t-shirts. The Episco-bear is kinda cute, and hey, what dog wouldn't be proud to bear the shield on his collar (and what about kitty collars, people?!). But Episcopal flip flops? Surely there is a saboteur in their midst, who came up with this one! Not that the idea of leaving a little trail of shields behind one in the sand (from the shape cut into the bottom of the sandal) isn't a dynamic evanglical tool (at least until the tide comes in) but isn't the whole concept of flip-flop, as in changing one's mind on critical issues, not exactly something with which we want to be closely associated? Just thinking...

Zapped!

So lightning struck the church. What I mean by that is, um, lightning struck the church, or near enough to us to knock out the power sometime after I left yesterday. Today we still have no phones. We put in a battery back up for the phone system, but since the outage happened right after everyone left, the battery didn't last long enough. At least that's the theory. The phone folks haven't come yet. But naturally, I am enjoying the peace. And yes, naturally I am experiencing a sense of God's presence in this. Not that I think God is up there hurtling thunderbolts on us, but hey, it is kind of funny that right after someone defiles the space with propaganda calling Israelis "predators" that the church is struck by lightning. Kind of does make Doc Bubbles think of Genesis: "12 Now Yahweh said to Abram, "Get out of your country, and from your relatives, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you.2 I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing.3 I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. All of the families of the earth will be blessed in you."

tempted!

Just after yesterday's post someone parked a car right in front of the church with a big blue swirlygig "ribbon magnet": this one supposed to make me aware of Down's Syndrome! They are trying my saintly patience!

What is my price?

It was almost a bar of chocolate, no, not just any bar, but a bar of Equal Exchange, Organic Dark Chocolate with Almonds, bestowed upon me by a true believer--in the destruction of Israel. Ah, but how deeply and with what passion she believes she is on the side of the light. She had asked to insert a notice in the bulletin, announcing the distribution of a letter from the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem. She had heard that last Sunday a plea was made for contributions to go to Episcopal Relief and Development's Middle East Crisis emergency fund, which seems relatively neutral in its mission to provide humanitarian aid (though, apparently, not to any Israeli Jews) http://www.er-d.org/newsroom_76926_ENG_HTM.htm . In her mind this meant that we were supporting the Bishop Riah, and it gave her a perfect opportunity to distribute one of his anti-Israeli screeds.

And, so, in preparation for this I was searching the web for some kind of article that would provide another perspective, something that would point out that it is in fact Hebollah that is using the children and innocent civilians of Lebanon as cannon fodder. That you can't broker a cease-fire with a terrorist group. Here's one that expresses it well: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23628. Or how about an article that exposes Riah as supporting the Muslim suicide bombers? http://www.comeandsee.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=415 . Nah, that probably would seem reasonable around here. If only recovering terrorist Walid Shoebat had some good articles www.shoebat.com, but he only seems to be available for speeches. Besides, these are a bit obvious. Perhaps the article by a good liberal like Rabbi Lerner, that I found on Tikkun's website: http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/asktherabbi might be snuck in to the pile without causing a witch hunt...

I was exploring these options when she came in to drop off her batch of propaganda and started regaling the virtues of her new favorite chocolate bar: "here, have this one!" she gave it to me and I accepted. She is a kind person, just very deluded, having brainwashed herself with nonstop reading of one sided views of a situation half a world away. I always wondered what makes people take up a particular cause. I look around and see thousands of them. Every car's bumper sticker here asks you to save another ethnic group or animal species. And please, if I see yet another disease taking over the sideways squiggle that's supposed to represent a tied ribbon to get me to be aware of autism or diabetes or schizophrenia, I may have to tear it from the car! But people find one to latch onto. The Tibetans. The Palestinians. The Sudanese. How do they decide?

I think we need a new 12 step program for parishioners of St. Jonah's. World-savers Anonymous. Its first step: "Just for today, I will let God save the world instead of me. Just for today, I will be Christ to one person whom I encounter." Imagine that, church!

Anyway, munching on the yummy candy bar, I thought about giving up my stealth counter campaign. Let me just read Bishop Riah's statement. And there in the first sentence, I read the Israelis described as "predators"! We don't even need the article about his earlier statements. It is clear enough where he stands. And there are people in this church who do not think this is partisan and inflammatory, but belongs on a table promoting Christ's peace!!!! I am going to go nuts here. And no, I won't be bought off by the candy bar. Friends, let me know which article I should print out.

P.S. Do all brit folk refer to paper cutters as guillotines? She does!

Cool Bumper Sticker of the Day

Republicans for Voldemort!

One good thing

Dimly seen through the dissipating clouds of hot air now clearing over Columbus was one good decision, one which will matter to us in our pews. On November 22, we will be able to celebrate the life and witness of Clive Staples Lewis.

A094: Church Year Calendar Inclusions. Proposes
these commemorations for inclusion in the
Church Year Calendar and authorizes trial use
for the triennium 2004-2006: Janani Luwum,
Archbishop of Uganda and Martyr, 1977 -
William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury,
1944 - Clive Staples Lewis, Apologist and
Spiritual Writer, 1963.

Of course, it doesn't take too much speculation to imagine that Lewis is sitting in his favorite heavenly pub, shaking his head in disbelief... or chuckling...

the body

There's a body in the church right now. Yeah, a dead one. You wouldn't think that's unusual enough to remark on, especially if you are among those people that think of church as the place you go to name your baby, get married, and get a good send-off into the next world. But nowadays most of what we see are cremations. I suppose I should think of those little boxes of ashes as bodies too, but it's awfully hard to relate them to a formerly living person. I've had the ashes of former friends sitting on my desk. (I also have the ashes of a beloved cat on my dresser at home, come to think of it.) I've carried people's ashes in a shopping bag to the sacristy. No big deal. But when the hearse arrives, and the men in suits (the funeral director now wears grey!--perhaps that's his gesture to summer) navigate the awkward ramp and all the next of kin stand around, wondering what to do or think, you know. The men must exert themselves to carry this large wooden box. You know there is a body in there. You know someone has passed from this life and it is real. I find it much more moving and solemn tha cremation. And that (in addition to not wanting to add to global warming with more smoke) is why I want to come to rest in earth.

My bit on the Convention

Thanks be to God: it's done.

Some are rejoicing and some are grieving. Danforth's advice for us Episcopos not to follow the example of Congress was too little, too late, I'm afraid. I stand ambivalent, realizing, for the most part, that my church's relationship with the Anglican churches round the world will not really matter to my life of worship here in Pixieville. I may praise or I may stand dumb, as always.

I wonder though, why, when it seems that planet earth has become so small, and our ability to interconnect so much deeper than ever before, that we become further apart in these theological matters, rather than closer.

But as I went running, with my Zen on shuffle, I listened as k.d. lang sang Leonard Cohen's "Hallelulah." And I knew: all shall be well.

Lectionary inspired rant

The lesson of the creation and the garden and the fall is not about the tangible world but about how truth got in. It is telling us the thing that is most unbelievable, that truth started with one tiny seed. One person and one God. The basic one on one relational nature of monotheism. First with God and Adam, then on to God and the nation of Israel, a relationship which by its uniqueness has caused anger and jealousy ever since, even though the point was that others are invited in. Paul/Saul recognized this when he said in Romans 11 “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them, and became partaker with them of the root and of the richness of the olive tree; don't boast over the branches. But if you boast, it is not you who support the root, but the root supports you.” The mistake of gloating was made by many Christians, and by Mohammed, who passed it on to all Muslims. All these thoughts emerged from reading today’s Psalm, which is highly critical of the Hebrew peoples. But it’s like how a person from one ethnicity is allowed to make ethnic jokes about their own group, or use certain terms that, in the mouth of someone not of that group, would be considered a deadly insult. It’s fine for a Jewish prophet to denounce the Jewish people. But when Mohammed comes along, and reads that, and internalizes it and sends it back out into the world as “the Jews screwed up, now we’re the ones with an in to God” then we got a problem. (Now that I am teaching an online World Lit class, I am reading parts of the Koran for the first time and basically feeling insulted by it, both as a person of Jewish heritage, Christian faith, and as a woman. Hmm, not too many other ways you can insult me.)

Here's today's lesson, which reinforces that sense which, for reasons unknown, even the psalm evoked in me, of the very uniqueness of God and of God's relationship with each one of us.

1 Timothy 2: 1- 6 (NRSV)
1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself a ransom for all -this was attested at the right time.

It's also a good passage for those of us who don't want to see our church prayer time taken over by prayers that have political agenda. I do feel pain that there are people being tortured and will gladly pray for them, and for the torturers. But let's delete the emphasis on how much better we know how to run the world than do the people running it. As if we would not all become monsters given the power.

Underbellies

Recently, the Dean of the Cathedral stopped into the Church office. He caught up briefly on my life, when I reminded him that he was Curate at the church were I first became an Episcopalian back in the 1980s. "And now you're the church secretary!" Then seeing my expression, commiserated: "You really do see the underbelly of the church, in this job." It is true, for some reason, I am witness to, and often the recipient of, some of the Episcopalian's worst behaviors. But why, I wondered, was this compared to an underbelly? When my kitty lies on his back, stretching out all four paws in relaxation, I exclaim with delight: "such a cute belly--I wants to touch it!" (Not allowed.) When my friend's dog squiggles his back into the dirt, wriggling with pleasure, again, I laugh and enjoy the sight. Underbellies, in our "emotional support animals" are beautiful. Ah, if only I could find such beauty in the parishioner who called a meeting with me and all available clergy, presenting us with a manifesto claiming that removing a few names from the parish phone directory was "unethical" "unconscionable" and "damaging to our community." Excuse me for touching the database without calling an all-Parish meeting! Turned out the problem could be solved by me giving her the addresses of 10 people. Wow. Does that deserve the name of underbelly? Gracious readers, you tell me.

May Day

The periodic cheers rising from a cluster of people gathered on the Common finally draws Doc Bubbles out of her chilly office. She is fortunate to arrive just as poet Martin Espada begins reading his poem "Alabanza." He is a powerful reader, his voice riding the rhythmic swells, emerging from his own rolling deeps, the crowd joining in on the refrain "Alabanza" (bless them, the workers killed in the World Trade Center) and drums beat time as well. Even the hard-hearted Doc Bubbles feels moved, as she strolls through the crowd, with its signs, in various languages, proclaiming that a person cannot be illegal, a point with which it would, admittedly, be hard to disagree. Surely this chanting, this mustering of emotions, is the true descendent of Ginsberg's Howl. Surely this is poetry that can make something happen... if any poetry can, if anything can happen....

A familiar face in the crowd speaks to her, smiling, saying what a great turn out. Ever optimistic, working on every cause, serving on the select board, this individual is truly admirable. Doc Bubbles had been, after all, thinking it was a rather paltry crowd, a pitiful turnout for a town like Pixieville. She can remember when she was young, in the days of the protests against Nixon, against the Vietnam War, how it seemed like the bodies out there on the fields were hugely significant, changing the very structure of reality, sending reverberations of love and peace that shook even the White House. Apparently, those protests did have some actual, not just cosmic, effect, so why does Doc Bubbles tend to relegate those perceptions to the realm of childhood, of stoner fantasy? Why can she do nothing but shake her head at those who place their bodies in town squares now, and think, you innocents, aren't you cute, but, can you really believe any of this matters?

Plagiarism scandal du jour

We learn to speak by mimicking the sounds we hear: when we get the response we like, we make that sound again. We learn to write the same way. Good, precocious writers easily glom on to the trendy expressions and attitudes, mimicking them and putting them together in variations that appeal to the public. When a writer takes those standard, trendy modes of expression and pushes them just a teeny bit forward, we are astonished and pleased. We call that genius. Writers who push them more than a teeny step forward, are generally called Gertrude Stein. And no one reads her.

So did Kaavya Viswanathan borrow from Megan F. McCafferty? Yes. Did she intend to or know she did it? Very likely, not. Frankly, once again, my disdain falls largely upon the greed driven publishers, who latch hungrily onto a hot commodity like a Harvard-going young woman of color hailing from foreign shores (so much more appealing than a Jersey girl with an Irish name…) and rush to press, with zero quality control.

Doc Bubbles is trying to restrain her snarky laughter. Really.

Cool Bumper Sticker of the Day

Immortality or bust.

the forest for the trees

Spring has come full force to Pixieville. Every day, new trees are blossoming. Even in the unkempt churchyard of St. Jonah's (motto: "yes, Lord, angry enough to die" (Jonah 4:9)) the magnolia tree is in magnificent pink array. Those of us who toil here are uplifted as we walk to and fro, and see it from the window. In honor of next Sunday's being Earth Day, excuse me, Creation Sunday, the group of those dedicated to the environment here at St. Jonah's have set up a big triptych display--right in front of the window.

Do I even have to add any commentary?

Update on Heretic v. Heretic

As I'm sure you know by now, Dan Brown was exonerated of the charges that he unfairly reworked a single source, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, to create the Da Vinci Code. I should join in with all the free speech crowd who thinks this is a key victory: after all, what Dan Brown did, they argue, is what scholars do, transform and rework the ideas of others. Do I only want to see him fall because he totally relied on the work of one book and didn't do his own research, and instead, promulgated these half-baked theories to a gullible public? Not really... Do I want the world to learn the lesson I try to teach my students about BOTH citing sources, and checking on their reliability? Well, yes. And, I guess, it seems a little different from a free speech issue, when person 2 gets rich off the ideas that person 1 published first, but wasn't such a marketing whiz. But that, as we say, is capitalism.

Christ Among the Partisans

Garry Wills writes: "THERE is no such thing as a "Christian politics." If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. "---this piece articulates just what I have been brooding over lately. Read it!

Driving While Elderly

Sorry, but it should be the one allowable case for profiling: geezers behind the wheel. I just stepped out on this lovely spring morning, to run a few errands, and as I am crossing (with the flashing pedestrian beeping that it is safe) first, a women in a smallish car makes a left turn, pulling into, not a parking space, but onto the sidewalk in front of me. She is looking over her shoulder at the car close behind her, a blue station wagon, I guess trying to guide it to park as well? Not sure, really, but moments later BANG, this second car succeeds, not in pulling into the parking space, but into the tree beside it. Lady in first car (containing two kids in back seat) goes to see the old man who sits in car. The tree, for some reason, only let loose one branch, and that branch is now swinging overhead, attached by either a wire or some leftover decoration (I have been noticing that the trees seem to have some unnatural sparkle in the sunlight). Willie the parking meter man happens to be across the street, and he calls it in. Moments later, there is a firetruck, an ambulance, and a police car. All because, as a passerby says, "he forget which one was the brake and which was the gas." Seems to be likely: he was confused by unfamiliar surroundings. The woman, who was speaking Spanish, had either a DC or a diplomat license plate. Why do old people insist on driving? My Dad, the other day, referred to the fact that "until recently" he had a car (and thus, had trouble finding his way from the Visitor's parking lot, where I parked to the front door of his residence). It has been at least 3 years since he totalled it and I basically forbade him to get a new one which he (then a mere 84) wanted to do. More on his other sensible choices (like ignoring some evil looking black spots on his skin and not seeing the oncologist whom he was supposed to see for regular check ups until they had been there over three months -- at least if you can believe his sense of time, which how can you? I can't trust my own!) And now the blue station wagon is being carted off by a tow truck. Let us pray the geezer learns that the time is upon him for dispensing with driving.

Can it be?

Is the state of the world not as bleak and hopeless as I tend to think? Discovery of the website Arabs for Israel does seem to offer a crack in the dark picture that I hold, a slight chink of light. Of course, one cannot tell how many people are behind this site, and share its ideals, or have visited it, but I would like to believe that there are more Arabs and Muslims who have the reasoning powers to realize that the Jews are not behind all of their problems, than than the louder, angrier voices would have us believe.

Heretic v. Heretic

As most of my learned readers already know, Dan Brown did not originate the ideas that he spun into a best seller with The Da Vinci Code; he merely packaged them perfectly so that they had maximum appeal for a world eager to believe the worst about organized Christianity and devoid of the minimum critical skills needed to discern the difference between fantastic speculation and verifiable fact. But I have to say, I find it rather humorous to read about their expensive little squak fest over who deserves credit for originating these ideas. Haven't they even read that book they are so eager to dismiss, the part where it said: "There is nothing new under the sun..."

Good DaVinci Code debunking article.
This one isn't even from a Christian perspective, but it traces the history of the fraud from which BOTH writers borrow.

What they bleep do they bleeping know?

I had heard the film, “What the Bleep do we know” was a mind-blowing experience, tho’ I wasn’t clear on whether it was a dramatic film or a documentary. It turns out to be the worst of both worlds: a sort of simplistic-story, poorl- acted, interspersed-with-silly-animations dramatic film, intercut with unidentified scientists spouting, not so much any kind of scientific information, but rather their opinions about the implications of their scientific theories, and what they suggest to them about the falseness of Christian religious ideas, about which they have at best a rudimentary knowledge. Should a theologian with no scientific training approach them to pontificate on quantum theory, they would be just as disgusted as I am at their dismissals of the God of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. It appears they have never heard the proposition God is Love but instead have based their perceptions of Christianity on the spoutings of television preachers. And so they can assure us in good authority that God (understood in some new, quantum way) cannot possibly concern himself with the “sins” (the word is uttered with contempt) of individuals or of the entire planet. As if it never occurred to the Jews or the Christians that the universe was vast, and that God was vaster still and that what we believe is therefore all the more paradoxical than, it seems, some minds can imagine. The opening seconds of the film set the scene “In the beginning was the Void” (we enjoy appropriating religious ideas) “and it was teeming with possibility” (I’m sorry, did you say “Void” and “teeming” in the same sentence?! Once a Void teems with anything it is not a Void!---sloppy, sloppy, sloppy!)

The scientific terms and theories are presented as mantras and never elucidated or explained in any way. They seem to think that just repeating the terms, showing pictures of people who may be scientists, and having funny little animated characters impersonate quarks will convince people of all the lovely propositions they learned once upon a time in their EST weekends. “You create your own reality.” The movie can be reduced to a bumper sticker: "because of quantum theory, we create reality.” There is not a single proposition –scientific or philosophical--that is argued or illustrated in any way. One of the scientists (uh, since they are never identified, or credentialed, I cannot say more than, one of the younger, unbearded male scientists) stated that when he began his day by “creating it” “strange things” happened. He neither clarified what this “creating” of his day entailed (thinking about it? planning it? some kind of chanting it into existence that we poor bleeps can’t be entrusted to know?) nor what any of the startling occurrences might be: did red lights turn green for him, as I have heard happens to many evangelicals who like to pray while driving?

Instead of going into any detail about Quantum Theory or even subatomic particles, they content themselves with animations and illustrations. I have read The Dancing Wu Li Masters, so I have some ideas about these things, and enjoy hearing them described in the simplified terms I can understand (no math! please!). The NOVA episode “The Elegant Universe” did an excellent job of presenting string theory in all its strange inexplicability. And all these ideas make my jaw drop in wonder and awe and make me no less sure that there is an intelligence underlying and infusing all that we think of as matter, whether it be dark matter, or the infinite reaches of empty space. Advice: watch this episode of NOVA and skip the facile gnosticism cloaked as scientific discovery of What the Bleep Do We Know.