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.