Mystical Paths

I just finished the fifth in Susan Howatch's Church of England series. I love these books! I have never read anything that showed real people grappling with real theological issues as they live out their real lives (and okay, there's a touch of supernatural thrown in, and this last one turns into a bit of a whodunit as well--it's got it all!). I thought this was the last one, but to my delight I discovered there is one more to wrap up the series. The addict's reprieve. Now I must decide whether to get it out of the library TODAY-- NOW-- or to try to wait a month and save it for my vacation in the beginning of June. Of course, on vacation it's easier to read books that are less delectable, and needed for desperate escape from horrible life.

So my question, dear readers, is what next? Is there anything out there comparable to this series?

Salamanders

The salamanders must have made their crossing by now. In fact, they could have gone back and forth a few times, there have been so many rainy nights over forty degrees of late. I sit in my comfy living room thinking: I should get a flashlight and my raincoat and go out and SEE them. I should, I really should. Then it occured to me. I am not an amphibian. I don't want to be amphibious. I will stay in. Despite the fact that right now as I am typing this, my Rhapsody player started playing Ben Folds' version of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"!

Even the handbasket's broken

the handbasket that we're going to hell in, is nowadays no hand woven feat of human creativity but a disintegrating maelstrom. What has thrust me into such a bad mood, first thing in the morning, when I only am just coming from a lovely yoga class? Perhaps it is the fact that something very Important is going on at neighboring Pixieville College (not to be confused with the University of Pixieville). I'm not even that upset that there's nowhere to park, and people were zipping through the four-way stop sign like they were going to win a very big prize for getting ahead by one car. But when two middle-aged white guys, engaged in their very Important conversation, see a lady in a hot pink raincoat, you would think they might condense themselves to their allotted half of the sidewalk. Or at least say "excuse me" when--because she does not move onto the soggy grass--one must brush past her. This is the second time this week that I have not been able to walk on the sidewalk to this church without being pushed off it! This is a small town! I left New York cause I couldn't take this kind of rudeness!!! I could have been working at a well-paying job (at least) if I stayed there. Next time I am just going to stop and yell, "Excuse me for walking on the sidewalk and interrupting your very important conversation. Next time I'll just lie down here so you can tromple all over me!"

Spring Peepers!

We heard them last night--loud! Stay on the salamander alert!

Addiction to busyness

Never is it more apparent than during Holy Week just how addicted to busyness the parishioners of St. Jonah's and other residents of greater Pixieville are. I mean seriously, how can a member of the Vestry no less, think this is a good time to explore new ways to lock cabinets for storage of valuables? How can the fund-raising committee imagine that this is when you ask the Parish Administrator to begin a mass mailing? You'd almost think this parish was filled with a bunch of pagans who didn't realize that the most important week of observances is underway and that this means that the office is completely busy making its fabulous bulletins for all of them! They should all be sentenced to having their eyes pinned open and watching The Passion over and over until they get a clue!

The Two Processions

Palm Sunday at St. Jonah's was energized by the buzz of Borg and Crossan's new take on Jesus' triumphal entry. Those of us who appreciate structuralist criticism find it nice: Jesus rode on a donkey as a counterpoint to Pilate's militaristic procession. Yes, a more graphic illustration of the principle that Jesus clearly stated: God's kingdom is not of this world. Then how do Borg and Crossan use this to disprove the concept of substitutionary atonement and take some digs at Gibson's Passion (are we still talking about that? And not about his latest proclamation of insensitivity in Apocalypto?) ? Quite a feat, I might add. And one in need, I think, of some post-structuralist trashing of binaries (lest we want to hop on the other foot and wonder about those who substitute justice for worship). That is, they see Jesus' driving out of the money changers as reflecting on Jeremiah's criticism of "worshiping God as a substitute for enacting God's justice." Excuse me? Worshiping God a substitute--for anything? Isn't it the chief end of our existence? Perhaps I am just being a pesky English teacher, picking on poor Borg & Crossan for an unfortunate choice of words. They didn't mean actually worshiping the living God, they meant engaging in empty rituals (which is what Jeremiah was criticizing). But I'm afraid this is a telling and egregious error, revealing the murky priorities expressed in this article and by those who are so eager to embrace its view. We don't want to carry our palm leaves down the side street in town to show that we love and adore the Holy One of Israel. No, we need to prove we are standing against Empire. That way we'll prove we're worthy.

Let us begin and begin again

The Parish Administrator was actually able to spend a minute in the church today. She wanted to pray for a suicide whom we have just heard of (though none of us knew him).

I thought, as we embark on Holy Week, that if we do not walk with Christ, in his sufferings, we become trapped and can walk only in our own sufferings.

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?