Telling Secrets

TONIGHT: Kapya Kaoma on CNN International and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow

2009-12-09T18:29:00.000-05:00

PRA: "The U.S. Christian Right and the Attack on Gays in Africa" by Kapy Kaoma

Read Kapya Kaoma's report here:

[snip] For two days in early March 2009, Ugandans flocked to the Kampala Triangle Hotel for the Family Life Network's "Seminar on Exposing the Homosexuals' Agenda." The seminar's very title revealed its claim: LGBT people and activists are engaged in a well thought-out plan to take over the world. The U.S. culture wars had come to Africa with a vengeance.

[snip] The unsuspecting audience heard (Scott) Lively promote his book, The Pink Swastika, and his argument that not only are gays seeking to take over the world, but they also threaten society by causing higher rates of divorce, child abuse, and HIV/AIDS. Legalizing homosexuality is on par with accepting "molestation of children or having sex with animals," he said.

As Lively puts it, LGBT issues cannot be considered human rights issues. "The people coming to Africa now and advancing the idea that human rights serves the homosexual interests are absolutely wrong," he said. "Many of them are outright liars and they are manipulating history; they are manipulating facts in order to push their political agenda."

Lively even tarred abortion rights as "a product of the gay philosophy" meant to promote sexual promiscuity in order to "destroy the family." In sum, he warned, U.S. homosexuals are out to recruit young people into homosexual lifestyles so they must be stopped.

Read the whole, shocking, disturbing report here.

Public Research Associates (PRA) is an independent, nonprofit, progressive research center for activists defending democracy, building equality, and challenging bigotry and oppression promoted by sectors of the Political Right.

Tonight, Rev. Kapya Kaoma, PRA Project Director will be on CNN International and MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss Uganda's anti-homosexuality legislation and the U.S. Right's involvement.

Kaoma, who authored the recently released report Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia, shows how conservative U.S. evangelicals - like Pastor Rick Warren - mobilize African clerics in U.S. culture war battles over gay rights. Their promotion of an antigay agenda in Africa has led to increased criminalization of homosexuality, and the denial of human rights for LGBT people.

Plastic Bags, Holy Bags

2009-12-09T06:16:00.000-05:00

We had a Christmas Bazaar this past Saturday. By all financial accounts, it was a great success, earning more money than last year.

That’s pretty terrific in these fragile economic time. And, as wonderful as that is, I don't want to talk about that.

I want to talk about Plastic Bags.

Yes, we have ‘outside vendors’ who sell everything from handmade bags, exquisite jewelry, luxurious scarves, and other delights. We charge them a fee and a percentage of their total sales. They provide the ‘draw’ into the Bazaar.

However, the keys to the financial success of the Christmas Bazaar really lies with two tables, lovingly referred to as “The Cookie Walk” and “The Soup Czars”.

Many people in the congregation either make one or two huge vats of soup (or soups) and a whole whack of cookies and other pastries. Or, in the case of the rector and other over-achievers, some of both.

The soup is lovingly ladled into plastic quart containers (donated by a member who is a restaurant manager), labeled, and frozen. I have seen people come in and buy ten or twelve quarts of soup and cart them away, happily muttering that at least they are going to eat well during the frenetic days of preparation for Christmas.

Then there are the cookies! Oh, the cookies! We have some very talented baking artists in this community. My favorite is the cookie that looks like a wee candied apple which sits in its own individual little cup and encircled with crushed walnuts. Lovely.

There were also a wide assortment of pastries: an almond upside down gingerbread cake, thick, dark chocolate brownies dusted with powered sugar, yummy peanut butter ‘buckeyes’ and chocolate cupcakes decorated with yummy butter cream frosting, crushed peppermint – some of them with cutout snow men stuck in on toothpicks. Oh, and these little tri-twisted pretzels which had a melted white chocolate kiss and three M&Ms – red, green and chocolate - in them.

Lord, have mercy! You could have gained five pounds and started a cavity on your back tooth just looking at the stuff!

The real success of the Christmas Bazaar, however, is what happens before, during and after the actual event. No, I’m not just talking about the thousands of details that need to be chased down and followed. I’m talking about what happens to people – to a community of people – when everyone works together to make an event like this come together.

Which brings me back to the Plastic Bags.

On Thursday, I got a frantic email from one of the coordinators of the Bazaar. She couldn’t find the plastic bags she had carefully stored from last year. We need them, of course, especially for the soup (see above note about people buying 10-12 quarts). Could we send out a blast email asking folks to bring in their plastic bags from home.

Problem: Randy, our Parish Administrator was taking a few well-deserved days off – the last of his vacation days. His computer has the most up-to-date parish data base. I do not. And, since he carefully monitors the number of blast emails that go out (don’t want people hitting ‘delete’ when they look at the ‘sender’ line because they feel harassed by too many emails), I didn’t think to make a contingency plan while he was away.

I know all about Murphy’s Law. And, I ignore it every time.

Feeling bad, I suggested that perhaps one of the local supermarkets might be happy to give us some plastic bags. Free advertising and all that. The email response was not only swift, but gave some indication of the stress this poor woman was feeling. “I don’t think anyone has time to get plastic bags. Can’t ANYONE send out an email?”

I offered to go get them and offered to send out an email to the Vestry. My Senior Warden beat me to that task. Meanwhile, my Parish Administrator, checking emails from vacation, emailed the updated parish list and my Youth Missioner sent out the Emergency Plea for Plastic Bags. A few moments later, my Senior Warden did the same thing (I could see Randy shaking his head sadly).

Just in case, I went to our local supermarket and got 500 plastic bags. We were ready. I kept them in the trunk of my car, just in case we needed them, but decided to let the community response take first priority.

On Saturday morning, I went ‘round to check on the Soup Czars and the Ladies of the Cookie Walk. In my travels, I cheerily asked if there were enough plastic bags. “Oh, yes, yes,” said everyone. “We’re fine.”

A few hours later, I saw it: Tucked behind the door where the great coolers of soup were stored, there was a HUGE white plastic bag – the kind you get from department stores when you purchase a large, counter top appliance or queen size linens – stuffed to overflowing with plastic grocery bags.

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing, right then and there.

Plastic bags have gotten a bad rap of late, for not being ‘green’. We can improve that lowly status by recycling them for other use. We can make sure, when their time of service has ended, to dispose of them properly, so they don’t become litter that is dangerous to the environment or to some of the winged or four legged of God's creatures.

I have discovered that there are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace that consist of even more common things than bread and wine, water and oil.

There are plastic bags, which can move beyond mere recycling and become transformed, by the grace and power of community spirit, into outward and visible signs of holy care and support by which we are made richer, more than much fine gold.

The Sturm und Drang of the Consent Processs

2009-12-08T08:21:00.000-05:00

Well, the ink has just barely dried on the diocesan consent forms in LA and the consent process of the election of Diane Bruce and Mary Glasspool as Bishops Suffran has begun in the wider community of bishops and Standing Committees in The Episcopal Church.

Both women need a majority of votes in both bodies. Bishops and Standing Committees in the same diocese may vote differently without canceling each other's vote.

The conversation about consents for Mary Glasspool is already heating up over at HOB/D - the House of Bishops and Deputies Listserv.

I have a few questions which I posted on the HOB/D list yesterday which I will share with you. I hope you will consider sharing your answers in the comment section here.

Any member of a diocesan Standing Committee or Bishop can, after prayerful and thoughtful consideration, consent or withhold consent without being forced or coerced to give reason for their action. That, I believe, is as it should be.

Can someone articulate for me, other than the fact that Mary Glasspool is lesbian - and, as such, the first woman who is able to be open and honest about her sexual orientation - in The Episcopal Church and World Wide Anglican Communion that would elicit a disinclination to consent to her election?

What are the major concerns and in what priority?

Is it a concern about our relationship with the rest of the communion?

If so, what are the specific concerns/fears?

Kendall Harmon has posted a fascinating piece which documents the +++ABC's statements about the consent and consecration of the election of the Bishop of New Hampshire. You can find it here.

Sounds to me like a lion roaring in the winter of the church. Yes, we have had dioceses and individual churches who have left TEC because of the election in NH, but General Convention has affirmed, clearly and unequivocally,

"that God has called and may call such [LGBT] individuals, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church."

We also

"acknowledged that members of The Episcopal Church as of the Anglican Communion, based on careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and in light of tradition and reason, are not of one mind, and Christians of good conscience disagree about some of these matters." (From GC2009-D025)

You can read the entire resolution here.

This is the 'cultural context' and the theological and spiritual reality of our church. We affirm the different realities and cultural contexts of other churches and provinces in the WWAC and do not seek to impose our theology on others.

So, is this really a well-founded fear/concern?

We have already seen that we will not be kicked off the Anglican Island as punishment for our actions, taken after prayer and in discernment and in steadfast faith.

So, is that really a well-founded fear/concern?

Yes, the reality is that still other churches (but probably not dioceses) in TEC may leave us and that is a possibility not to be taken lightly. Given the fact that most of those who might leave because of the concern for our membership in the WWAC have probably already left, is this really a well-founded fear/concern?

Please help me understand how institutional unity is of more value than vocational integrity.

Is it simply a concern about her "moral suitability" for office - because she is a lesbian?

Since 1994, The Episcopal Church has had a canon on the books which states:

"All Bishops of Dioceses and other Clergy shall make provisions to identify fit persons for Holy Orders and encourage them to present themselves for Postulancy. No one shall be denied access to the selection process for ordination in this Church because of race, color, ethnic origin, sex, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, disabilities, or age, except as otherwise specified by these Canons." -- Title III, Canon 4, Section 1 of the Constitution and Canons for the Government of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, p. 60"

If a Bishop or Standing Committee votes to consent, they will not be in violation of our canons.

Mary is in a long-term, partnered relationship. If she were back in the Diocese of MA (where I first knew her), she would be able to be married to her life partner. She now resides in MD where marriage equality is not a reality. When she moves to LA with her life partner, she will be allowed a civil union of sorts but not marriage.

She isn't married because she can't be. She would if she could. How does that disqualify her because she does not possess "moral suitability" for the office of bishop suffragan?

Finally, this:

If you are/were a member of the Standing Committee in your diocese and you were "on the fence" about whether or not to consent to this election, what would convince you to cast your vote to elect? What information would you need? What assurances would you require to be able to give your consent?

It's not that I'm not concerned about our sisters and brothers in dioceses like South Carolina who will decline consent because of their New Doctrine of Selective Inclusivity. I am, but there's not much, I fear, that I or anyone else will be able to do to dissuade them.

I am concerned that we have an informed, spirited discussion in the church which might bring less heat and more light to this issue. We have been blessed with another challenging opportunity to engage the issues of human sexuality and gender even more deeply than before.

My hope and prayer is that we may all learn something more about how the Spirit works through our relationships in Christ Jesus.

Years ago, Jennifer Phillips suggested that, perhaps, just perhaps, we were asking the wrong question. Rather than asking, "Why should we ordain LGBT people?", we should be asking, "What is God teaching us by presenting LGBT people for ordination?"

I leave you to consider that question and your answers.

Cockroaches?

2009-12-07T08:34:00.001-05:00

Apparently, I've been remiss in my reading.

In all the excitement about the elections in the Diocese of Los Angeles and Louisiana, and the statement from Lambeth Palace about the election of Mary Glasspool, I missed this article.

Man of God backs govt against gays

Stephen Otage

Kampala

A senior member of the Anglican Church has thrown support behind the government move in a bid to phase homosexuality out of the country.

Rev. Michael Esakan Okwi said on Friday that not even “cockroaches” who are in the “lower animal kingdom” engaged in homosexual relations.

“What about the human being who was made in God’s image?” he asked at the funeral service in All Saints Cathedral - Kampala for Tom Omongole, the former Resident District Commissioner of Bukedea.

Rev. Okwi also lectures Theology and Philosophy at the Uganda Christian University. The law prescribes a seven-year jail term for gay sex and a death penalty for certain types of offences like homosexual rape.

It was introduced as a private member’s Bill by Ndorwa West MP David Bahati and has since kicked off an international storm with a number of Western governments and human rights groups describing it as hateful.

This week, Dr Nsaba Buturo, the Minister for Ethics and Integrity, told a news conference at the Uganda Government Media Centre, that the country would not bow to foreign pressure over homosexuality, which he again denounced as an immoral practice that is unacceptable in Uganda.

Countries like Sweden have threatened to withhold aid to Uganda over the proposed law. During the recently concluded Commonwealth Summit in Trinidad and Tobago, the anti-gay bill acquired instant international notoriety.

Apparently, this man of God and prince of the Anglican Church made this statement during a funeral.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, eh? What a giant of "the faith first received from the fathers"!

I'm thinking that, in all probability, we won't hear from +++Himself about the proposed genocide of LGBT people in Uganda, much less a rebuke of this prelate from Kampala.

+++He's much too busy rebuking The Diocese of LA in particular and warning The Episcopal Church in general for taking the risk of doing the work of the gospel.

Meanwhile, not even a peep about the self-avowed, unrepentant, practicing heterosexual man with clear revisionist tendencies who was elected Bishop of Louisiana.

No wonder the Church of England is losing members.

Never mind. Even Kendall Harmon, that peripatetic and ubiquitous Canon Theologian of all 'orthodoxy' from the Diocese of South Carolina has published a very revealing piece entitled, "A Look Back at Rowan William's Statements in 2003" when +Gene Robinson was duly elected and consecrated Bishop of New Hampshire.

An old lion roars in the winter of the church.

Yawn!

Even Cody Sanders, writing an op-ed cover piece for the Associated Baptist Press, asks "On Gay Rights: Is there Any Common Ground?" Mr. Sanders just wants the violence and hate crimes against LGBT people to stop and wonders if we all might agree on that.

You'll be amazed at the comments. Okay, maybe you won't. Call me naive, but I was.

Then again, "cockroaches" just need to be exterminated. You know. We've done this before. In Germany. In the 40's. "Vermin" - in whatever form - always need to be exterminated.

Never mind. As for me and my house, we will praise the Lord for The Episcopal Church and keep our eyes on Jesus.

Suddenly, I find myself praying even more fervently that wonderful prayer from the BCP Office of Compline.

"Shield the joyous."

And, this: "May God Bless +++Rowan Williams, and all the Prelates of 'orthodoxy' and self-proclaimed 'defenders of the faith', and keep them far away from us."

No, she's not gay

2009-12-06T19:37:00.005-05:00

The Rev'd Canon Mary Glasspool is not 'gay'.

Neither is Martina Navratilova.

Or, Ellen Degeneres.

Or, Meridith Baxter Birney.

Or, Chaz (formerly Chastity) Bono. She's a transgender man who is in a relationship with a woman, but that's another story and another challenge for another day.

For that matter, neither am I.

All the other women listed above are lesbians.

Lesbian women.

Not 'gay'.

Men who love other men are 'gay'. Not lesbians.

Women who love other women are 'lesbians'. Not 'gay'.

So, let's get this 'straight', as it were. The Rev'd Cn. Mary Glasspool is not the 'second gay person to be elected to the office of bishop'.

She's the first lesbian woman to be elected to the office of bishop.

Got it?

I know. Sounds tedious, right? Not to me. Sound absolutely right.

Indeed, those words sound right to most feminists - especially those who also happen to be lesbian.

I know. It's tedious to go through every letter of "The LGBT Alphabet of Community" - even for LGBT people, but every single one of those letters stands for a different and distinct way of being who we are.

Each and every single one of those letters also stands, symbolically, for the fact that, as LGBT people, we are not a monolithic community. We stand together against the oppression we experience, but like members of the Black / African American / Afro-American / People of Color / Afro-Caribbean / Afro-Asian / Afro-Hispanic / Afro-First Peoples Community, we are different in our views of the world, our politics, our religion, our spirituality, and how we understand who we are and how we relate to each other and the world.

And yes, LGBT people, like all other 'target groups' are different in how we understand human sexuality in general and our sexuality in particular.

You know. Just like White, so-called 'straight', people.

I will skip an elucidation on that point and proceed to a lesson in what I like to call "Anti-Oppression 101." Open your books and turn with me to Chapter I: Sexism.

Let's go back, let's go way on way back when, to the Garden. Eden, that is. There we will discover what I like to call the Original Sin of Sexism.

You're going to have to go Beyond the Apple to find it. Everything up until then was pretty cool. Yes, I know. Eve gets the rap for taking the first bite.

I like to think of her as being the first one to have the gonads to take the risk of intellectual curiosity.

The writers of that mythological story which has become our sacred text report, at the end of Chapter 3, that the first thing Adam did, after God issued the guilty verdict and sentenced them for their "crime," was to give a name to his partner, the woman that God had "given" him from the bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

"The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living."

And, men have been naming identity and reality for women ever since.

It ought not be a surprise to many, then, that the first thing women did, in the early 70s, was to take back the right to name their own identity.

Some of us insisted that we were no longer "Mrs." or "Miss." We would not be defined by our marital status, or lack thereof, as if that were the sum and substance of our identity.

"Ms" was the title of choice for feminist women.

Some of us insisted on keeping our own last name in marriage. Others hyphenated our names with our husband's name. Still others (like moi), who were not (or no longer) 'married', declined to be identified by their father or their husband's identity and took new surnames from their family tree.

No surprise, then, that lesbian women, who were also just finding our voices, declined to be identified as 'gay'. Rather, we took our identity from two sources:

(1) Lesbia, the literary pseudonym of the lover of Gaius Valerius Catullus, the ancient Roman poet, who lived 82-52 BCE.

(2) The famous circle of young girl lovers on Lesbos Island, who included the poet (not poetess, please) Sappho.

Truth be told, the name was not only an attempt to name our own identity, it was also a clear way to separate ourselves from the word 'gay'. It was a way to articulate that being a woman who loves other women comes with a different cost to women than the cost of being a man who loves other men.

Not only did we experience the on-going prejudice and oppression of being a woman in a society dominated by the social paradigm of patriarchy, we were also targets of bigotry - sometimes lewd - for being lesbian.

In those days, rape was widely considered as sure a cure for "lesbianism" as getting pregnant was considered a cure for menstrual cramps. Either way, you got the short end of the cruel stick of misogyny - whether you wanted it or not.

More than any of that, however, naming our own identity was important for lesbians because it defined how we understood our sexuality as being different from men.

Indeed, it represented, for many of us, the reason we were lesbians - beyond biological, and sociological and psychological explanations for this "aberration" in human sexuality.

For us, it wasn't so much about the sex as it was about relationships. About something that happens for us - in our hearts and souls and minds, as well as our bodies - in the company of women.

There is an old joke about lesbians:

Q: What do lesbians do on their second date?
A: Hire a U-Haul.

Get it? Well, the joke is a laugh about the essential, relational quality of being a lesbian, but it is also a joke at the soft-underbelly of that: co-dependency.

You'll find a fuller discussion of that in later chapters of the Anti-Oppression 101 educational texts. It's under "Internalized Oppression: Coping Mechanism."

However, many lesbian women had problems with the word 'gay' - which pointed to another different dynamic between being lesbian and being gay.

If you were 'gay' you were considered a feminized man - someone who was light, happy and carefree or bright and showy. Indeed, the term was used, well into the early 1920s - usually about children, music, poetry, a summer's day, or women - without any connotation to one's sexual orientation.

If men who loved other men were happy to take on a name, an identity, that made fun of being more childlike or feminine or frivolous and non-essential, why on earth would women who loved women call themselves something that trivialized one of the many ways - one of the myriad of expressions - of being a woman?

However, there were - and continue to be - problems for some women (and men) with the word 'lesbian'. Some are uncomfortable with anything that separates us from - or seems as if we don't stand together in solidarity against - the oppressive forces of bigotry and prejudice.

For others, however, the word 'lesbian' - with its association to the Isle of Lesbos, that island in the Aegean Sea which was inhabited by young women lovers.

Too blatant. Too sexual. Too 'in your face', as it were.

I remember marching in the Chase-Brexton Clinic (an AIDS Clinic) contingent of the Baltimore Gay Pride parade in the early 80's. As anyone who has ever marched in any parade can tell you, there are moments when the parade has to catch up with itself. Various groups marching in the parade have to march in place, or sometimes, come to a standstill for up to 10 - 15 minutes or so.

At one of those points, my colleague, Sally Daniels, an old cheerleader, decided to lead us in a cheer. Mind you, this was back in the day before we added the 'B' to our alphabet soup of identity. The "T" was still more than a decade or two from coming into its own.

"Give me an 'l'," she shouted, and the crowd, not sure of where she was going with this, nevertheless enthusiastically roared back, "L!!!"

"Give me an 'e'," she shouted again. Hmmm, not 'i', not going for 'Liberty'? Okay, "E!!!"

"Give me an 's'," Sally's voice croaked. She was clearly many years out of high school practice but had lost none of her enthusiasm. You could see the unmistakable "Uh-oh" of recognition on some of the faces in the crowd.

By the time she got to 'b', the roar had substantially dwindled. "Oh. My. God. She's going to have us say THAT word."

Sally was completely undaunted. "Whadday got?" she ended, as some of us, delighted by what she was doing, shouted even louder to compensate for the crowd: "LESBIAN!!"

And, with that, she executed a perfect jumping-jack which rolled into a handstand which ended with a cartwheel flourish.

Clearly, it was a new day in the socio-political landscape of Baltimore. More importantly, a new day of empowerment had dawned in the hearts and minds of many lesbian women, gay men and our straight allies.

So, you will excuse me if I seem a little tedious about this. There's been too much baptismal water over the font for me not to get a little touchy about the subject.

Despite what you may have read or might have been told, Mary Glasspool is not the 'second gay priest' to be elected to the episcopacy.

Mary Glasspool is the first lesbian woman who is a priest - the first woman to be able to be open and honest about who and how she loves - to be elected to the episcopacy.

I, for one, will not allow that distinction to be taken from her or diminished and morphed into an identity that is clearly male.

Not that there's anything wrong with being 'gay'. It's just not who she is - or I am. Some women, some of them lesbian women, will disagree with me on this.

And, you know what? I delight in that. We all need to be able to name and claim our own identity. I don't want to be denied that opportunity. Why would I deny it to others?

If you have any doubt that sexism lingers in both blatant and subtle ways, ask yourself this: Why is it that the first woman to be elected to the office of the episcopacy was elected, not to the office of bishop diocesan, but bishop suffragan?

Probably for the same reason that the first lesbian woman to be elected to the office of the episcopacy was elected, not to the office of bishop diocesan, but bishop suffragan.

And, the same reason that Bonnie Perry lost in Minneapolis. And, Tracy Lind lost in Chicago.

Fighting against two forms of oppression is daunting. Always has been. Always will. Just ask any woman of color. Or, one who is a woman of color who is a lesbian.

Never mind. We can do it. Si se pueda! Somebody's gotta make the first move - have the first crack at the stained glass ceiling. Mary did that with grace and intelligence and an undeniable rock-solid, deep sense of her relationship with God.

Yes, yes, yes. And now, the tedium and controversy of the consent process will begin. I predict that Mary will get those consents, the homophobic rantings and warnings of the Archbishop of Canterbury notwithstanding, because everyone who sees her and knows her is convinced of her vocation.

Which is as it should be. She was elected from a slate of absolutely stellar candidates. Any one of them could have been elected and would have done a fine job - including my buddy John Kirkley, an amazing gay man and brother of my heart who is also one of the stellar priests in the church.

The Holy Spirit has spoken in the people of the Diocese of The City of Angels. Jesus warns us, in Matthew 12:31-32, that the only unforgivable sin is one against the Holy Spirit - "either in this age or the age to come."

Say it with me, children, "Mary Glasspool is the first lesbian woman in The Episcopal Church and the World Wide Anglican Communion to be elected to the office of the Episcopacy."

She's not the second gay priest to be elected to the episcopacy.

She's the first lesbian woman to be bishop.

Give me an 'L'!

UPDATE: It's Monday morning. I'm fresh from a good night's sleep, prayer, exercise and a nice hot shower. I've been thinking about some of the comments left here. I guess I'm more "old school" than I care to admit. Sigh!

Herstory is made in LA!

2009-12-05T19:54:00.001-05:00

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles made herstory yesterday in electing the Rev'd Cn. Diane Bruce as its first woman Bishop Suffragan.

It made herstory again today when it elected the Rev'd Cn. Mary Glasspool as its second woman Bishop Suffragan.

She is also the first to be able to be an honestly, open, self-affirming lesbian woman in the House of Bishops.

The field of candidates was absolutely stellar, including my dear friend, Rev'd John Kirkley of San Francisco, the Rev'd Zelda Kennedy of All Saint's, Pasadena, the Rev'd Sylvestre Romero of San Jose, CA, and the Rev'd Irineo Matir Vasquez of Hawthorne, CA.

I must say, however, that while the church would have been enormously enriched by any two of these wonderful candidates, I am, I confess, absolutely 'over the moon' that these two women have been elected to the House of Bishops to serve in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

It's been a long time since we have elected a woman to the 'junior house' - so, to elect TWO is pretty amazing. That one should be a person of God's Rainbow Tribe is, well, for me, unspeakable joy.

What a great day for the church! For our baptismal vows! For all those who really believe St. Paul when he told the church that, in our baptism in Christ Jesus, there "is no male or female, no Jew or Greek, no slave or free . . . . we are all one in Christ."

You know, I can't really say much more than that.

I can only weep great, bit, fat tears of joy- that I would live to see this day.

Oh, glory. Oh, glory.

Glory, glory Hallelujah!

Eyes Left: One 'Woo Hoo'. One more to go.

2009-12-05T09:17:00.000-05:00

The Diocese of Los Angeles made history yesterday when it elected the first of two new Bishop Suffragans for their diocese in electing the first woman to that position in their diocese.

The Rev'd Canon Diane Jardine Bruce was elected bishop suffragan on the third ballot from a field of absolutely stellar candidates.

Note, please, that this comes after three bishops ago when the ordination of women was not even a possibility in that diocese.

Susan Russell has all the inside scoop here.

The process continues with the remaining four candidates (Bruce, of course, was elected and the Rev'd John Kirkley withdrew) this morning. The first ballot was taken last night before convention broke for their banquet.

Talk about a cliff-hanger!

The diocese has the opportunity to make history again with the possibility of the election of the Rev'd Canon Mary Glasspool, the other candidate who is privileged to be able to be open and honest about who she is and who she loves.

I'm off to a Christmas Bazaar at St. Paul's this morning, followed by a Memorial Service at 4:30 for two of our former, elderly parishioners who died 11.5 months apart.

Advent. Christmas Bazaars. Praying the saints into heaven. The election of a bishop - another suffragan in LA and a diocesan in Louisiana - and the potential to make history.

It's quite a day in the fields of the Lord.

The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.

Indeed.

Pray for the church.

+KJS: ". . . the public scapegoating of any category of persons, in any context, is anathema."

2009-12-04T10:48:00.002-05:00

The Episcopal Church
Office of Public Affairs

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori
concerning proposed bill in Uganda

[December 4, 2009] The following is the statement of Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori concerning proposed private member’s bill on homosexuality in the Parliament of Uganda:

The Episcopal Church joins many other Christians and people of faith in urging the safeguarding of human rights everywhere. We do so in the understanding that “efforts to criminalize homosexual behavior are incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ” (General Convention 2006, Resolution D005).

This has been the repeated and vehement position of Anglican bodies, including several Lambeth Conferences. The Primates’ Meeting, in the midst of severe controversy over issues of homosexuality, nevertheless noted that, as Anglicans, “we assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and valued by him, and deserving of the best we can give of pastoral care and friendship” (Primates’ Communiqué, Dromantine, 2005).

The Episcopal Church represents multiple and varied cultural contexts (the United States and 15 other nations), and as a Church we affirm that the public scapegoating of any category of persons, in any context, is anathema. We are deeply concerned about the potential impingement on basic human rights represented by the private member’s bill in the Ugandan Parliament.

In the United States and elsewhere, we note that changed laws do help to shift public opinion and urge a more humane response to difference. The Hate Crimes Act recently passed in the United States is one example, as are the many pieces of civil rights legislation that have slowly changed American public behavior, especially in the area of race relations. We note the distance our own culture still needs to travel in removing discriminatory practice from social interactions, yet we have also seen how changed hearts and minds have followed legal sanctions on discriminatory behavior.

We give thanks for the clear position of the United States government on human rights, for the State Department’s annual human rights report on Uganda, which observes that the existing colonial-era law on same-sex relations is a societal abuse of human rights, and for the State Department’s publicly voiced opposition to the present bill. We urge the United States government to grant adequate access to the U.S. asylum system for those fleeing persecution on the basis of homosexuality or gender identity, to work with other governments, international organizations, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide adequate protection for these asylum seekers, and to oppose any attempts at extradition under a law such as that proposed in Uganda.

Finally, we note that much of the current climate of fear, rejection, and antagonism toward gay and lesbian persons in African nations has been stirred by members and former members of our own Church. We note further that attempts to export the culture wars of North America to another context represent the very worst of colonial behavior. We deeply lament this reality, and repent of any way in which we have participated in this sin.

We call on all Episcopalians to seek their own conversion toward an ability to see the image of God in the face of every neighbor, of whatever race, gender, sexual orientation, theological position, or creed. God has created us in myriad diversity, and no one sort or condition of human being can fully reflect the divine. Only the whole human race begins to be an adequate mirror of the divine.

We urge continued prayer for those who live in fear of the implications of this kind of injustice and discrimination, and as a Church, commit ourselves anew to seek partnerships with the Church of Uganda, or any portion thereof, in serving the mission of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That Gospel is larger than any party or faction. It is only in mutual service and recognition that we will begin to mend our divisions.

We are grateful for the willingness of the Anglican Communion Office and Lambeth Palace to hear this plea on behalf of all God’s people, and urge their continued assistance in seeking greater justice. We note the impediments this legislation would pose to the ability to continue a Listening Process in which all of the Anglican Communion is currently engaged.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop
The Episcopal Church

_ _ _

The Episcopal Church welcomes all who worship Jesus Christ in 109 dioceses and three regional areas in 16 nations. The Episcopal Church is a member province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Episcopal Church: www.episcopalchurch.org
IamEpiscopalian: http://www.iamepiscopalian.org/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/episcopalian
Twitter: http://twitter.com/iamepiscopalian
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/TECtube

Paying attention

2009-12-04T08:13:00.006-05:00

There is a member of my congregation who takes it upon himself to be my personal "clipping service". Every Sunday, he brings in an envelope with clippings from various newspapers - some things about LGBT issues, but mostly always about religion.

All religions. I'm kept informed of what's going on with the Mormons, the Jews, the Roman Catholics and, of course, The Episcopal Church. I never fail to be grateful.

This past Sunday, the envelope was much thicker than usual. I brought it with me, as is my custom, to breakfast after church. Ms. Conroy and I can usually be found at The Nautilus Diner in Madison (lovingly referred to as "The Nauseous"). We've been going there for years.

We usually sit at the counter, because it's easier to get seating on Sunday, but sometimes we're in a booth. We don't talk much. We read.

Sometimes, a parishioner or two will be there. Most often, they wave and smile and then leave us alone. We are thankful.

Some of the wait staff come by to say hello, share a hug and a smooch, tease each other about the Yankees vs. BoSox, complain about the weather, report on the latest family drama.

Like that. Diner talk. North Jersey style.

Last Sunday, however, the news clippings took up most of our attention and conversation. There were articles from various sources citing an increase on college campuses in Evangelical organizations and another reporting a sharp increase in atheist student organizations - Secular Student Alliance - most recently at Harvard and Iowa State University, both of which now have Humanist Chaplains.

We wadded through various op-ed pieces opining and prognosticating about the upcoming votes on Marriage Equality in New York and New Jersey, an article about the killing of a gay man in Turkey, a report of a new book that calls Jewish people "an invention," a story about the banning of religious Christmas songs in the Maplewood-South Orange, NJ schools, and the growing controversy about the authorship of "The Serenity Prayer."

Amazing what you can learn about what's going on in the world by reading the newspapers, right?

There were no less than nine articles on the Roman Catholic church. The first one was entitled "Benedict Woos Artists, Urging 'Quest for Beauty'" which read, in part:

"And so in an effort to improve the Catholic Church's engagement with a contemporary artists - and perhaps put a gentler face on a contentious papacy - the Vatican invited more than 250 artists, architects, musicians, directors, writers and composers for an audience. . . with Pope Benedict XVI."

A 'gentler face', eh? What's that quote about 'lipstick on a pig'?

The other eight articles were enough to make the heart - and stomach - sick.

"In Dublin, 700 pages on the Church's Sins".

"The report details examples of priests who were blatant, notorious abusers, but who were allowed to continue without punishment or censure. One priest admitted to abusing more than 100 children. Another said he had abused, on average, a child every two weeks for 25 years.

One parish priest whose case was examined in the report, the Rev. James McNamee, was locally infamous for his behavior over more than 30 years. Early in Father McNamee's career, an altar boy said he had seen the priest "bathing with naked adolescent boys and placing the boys on his shoulders"; a parishioner said he had seen the priest exercising in the nude with boys in his backyard."

"Diocese Says It Recorded 32 Accusations of Abuse."

"The (CT) diocese made the admission last week in contesting a lawsuit filed by the estate of Michael Powel, who died last year. Mr. Powel had claimed that he was sexually abused at St. Theresa's Parish in Trumbull (CT) between 1968, when he was 9 and 1972, when he was 13.

The diocese is asking the court to allow it to withhold records on all allegations made after 1973, saying they are irrelevant to Mr. Powel's lawsuit. In its filing, the diocese said it should not have to spend thousands of dollars to review the documents 'simply because Michael Powel alleges he was abused one time for one minute in the winter of 1971'."

Oh, it gets worse.

"Diocese pays $325,00 in sex case."

"Jenni Franz, who was (Rev. Ron) Becker's niece, says Becker (who died in January) molested her more than 100 times from when she was five until she was 11. "Her mother would go shopping, and Father Becker would say, 'Don't worry, I'd love to babysit. Jenny.' And he would sexually molest her."

And then, just in case that wasn't enough and you thought it was only about pedophilia, there was this:

"Woman, 72, sues cleric for trauma and distress."

"On November 15, 2007, the 72 year old parishioner and 39-year old priest (Rev. Edson Fernando Costa, an assistant pastor at St. Anne's Church, Fair Lawn, NJ) were in a church hallway area when he embraced her, then took her hand and forced her to touch him, the complaint reads. "The plaintiff, shocked, horrified, humiliated and embarrassed, told the defendant, 'If you have any respect for me at all, then please me alone,' according to the lawsuit.

Four days later, she told the pastor, the Rev. Joseph C. Doyle. . . "Fr. Doyle did not contact the Archdiocese of Newark, nor any law enforcement agencies to advise them of the criminal conduct of the defendant. . . and as a result, the plaintiff has suffered damages."

The woman also names as defendants the St. Anne's pastor who supervised Costa, the church, the Archdiocese of Newark and Archbishop of Newark in the lawsuit filed November 10."

Well, as you might imagine, by the time I got to the last three clippings, I was in a pretty foul mood.

You already know the saga of the Bishop and the State Representative, so I'll just file them by title:

"Patrick Kennedy Says His Politics Led to Communion Ban"

"Bishop admits barring Kennedy from sacrament"

"Kennedy Not Welcome to Receive Communion"

I know. Almost unbelievable, right?

Thomas Tobin, Catholic bishop of RI where Kennedy lives and is a State Representative, is quoted as saying, "He (Kennedy) attacks the church. He attacked the position of the church on health care, on abortion, on funding. And that required that I respond. I don't go out looking for these guys. I don't go out picking fights."

After I read that paragraph aloud, Ms. Conroy looked over at me, her face aghast. She shook her head in disgust, threw the clippings she had in her hand down on the counter and said, "Who the hell are these guys to hold themselves up as the 'moral compass' of society?"

See? The good bishop was just minding his own business. Doing his father's work. Patrick Kennedy, on the other hand, an elected official who is supposed to have an opinion or two on important matters of public policy, was not doing his job. No! He was 'attacking' the church."

Here's the quote that sent Ms. Conroy over the edge:

"The bishop's attempt to publicly shame Kennedy comes just a few months after the death of his father, Sen. Edward Kennedy. Tobin told the Associated Press in an interview . . . . ... that he's praying for the younger Kennedy, who has been in and out of treatment for substance abuse, and said Kennedy has been acting 'erratically'.

I mean, really!

Using prayer as a way to further shame Kennedy by bringing up his addiction.

And, claiming that someone's behavior is erratic - or, hysterical - as a way to discredit their position is an ancient ploy. Why, it's as old as the church.

Bishop Tobin have you no shame? At long last, sir, have you no shame at all?

All was not lost. Here's a little something I learned in the NY Times 'Letters to the Editor' section, which was also attached at the end of all the clippings.

Representative Patrick J. Kennedy is on stronger theological ground than Bishop Thomas J. Tobin. A legislator may support the legalization of a practice that he or she personally deems immoral.

Thus, SS. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas thought prostitution immoral but supported the legalization of prostitution on the grounds that greater evils would ensue if this outlet for aberrant sexual energy were outlawed. Aquinas even said that in doing this the "wise legislator" would be imitating God, who tolerates certain evils lest greater evils ensue.

So a Catholic legislator who thinks all abortions are immoral could still vote to keep it legal because of the evils that would ensue, especially for poor women."

The letter was was written by Daniel C. Macguire of Millwaukee, a professor of moral theology at Marquette University dated Nov. 23, 2009.

Whoever said, "Ignorance is bliss" wasn't just kidding.

It's also very, very dangerous. Because, for one thing, enforced institutional ignorance has always been a handy-dandy little tool of corrupt institutions.

I could have done without most of the information in that packet of clippings. It made me sick to my stomach. I am outraged.

At least I'm paying attention.

Apparently, so are many, many others. I suspect the story about the influx of Evangelicals on college campuses may well be former Roman Catholics who like structure in their religion but not corruption.

For those Roman Catholics who have been completely devastated by the behavior of the prelates of their church, I suppose there's the 'Secular Student Alliance'. I'm thinking those Humanist Chaplains are getting an earful.

Someone the other day commented on this blog on another post that outrage was the easy part. He wanted to know what, if anything, we're going to do about it.

Well, I heard that. Loud and clear. And, I've made a decision: it starts here. I'm reprinting this stuff to help us think about what it is we might do about all this.

I'm asking a serious question: How can we help our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers, those courageous and tenacious Christians who have stayed in the church to work for change from within?

What course of action might help them most? Would protest marches outside the homes of individual Roman Catholic bishops or diocesan administrative offices help? Would letter writing campaigns be of any help? A coordinated night of Prayer Vigil outside every major cathedral in every major RC archdiocese? The equivalent of a "Million ~~Man~~ Person March" on the Vatican?

I'd like everyone who reads this post to ask one of your RC friends (and we all have at least one RC friend) what might be the most helpful thing we could do to help bring an end to the arrogance and corruption that has so infested this part of the Body of Christ.

Maybe, together, we might be able to come up with an effective plan to let every deacon, priest, bishop, archbishop and cardinal who has ever looked the other way and not reported these abominations in the site of the Lord - and worked for them to end - to know that others are paying attention.

You think about that for a while. Meanwhile, I'm going to take that clipping of the story of the Pope's 'quest for beauty', along with all these other clippings, and send them to the Holy Father with a note suggesting that perhaps his quest should be for the beauty of Truth and Decency.

You know. Just to let him know that someone is paying attention.

A little 'family chat'

2009-12-02T23:18:00.024-05:00

Yesterday, someone over on HOB/D (House of Bishops/Deputies Listserv) wrote something absolutely hateful about homosexuality being a 'disorder'.

He later tried to back paddle by saying that he believed 'all of creation was disordered' after The Fall.

Yeah, that's a really helpful dodge. Take a swing even farther to the Right until you move right out of the traditional Spirit of Anglicanism and run smack-dab into Calvinism.

A few polite-white liberals then tried to rationalize reasons for this behavior.

You know me. I had to speak up. A few folk wrote to tell me they thought what I wrote was important enough to have a wider audience.

Given the defeat of Marriage Equality yesterday in New York State Senate, I suspect they might be right.

When will people get over the fact that this is not an 'issue', it is about people's lives? Men, women and children? American citizens. Taxpayers. People from all walks of life?

Here's what I said:

It's not that I don't appreciate the irenic tone of the posts here regarding the "disorder" of creation with regards to homosexuality. I do.

It's just that, when you talk about that "disorder" you are talking about me. Me. Elizabeth. Elizabeth Kaeton. And, hundreds of thousands of Episcopalians. And, millions and millions of LGBT people around the world.

It's not just a theo-cultural, political construct, see? There is a human face in the box with the label you have applied.

Behind that face beats the heart and mind and soul of a child of God.

You can't see that if you keep us carefully wrapped up in a box with a nice, important sounding label.

You can't hear that if you fill up the air space with theo-political rhetoric.

You can neither see nor hear the fullness of the human condition or the enterprise of being human if you continue to put yourself above it all (and others) while standing safely in your theological pulpit or cultural, political soap box.

We are told by St. Paul that, in baptism, Christ is alive in us. You can't see the Christ in me - and it's hard to see the Christ in you - if you don't let the Light of Christ shine past labels and language and rhetoric.

Whenever I find myself running to my head and using Very Big, Important Sounding words, or labeling people in order not to deal with something that is distressing to me, it's usually an indication that my heart is afraid.

There's a saying in 12-Step Programs that if you run into more than two "idiots" (well, that's not the exact word, but we're in polite company) in the course of a day, it's time to look in the mirror.

Actually, and sadly, I think all your labels, your persistent, antiquated and incorrect correlation between homosexuality and addiction, and your rhetorical/theological flourishes say more about you than anything I know God believes about me.

I would remind you of this: In the words of the great collect in the BCP (p. 214) for the Second Sunday after Christmas Day, we pray:
"O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature, Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity . . . ."
Think about those words before you next pray them.

If there is any truth to your words that "my understanding of the doctrine of the fall is that all creation was and continues to be disordered," then I suggest you skip this prayer on that day.

Maybe Calvin has written one that better expresses your theology. Then again, he wasn't Anglican, was he? Ah, more's the pity for you, I suppose.

You may believe that 'The Fall' permanently tarnished the wonderful creation and creatures of God. I believe that, whatever it was that happened in The Garden, the dignity of ALL human nature was 'yet more wonderfully restored' by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

No matter. We believe differently. As Anglicans, we have the glorious freedom to use our intellect and reason in the living out of our religious and spiritual lives, and yet still be one in Christ.

Just remember that there is a person - a 'wonderfully created' child of God who has been 'even more wonderfully restored' in Christ - with a heart and soul and mind that is deeply offended and hurt by your language.

Well, there it is. For whatever it's worth. I personally think that New York State Senator, Diane Sovino, said it much better.

Here, have a listen. It's a seven minute video, but she really starts to rock about a minute and a half into it.

Somebody cue Peter, Paul and Mary and ask them to sing, "Where have all the flowers gone?"

When will they ever learn?

2009-12-02T06:15:00.001-05:00

I loved that her name meant "I love." Jaime. J'aime. Because she did.

She was a vibrant child. Intense. Curious. A full head of curly hair that seemed to have a mind of its own, just like the rest of her. Her features were an exotic mixture of her Portuguese/Azorean mother and her father who was German and French Canadian with some rumor of Native American.

Stunningly, strikingly beautiful.

She was, as they say in the South, a willful child. I can still see her at two and a half years old, hand on hip, mouth drawn into a pencil thin line, her brows furrowed, her little foot stamping the floor and she's saying, "No."

You knew that this was something beyond "the terrible two's". There was no doubt that she meant it. At two and a half.

She loved Disney movies, but she couldn't watch "Bambi". Or, "Dumbo." I don't think she ever watched either movie to the end. Too sad. She loved "Pinocchio" and, of course, "Cinderella" and "Snow White." But she also loved "Pete's Dragon." Knew all the words to all the songs - even "Passamashloddy".

As a child and even as a young adult, she loved, "Somewhere Out There" from 'An American Tale'. Sometimes, we used to sing it to each other. On the phone. Before she went to bed. During those Terrible Years of The Custody Battle. I still can't hear that song without being instantly transported back in time. And dissolved into tears.

As she grew she became an intelligent, creative, and passionate young woman. When her dark eyes flared, you knew to stay out of her way. When she laughed, her whole body laughed with her. She cared deeply about suffering in any form, but had a special place in her heart for animals.

The Roman Catholic Church of her husband's faith became her spiritual sanctuary. She loved to go to mass, and did so several times a week, but she sometimes just stopped in at the church around the corner from her home to say a prayer and light a candle. That small act of hope also brought comfort and solace to her often troubled soul.

And, she loved to cook. One of the last presents I gave her was two cookbooks. The last conversation we had was about the spaghetti sauce she was making. From scratch. She was going to serve it with penne pasta. The recipe called for red wine which, she said, she was enjoying as she cooked, even though she had been told by her doctor not to drink any alcohol.

"It's just a glass," she said, with an annoyance that could have easily turned into a flash of her anger, "which I'm sipping." I could see her hand on her hip, her mouth pencil thin, her brows furrowed, her foot stomping.

Then she laughed and said, "How can you cook Italian if you don't drink wine?" Then, she laughed some more, "Or, French? Or, Chinese? Or Indian? Or, Portuguese . . . . .?" Then, she laughed some more.

That was the day before she died.

She had been feeling ill. Her energy level was "at zero to minus five," she said. She hated the new medication she was on. "I really think I'd be better off without it," she said.

She died five years ago. Today.

I'd like to think she's better off. My faith tells me she is.

I'm not.

I miss her more, today, than I did the day I got the call from her husband, telling me that she had died.

It's not supposed to be like this, you know? Parents are not supposed to outlive their children. It's all terribly wrong. Which, in some perverse way, only adds to the grief.

It helps to imagine her somewhere celestial. Somewhere very beautiful. "Somewhere Out There." She has rescued another small animal who is sitting happily nearby. The music she loved most - Stevie Nicks, KISS, Heart, George Michael, Anything MoTown - is playing in the background. LOUD. She's cooking up something delicious, and she's enjoying a large glass - or two - of red wine.

And, laughing. Intensely. Passionately. Freely.

Later on today, when I get home from work, I'm going to have a glass of red wine and raise it in her honor.

She'd like that, I think.

I'll definitely be saying a prayer that, someday, "we'll find one another in that big somewhere out there."

But first, I'll cry.

Because I love.

Three Flickers of Hope on World AIDS Day

2009-12-01T08:36:00.001-05:00

By the time you read this, most of what I'm posting here will be old news.

Funny. It's less than 24 hours old, but in the high speed intensity of communication in cyberspace, 24 hours is a long time.

Still, the news is good. Good enough to be shared. Again.

You know. The way we share the Good News of the scriptures every Sunday - and, every chance we get.

The first is the Statement about the proposed Anti-Gay law in Uganda from Claiming the Blessing. As a member of that Steering Committee, I signed that statement, of course. It says, in part:

We believe the “Year of the Lord’s Favor” our Presiding Bishop preached about at her investiture includes the liberation of those held captive by homophobia. Our Ugandan LGBT brothers and sisters need to hear the word of hope the Episcopal Church can give by joining those opposing this legislation. The time to stand up and be counted is now. We urge our elected and appointed leaders of the Episcopal Church to stand up and to speak out on behalf of the gospel.

The entire CTB statement can be found here:

The second is the statement from IntegrityUSA which speaks, in part, to the historic relationships that organization has had with LGBT people in Uganda. It also makes reference to the absolute abomination of the collateral effect of hampering the work being done to address the devastating effects of the world-wide HIV/AIDS pandemic there.

Integrity has a long history of relationship with Uganda through its connections with Integrity Uganda allies but also through its Vice President of National & International Affairs, the Rev. Canon Albert Ogle’s work in Uganda on HIV-AIDS. "We cannot support laws that are internationally and locally criticized as ineffective public health policy that will only make the HIV situation worse for Ugandans in general, and to use religious values to deny human rights that run contrary to the Ugandan Constitution," said Ogle. He has written an important background paper and analysis shedding new light on the complexity in Uganda with special emphasis on the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. His paper will be released, December 1st, World Aids Day, and posted on the Walking With Integrity blog (walkingwithintegrity.blogspot.com).

Integrity calls for prayers for all those living with HIV/AIDS and for those fighting to overcome the scourge of homophobia.

The entire statement can be found here:

Finally! A statement from Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, which condemns, in no uncertain terms, the proposed Ugandan Anti-Gay Law.

The pending Ugandan legislation that would imprison for life or execute people who violate that country's anti-homosexuality laws would be a "terrible violation of the human rights of an already persecuted minority," Episcopal Church House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson has said.

"I hope and believe that a vigorous statement will be forthcoming (from a December 7th teleconference call by members of the Executive Committee), and that I will be able to support this statement wholeheartedly," Anderson said.

Meanwhile, Anderson said she would encourage House of Deputies members and first alternates to contact their congresspersons through the church's Office of Government Relations to express their opposition to the bill.

You can read the entire news article here.

So, three bits of "old news" which come as flickers of hope in the dark night of a proposed law which promises to violate the basic human rights of Ugandan LGBT people and their families - especially those who continue, against solid scientific information to the contrary, to exploit the connection between homosexuality and HIV/AIDS.

Three candles which the darkness can not overcome.

A Trinity of candles which beckon others to join them to be the Light of the World.

I do believe that the quiet sound of candles, burning and flickering in an almost inaudible hiss, can dull the roar of voices that call for the oppression and murder of God's children.

Then again, I believe in the power of a young, unmarried Nazarine woman who said "yes" to God's call to bear and birth God's own Self into the world.

I also believe in the power of a simple carpenter from the House of David who agreed to accept God's impossible vocation to be the human father of God's Divinity.

Not only that, I believe in the great power of a tiny, vulnerable, newborn infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger to change and transform hearts and minds to change and transform the world.

I not only believe in the power of Incarnation.

I have seen it.

It is the power of an impossible vocation, lived not flawlessly but faithfully. It is the power of vulnerability. It is the power of hope.

We are, each and every one of us, pregnant with goodness and possibility.

We just need to let our Light shine.

And on this World AIDS Day, in the 28th Year of what is now a World Wide Pandemic but what some people think is "old news", a little Light is still a good thing.

Indeed, it may be the only hope some people will ever know.

Translation, please

2009-11-30T08:29:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking of late about the op-ed piece, written by Anglican Bishop Joseph Abura of Karamojo Diocese, Province of the Anglican Church of Uganda, defending his support of the proposed "new" law in Uganda which calls for capitol punishment for the "crime" of what they call "aggravated homosexuality."

Translation: Anyone who is open and honest about being an LGBT person.

Some of my brothers, while not exactly defending Bishop Abura's position, have been urging patience and understanding of the 'cultural context' from which the bishop speaks.

I've also been thinking about the way words don't translate from generation to generation and culture to culture. More importantly, I've been thinking about how cultural understandings are often incomprehensible to others.

When I was in Acra, Ghana, some of the women college students in Accra told me that men are known to "sleep" with other men, but asserted that this was not evidence of homosexuality. "That's just men being men," they giggled.

They also told me that a man may legally marry any woman but he must be married in a tribal ceremony to a woman of his own tribe. "That is not polygamy," they asserted. "He must marry someone in his tribe in order for the tribe to continue."

Likewise, I was told, a "married" man may have sex outside of marriage with male or female. "That is not promiscuity," they told me. "That is just the way of men."

And yes, they also said that this has been "the way of men" in Africa until, they said, "The Christians brought us the idea of shame. So, now we try to assimilate." Which, roughly translated from the local African, meant, not to scare the Christian horses.

Which I experienced, through my American-via-Western-European-Mediterranean-Azorian lens, as grinning, giggling, and disarmingly charming duplicity.

I also visited a Witch Colony in Tamale, in Northern Ghana, where women are banished because they are feared to have "evil powers". This may mean a 9 year old girl who "disobeys" her father or older brother, or a 36 year old wife with five children who has had an argument with her mother-in-law.

I just read this article from the Huffington Post "10,000 Albinos in Hiding After Killings in East Africa."

I confess. It's incomprehensible to me.

We have much to learn about each other's culture. Translation of words is sometimes easier than translation of behavior from one culture to another.

St. Paul tells us through his letter to the church in Ephesus that there are "no more Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female . . . . we are all one in Christ."

If that is true, and I believe it is, then this discussion about cultural context is important for understanding but absolutely, positively irrelevant when it comes to how we treat one another as Christians.

The murder of an LGBT person or an albino person - the influence of tribal witchdoctors not withstanding - or the easy banishment of women and children into a life of slavery - allegations of Evil notwithstanding - is not only a violation of human rights, it is a violation of everything that is sacred to the heart and mind of Jesus.

I want to give as much respect to the cultural contexts of others as I expect from others for my own cultural context. Indeed, I am happy to err on the side of generosity.

However, as Christians, we share the cultural context of our love for Jesus and His unconditional love for us.

The cultural context of Christianity trumps all other cultures. It has to. If we are to be "one in Christ." If the "old self" has died in baptism and "Christ now lives in me".

Isn't that what St. Paul teaches?

We should all be outraged when our common heritage and culture of Love Incarnate, Love Divine is violated in such heinously evil ways - even when they come from intelligent, articulate Princes of the Anglican Church.

Here's my question to Christian leaders - especially in the Anglican Communion - Where is your outrage?

This just in from Religion Dispatches:

There is, of course, a fundamental irony in these arrangements. American conservatives have convinced their African peers that collaborating with them somehow represents a kind of anti-colonial resistance. One is almost tempted to applaud the American right’s audacity. After all, it generally opposed Africa’s national liberation movements, and often smeared the progressive churches that supported them. Now, by presenting homosexuality as the corrupt imposition of a decadent, dying west, American Christian conservatives have positioned themselves as champions of the developing world’s cultural authenticity. Meanwhile, African leaders purport to fight Americanization by aligning with some of the most powerful and chauvinistic of American religious leaders, and even taking American government money.

Read the whole thing here.

This is not about culture or religion.

I don't need a translator to understand what this is really all about.

This is about power.

I think it makes Jesus weep.

UPDATE: Exert the power of your voice. Sign the petition which reaffirms resolution D005 of the 2006 General Convention placing The Episcopal Church in opposition to such laws.

"While we hope that in due course our leadership will speak, we must now speak out to support the glbt community in Uganda and in every country contemplating such legislation. They need to know that we are out here and we are not going to remain silent."

"Anglicans Opposing Uganda's Anti-Gay Bill"

Advent I: Are you ready?

2009-11-29T14:51:00.002-05:00

“. . . .stand up and raise your heads . . .” Luke 21:28
Advent I – November 29, 2009
The Episcopal Church of St. Paul
(the Rev’d Dr.) Elizabeth Kaeton, rector and pastor

It’s the New Year. Are you ready?

No, I’ve not gone off the deep end. Even though we have several weeks to go to the beginning of 2010, Advent I begins a new year in the Church’s Liturgical Calendar.

It’s not as crazy as it might seem. Our new year begins with the anticipation of the Incarnation. We are a people who are pregnant with hope.

I’ve been struck by verse 28 from the 21st chapter of Luke’s gospel: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

“Stand up and raise your heads.”

What a remarkable thing to say to an ancient people bowed down and bent over by the oppression of the occupied forces of Rome. Indeed, what a remarkable thing to say to anyone whose shoulders are slumped and head is bowed by anxiety or shame or fear.

“Stand up and raise your heads.”

It was Tuesday afternoon when the call came in. A student I had known several years ago was calling to say hello and Happy Thanksgiving. She is always irrepressibly cheerful and positive in her outlook, even though she’s been through a rough patch.

She graduated a few years back with her M.Div. but had only been able to obtain a 1/4 time position with a ministry with a fledgling inner city organization that provides food to those who are homeless. The rest of the time, she works at a Café. Even has some health benefits.

God, she says, is good. All the time.

“So,” she continued after the pleasantries, “can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure,” said I.

“Well, I’m wondering if I could park my car in your church lot overnight.”

“No problem,” I said, “Just put a note in the dashboard that says, ‘Guest of St. Paul’s Church’. That way, the police will leave you alone.”

“Well,” she continued, “you see, I’ll be sleeping in my car.”

“Excuse me?” I said, certain I didn’t hear her correctly.

“Yeah, see, well, I couldn’t afford my student loans, my car and my apartment. I figure I need my car for my jobs so I gave up my apartment. Trouble is,” she continued quickly, “my 14 year old daughter is here visiting so I really don’t want there to be any trouble. You know. With the cops.”

I took in a deep breath as I took in all that she was saying.

This is an intelligent woman. Creative. Well educated. Who takes care of homeless people And now, she’s homeless. With a 14 year old daughter. How could this be, I asked myself.

Strange. I had just been reading the poem by William Butler Yeats “The Second Coming.”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

“Look,” I said, “you can not sleep in your car in the church - or any - parking lot. Even if I gave you permission, that wouldn’t hold with the Chatham police – or any police department. My permission would not spare you a charge of ‘child endangerment’ – and you could lose visitation rights with your daughter.”

There was a long pause and she said, “Oh, right. What should I do?”

I said, “ Well, for now, just hang on and let me make a few phone calls and get back to you.”

We said a prayer together and then hung up. I thought of the words from this morning’s gospel. “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Raise your head, I said to myself. Don’t be overwhelmed by all this. Raise your head for yourself and for her and her daughter. THINK.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Who would still be at their desk? I sent up a quick prayer before making a phone call to a friend at Interfaith Hospitality Network.

To my delight, I was able to reach her and explained the situation. “You know, we used to get calls like this oh, once or twice a month. Now, it’s three or four times a week. It’s like the center is giving way.”

I thought to myself that both Jesus and Yeats, writing at very different times in history, were right.

Sometimes, things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

She said I should give my friend her number to start the process of intake with IHN, but in all likelihood, there would be no room for her tonight.

“Call the Office of Temporary Assistance,” she said, “and perhaps, between that office and maybe some pockets you can pick, we can get her off the streets – at least for the time her daughter is visiting.”

Well, it took a little doing and no less than quite a few phone calls, but we were able to patch together enough money for an inexpensive hotel room while we started the longer-term process of finding a solution to her homelessness.

When I called my friend later that evening in her hotel room she thanked me and said, “You know. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just so ashamed and so afraid.”

And then she sighed and said, “I need help.”

“Ah, I said, “and now you have said the three most courageous words in the English language. I. Need. Help. It’s hard to say, isn’t it? But, once you’ve said them, once you’ve taken careful stock of where you are and what’s going on around you; once you are able to say, ‘I need help’, you are able to stand up and raise your head and see Jesus waiting to help you.”

In this morning’s gospel, Jesus says, "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.”

Oh, my friend is not out of the woods, but she’s on the path. She took her first step onto the path of her own salvation when she stood up and raised her head against the rising tide of shame and fear and was able to say, ‘I need help.’

And that, my friends, is the essence of this Advent Season. That is the beginning of the New Year we proclaim this Sunday. The New Year when the prophet Jeremiah says that God will fulfill God’s promises.

The year of the Lord which begins with a birth of rude awakening in the humble stables of the Bethlehems of our lives.

The second stanza of Yeats’ poem continues:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

To one extent or another, we are all slouching toward Bethlehem. I know I am.

Many of us are stooped over by anxiety and fear. Some of us are ashamed. Others of us are grieving. Deeply. Some are angry.

We hide it well behind cheery smiles through grit teeth all tied up in a bow of ‘passionate intensity’. Most of us are able to convince ourselves and even others that we are ‘fine, just fine’.

But, we’re not. The truth of it is that all of us need Jesus in our lives. And, there is no room for Him right now, for the inns of our hearts are too cluttered with the ‘dissipation and drunkenness of the worries of this life’.

Fear not. The Light of the world is coming.

This morning, we lit the first candle of the Advent Wreath. Each week, we’ll light another. And another. Each week, the ‘rough beasts’ of our worst fears, whose ‘hour has come round at last’, will slouch a little closer towards Bethlehem, expecting to find what the world describes as King, only to find that God has given us a wee tiny babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes. The Infant Messiah.

We’ll know by the light that overcomes the darkness of our ‘rough beasts’.

We’ll know by the innocent hope we see in our children’s eyes.

We’ll feel it in the real joy that lights up our hearts which comes from sacrificial giving to those whose need is far greater, even than our own.

Hear again the words of Jesus to us this morning: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

It’s the beginning of a New Year – a new life – for a people who are pregnant with hope.

Are you ready?

Stand up and pick up your heads. Ready or not, it has begun.

Amen.

Advent I: Happy New Year!

2009-11-29T07:02:00.000-05:00

Godspell - with Portuguese subtitles, even!

Two of my favorite songs from one of my favorite plays.

More on this, later. For now, just enjoy!

Advent I: Bishop Shaw takes the first 'pastorally generous' step toward Marriage Equality in The Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts

2009-11-28T22:14:00.003-05:00

Advent I
November 29, 2009

Christian marriage is a sacramental rite that has evolved in the church, along with confirmation, ordination, penance, and the anointing of the sick, and while it is not necessary for all, it must be open to all as a means of grace and sustenance to our Christian hope.

I believe this because the truth of it is in our midst, revealed again and again by the many marriages—of women and men, and of persons of the same gender—that are characterized, just as our church expects, by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, and the holy love which enables spouses to see in one another the image of God.

In May of 2004 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opened civil marriage in our state to same-gender couples. That ruling set up a contradiction between what civil law would allow and what our church’s canons and formulary state, which is that marriage is between a man and a woman.

And so, for more than five years now, while faithfully waiting for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church to act in response, we in the Diocese of Massachusetts have been living at some cost with an imperfect accommodation: Our clergy have not been allowed to solemnize same-gender marriages, but they have been permitted to bless them after the fact.

In July of this year, the 76th General Convention adopted resolution C056, “Liturgies for Blessings.” It allows that “bishops, particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church.”

Your bishops understand this to mean for us here in the Diocese of Massachusetts that the clergy of this diocese may, at their discretion, solemnize marriages for all eligible couples, beginning Advent I.

Solemnization, in accordance with Massachusetts law, includes hearing the declaration of consent, pronouncing the marriage and signing the marriage certificate. This provision for generous pastoral response is an allowance and not a requirement; any member of the clergy may decline to solemnize any marriage.

While gender-specific language remains unchanged in the canons and The Book of Common Prayer, our provision of generous pastoral response means that same-gender couples can be married in our diocese. We request that our clergy follow as they ordinarily would the other canonical requirements for marriage and remarriage.

And, because The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage in The Book of Common Prayer may not be used for marriages of same-gender couples, we ask that our priests seek out liturgical resources being developed and collected around the church.

We also commend to you the October 2008 resource created by our New England dioceses, “Pastoral Resources for Province I Episcopal Clergy Ministering to Same-Gender Couples,” available at www.province1.org.

We have not arrived at this place in our common life easily or quickly. We have not done it alone. This decision comes after a long process of listening, prayer and discernment leading up to and continuing after General Convention’s action this past summer.

Our Diocesan Convention recently adopted a resolution of its own expressing its collective hope for the very determination that your bishops have made. Even so, we know that not all are of one mind and that some in good faith will disagree with this decision. Our Anglican tradition makes space for this disagreement and calls us to respect and engage one another in our differences. It is through that tension that we find God’s ultimate will.

We also know that by calling us to minister in the context of this particular place and time God is again blessing our diocese with a great challenge by which we might enter more fully into that ethic of love which Jesus speaks to us through the New Testament.

It is an immeasurable love given for all. We are being asked to live it, all of us, children of God, each with equal claim upon the love, acceptance and pastoral care of this church, so that the newness and fullness of life promised through word and sacrament might be for all people and for the completion of God’s purpose for the world.

/s/ M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE

My Mother's Daughter

2009-11-28T14:08:00.001-05:00

I just spent an hour washing, starching, ironing and folding the holiday linens.

I love to cook and made way too much food for our Thanksgiving Dinner, but, of course, it was a very 'necessary excess'. I had to send "care packages" of left overs home with everyone, didn't I?

Sometimes, in the midst of a perfectly fine conversation, I find myself arguing a contrary position, just to argue a contrary position.

When I am holding a baby and she yawns, I make the sign of the cross over her open mouth.

Before I go to bed at night, I check to make sure all the doors are locked and all the lights are turned off.

GASP!

I think I am becoming my mother.

Of all the things I do that my mother did, I think I enjoy ironing the most. Well, cooking comes in a very close second, but it is the ironing that connects me to her with the strongest bond.

My mother was a "Mill Girl". Like many first generation Portuguese women of her generation, she worked in the textile mills in Fall River, Massachusetts.

She was a "finishing presser."

In the "piece work" assembly-line of the textile industry, that meant it was her job to steam press the collars, sleeves, cuffs and pockets of the dresses that had been sewn by other women.

After she pressed out all the wrinkles to a farethewell, the pieces were then sent on to other women who assembled the parts by pinning them together. Yet another group of women sewed the dresses together.

The finished product was then sent on to yet another set of women who steamed pressed them to be sent off to be made ready for shipping to retail stores all over the country for other "women of means" to purchase them.

"Textile industry" was the term we used after her shop was unionized. Before that, her place of employment was known as a "sweat shop". Mind you, we were never allowed to use that term, but that didn't change the reality of her place of employment.

It was, make no mistake, a "sweat shop".

I don't know how she did it. Rain or shine, winter or summer, she worked eight hours a day, five and sometimes six days a week, in a factory with no central heat and no air conditioning.

Oh, there were large, institutional windows but the direct sunlight was obscured by the accumulation of years and years of layer upon layer of textile lint on the inside and city grime on the outside.

I remember her grumbling, from time to time, about wanting to take "a pail of vinegar and water and some newspaper" to clean the inside panes of glass. She never did. It wouldn't have made a difference, she said. She was on the fifth floor and there was no way anyone was going to wash the grime off the outside of the panes.

The "sweat shop" environment was made pleasant, however, because it was also a community. Everyone knew everyone else - or was related to somebody. Many came from the same villages in Portugal or the Azores.

There were so many women named "Mary" who often had the same last name - Souza, Medeiros, Pacheco, Costa, Almeida - that they referred to each other by their role in the assembly line.

I grew up knowing "Mary on Buttons" who was not to be confused with "Mary on Collars" who was the cousin of "Bella the Supervisor" and therefore a person of some influence.

People helped each other. If a kid needed sneakers ("sneaks" as they were known) for school, somebody knew someone who worked in another factory where they could be gotten out of the trunk of someone's car for $1 - maybe a bit more if they were a 'brand name' and not 'seconds' ("Eh, the box fell of the truck. Waddya gonna do, let it stay there in the middle of the street?")

If someone's cousin "just got off the boat" and needed a job, somebody knew somebody who could "put in a word for you".

I don't think there were any hard and fast rules, but the system seemed to work. My mother seemed to enjoy "getting out of the house" and "helping the family" with the "little extra's" that were the signs and symbols of some achievement in "The Great American Dream".

Ultimately, it was the money she earned that helped us save up the down payment for our own home "in the country" - well, at least it was away from the second floor tenement apartment above my grandparent's home in Fall River.

I remember when my mother saved up enough money to purchase a new set of sheets for her bed. She was so excited. No more plain white sheets for her. Nosireebob. She got Very Bright stripped sheets.

She brought them home on a Friday afternoon - along with the Chow Mein Sandwiches ($1 a piece at the Mark You Chinese Restaurant in Fall River) for the obligatory, Roman Catholic meatless Fridays of my youth.

While we kids ate our supper, my mother ripped open the package of sheets and - oh, my goodness, can you imagine it - matching pillow cases, and put them right into the washing machine.

We didn't have a dryer (a luxury we couldn't yet afford, but my mother was working on it), so she broke her own mother's rule ("Never go out into the night air or you 'may catch your death of pneumonia.'") and went outside to hang them on the line to dry over night.

I don't think she slept all night, waiting for the sheets and pillow cases to dry. In the morning, she took them off the line and then - of course - ironed them before she made up the bed. She wanted to surprise my father.

Now, my father was a man of few words with an even drier sense of humor. He worked 11-7 at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company while my mother worked 8 - 4 ~~at the sweat shop~~ in the Textile Industry. He would always take a wee nap after supper, getting up around 10 PM to get ready for work.

After carefully and lovingly and meticulously ironing the new sheets and pillow cases, mother called us kids together to help her quick make up the bed while my father was out at the barber shop getting his weekly haircut. We could hardly contain our excitement, waiting for him to take his after supper nap.

We said our "good nights" and then waited at the table, hands folded, to hear his response as he went into the bedroom.

Nothing.

We heard the bed springs creek and knew he was in bed.

Still nothing.

When we couldn't stand it any longer, we followed our mother to the bedroom and peaked in. There he was. Head on the brilliant, stripped pillow case, arms folded over the equally brilliant folded top sheet.

No response.

Except for the fact that he had sunglasses on.

Maybe it's the fondness of these memories that connect my fondness for menial tasks like ironing. Maybe it's that, of all the things I do as a pastor, I rarely get to see the results of my work.

I mean, as I write this, I can look over at the laundry basket waiting to be brought downstairs, which is filled with crisply ironed and neatly folded Thanksgiving linens. I don't often get to do that in too many other places in my life.

Oh, to be sure, I did provide some assistance on Wednesday afternoon to a mom and child who were suddenly homeless. I not only got them enough money through a combination of help from the Office of Temporary Assistance, my discretionary fund and some other donations to spend the rest of the week in a hotel, but also got them hooked up with Interfaith Hospitality Network for some longer term solutions.

And yes, the house still smells faintly of turkey, sage, garlic and onions. Yes, most of the food is gone to Southern NJ, Northern NJ and the Upper East Side of NYC.

Yes, there is some satisfaction in that - all of that.

I must say, however, that, as I sit here and write this, looking over at that laundry basket fills me with a richness and a sense of thanksgiving that is hard to describe.

Perhaps I am become my mother's daughter.

And, for all of her faults - and, God knows, my own - perhaps that is not such a bad thing after all.

A Brief History of Socialist Plots to End the American Way of Life

2009-11-28T10:52:00.001-05:00

Postprandial slump

2009-11-27T11:28:00.004-05:00

Oh, my!

We are all nearly comatose here after yesterday's feast.

That's Ms. CoCo Chanel, AKA "the Upper East Side bitch", in the picture above. She's postively exhausted after being on guard all day, protecting the humans from themselves, being especially careful to fret over the Grandbabies while being "on call" to clean up anything that dropped from the counters onto the kitchen floor.

Above and to your right is Mr. Lenny Bruce Brisco, held in the loving arms of our Ms. Mia.

He's usually absolutely undone by her love, and you can't hear him, but he was actually snoring when I took this picture.

I greeted Ms. Conroy in the bathroom earlier this morning. Well, "greet" is a relative term, isn't it? As I recall through the post-carbohydrate haze, we sort of made a mostly pleasant sound in each other's general direction - somewhere between a grunt and an actual 'good morning', but not exactly either.

I have a few wonderful memories that lighten my steps this morning:

The first is our "grace" before the meal. We usually go round the table and each person says one thing for which they are thankful.

Half-way round the table was Ms. Abbi's turn. Mind you, she's three years old, so we really didn't expect much from her this year.

Her sister, Ms. Mackie, who is eight and a real Thanksgiving Day veteran, was a bit different. She understands the process now. She said she was thankful for 'Clara' - her white pet bunny - who loves, loves, LOVES bananas as a special treat, sez Mackie.

Finally, it was Ms. Abbi's turn. Without missing a beat, she half-whispered, "I thankful for hugs from my family."

I was as delighted by her response as I was amazed at her ability to have "gotten" the process.

The next came when we took an after-dinner ride in Lucy True Bug, Nana's VW convertible. As I put the top down, Ms. Abbi, sitting in her car seat in the back, watched wide-eyed in child-like wonder.

"Wow!" she gasped, "You have a wace cahr!" Then she squealed delightedly and clapped her hands, "I'm widding in a wace cahr!"

I think my favorite moment came much later, as Ms. Mackie was playing a mean game of scrabble at the dinning room table, before dessert.

Ms. Abbi was in my office AKA "my pway room" where I keep a small arsenal of toys and stuffed animals.

She was "pwaying" with two of her favorite toys - a large stuffed frog and a small stuffed Canada goose - and engaging them in very whimsical but rather intense conversation.

"Mmm, Abbi," I said, in an attempt to mimic the whimsy of her voice, "I don't think Canada geese talk to frogs."

She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me, startled and then rather pensive for a few moments. She turned back to her play and said, "Well, they do when I pway with them.

I have no doubt. No doubt at all.

While the rest of God's people rush off to celebrate Black Friday, I've determined that I am NOT going shopping. Not today. Not me. No sir. No way.

I'm just going to sit here and bask in the glow of yesterday's celebration.

I am very, very thankful.

Yes, indeed, I am.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T11:47:00.001-05:00

My prayer is that you have enough food and family to share with those who have neither that all may be fed and warmed and give thanks and praise for the abundance of of our Most Abundant God.

Our traditional Thanksgiving Day table prayer:

Some have food. Some don't.
God bless the revolution of Jesus.

Le Menu

Aperitif

Leite do mar (Mia Voa's traditional "Milk of the Sea" (Seafood Chowder) - with Lobster this year)
Guacamole with salsa and baked chips

Strawberry Belini

Menu principal

Oven roasted turkey
Sausage Stuffing
Vegetarian sweet potato stuffing
Slivered green beans with butter and slivered almonds
Sweet potato casserole
Shredded brussels sprouts with asiago cheese
Buttered garlic red potatoes

Le Dessert

Pecan pie
Pumpkin pie
Chocolate cream pie

"The Family" in Uganda

2009-11-25T06:33:00.003-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I listened to "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross on NPR which featured an interview with Jeff Sharlet, author of a book, "The Family: Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. " Seems like there is a "Cosa Nostra" of another sort - and they are just as murderous.

"The Family" is a fellowship of powerful Evangelical Christian politicians which includes some names that have recently been prominent in the headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stupak (who lives at "The Family" residence on C Street) and Rep. Joe Pitts.

Doug Coe is the reclusive leader of "The Family" (he has been referred to as the "stealth Billy Graham"), who is not an ordained minister, was named one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals by TIME magazine in 2005.

One of the 'core ideas' of 'The Family" that Coe "preaches" is that the message of the New Testament is not love, mercy and justice but power.

In the interview, Sharlet reports a "sermon" preached by Coe in which he asks his audience to name three people who embody the message of Jesus.

The answers come swiftly. "Martin Luther King, Jr." "Gandhi." "Mother Theresa."

"No," says Coe. "Hitler. Stalin. Pol Pot." The audience gasps as he quickly adds, "That is not to deny that what they did was Evil, but they understood the message of Jesus."

Nice guy, eh? Makes guys like John Chenney, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh look like Kindergarten teachers.

The 'breaking news' in yesterday's NPR broadcast was the direct link Sharlet was able to make - by "following the money" - between "The Family" and the leadership in Uganda and the proposed draconian law concerning "aggravated homosexuality" - which (just so we are clear) not only mandates capitol punishment for LGBT people, but life imprisonment for anyone (like, for example, a father, mother or sibling) who knows a person to be LGBT and doesn't report it, or anyone speaking favorably about same sex marriage.

Both Ugandan Legislator Bahati (who proposed the new law) and Buturo (the Ugandan Ethics and Morality Minister) are part of "The Family" and they (and President Museveni) receive money from this Washington group.

I strongly urge you to isten to the whole thing here.

It is one thing for Ugandan MPs to propose draconian laws in their own country; it is quite another for American Evangelicals to fund and support the leaders of Uganda in laws that are in serious violation of every principle of human rights - not to mention Christianity - as a 'test case' for the passage of similar laws in this country.

Which leads me to ask the question: Does anyone know of a connection between "The Family" and the IRD (Institute for Religion and Democracy)?

What groups like "The Family" and the IRD have not learned from history is that, whenever despots over play their hand and cross the line of human decency, they create martyrs for the cause.

And there ain't nothing more powerful than a martyr.

To paraphrase Audre Lorde: Our silence will not protect us.

Crossing the line

2009-11-24T08:00:00.004-05:00

I was just a second-generation Portuguese American, Roman Catholic kid living in Massachusetts when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected President of the United States of America.

Sure, he was Irish, but he was Roman Catholic and of immigrant stock, just like me. My whole family was So Very Proud.

In every home of every family in the neighborhood of my youth, you could be sure that somewhere in the house (usually the kitchen or the dining room), hung two pictures, "side by each" as my aunts would say.

One was of Jesus - usually his 'high school graduation picture' as we kids called it: side profile, hair carefully coiffed, back lighting, enough to make his mother Mary burst with pride. The other was one of JFK, Jr., a large shock of hair combed neatly on his head, an American Flag in the background, and the map of Ireland written all over his face.

God and country. It was the realization of the American Dream. A reminder of what was possible. The reason my grandparents had immigrated from Portugal to come to this country to the 'land of the free and the home of the brave'.

If the son of an Irish immigrant could grow up to be President of the United States, there was no telling - no telling at all - what we kids could achieve.

I also remember the long discussions around the family table about the controversy that surrounded his election. Because, of course, he was a Roman Catholic. There had never been a Roman Catholic President. He was the first. And we were doubly proud.

However, the voices of concern asserted that his 'faith' would interfere with his ability to lead the country. That his religion would have too much influence on his politics. That he would have more allegiance to Rome than to Washington. That the Pope would influence his decision-making as President.

(Gee, come to think of it, does any of this sound vaguely familiar?)

"Outrageous!" my father and grandfather and uncles thundered.

"Separation of church and state" they chanted like a litany and as a prayer to ward off the Evil spirits of those who would try to thwart the democratic process with prejudice and fear-mongering.

Turns out, they were wrong. Well, not in that JFK ever let Rome tell him what to do or how to think about governing this country. Certainly, his faith inspired and influenced his passion for justice and service to the poor. For that, we can be deeply grateful.

They were wrong, however, about the long arm of the Vatican trying to influence the politics and policies of those Roman Catholics who choose to serve in elected public office.

Oh, the Vatican laid low during those years of the late 60s and early 70s - even though the Women's Movement made great strides in shedding light on discriminatory practices in the work force, raising consciousness about domestic violence and sexual assault and rape, as well as in making birth control measures safe and available.

Rome didn't hesitate to make it's objections, but, for the most part, their words fell on the deaf ears of American Roman Catholics.

Then, on January 22, 1973, came Roe v. Wade. The lace sacristy gloves were officially off. The American Culture Wars with Rome were officially declared.

Catholicism stumbled through the late 80s and 90s, a victim of its own hypocrisy and corruption. It began with the revelation of the secret horror of Catholic run schools and orphanages as the truth of decades of almost unbelievable stories of physical, emotional and sexual abuse began to come to light.

Law suits and expensive litigious processes brought a few diocese to near bankruptcy. But, that was just the beginning. Soon after, a stream of young men and women quickly turned into a torrent of horrible stories of sexual abuse in the classrooms of Roman Catholic schools and the sacristies of Roman Catholic churches at the hands of Roman Catholic priests.

Worst, still, was the revelation that the upper echelons of the Roman Catholic hierarchy knew of the abuse and merely transferred 'Father' to another church, and another, and yet another, where the abuse continued.   Indeed, 'secret deals' were made with the parents involving 'hush money' to keep the scandal from the public.

As horrible as the stories of sexual abuse were, the mendacity and hypocrisy perpetrated by Princes of the Church seemed even more stunning and shocking and deeply disturbing.

The moral character of the Church was in serious disrepair. In fact, it seems not to have yet fully recovered. Jokes, albeit in very poor taste, about RC priests who molest little boys never lurk far from a conversation about the RC Church.

This may, perhaps, be part of the reason for the most recent strong-arming of American politicians by Roman prelates.   It's been going on for a while now, mostly to tut-tuts and embarrassed pshaws from American Roman Catholics.

In 1980, Roman Catholic Priest and Congressman Fr. Robert Drinan, the first of two RC priests to be elected to Congress, was forced to choose between Congress and the priesthood when Pope John Paul II demanded that all ordained clergy either leave the priesthood or leave politics. Fr. Drinan was decidedly pro-choice and a dear friend of the Kennedy family.   He died in 2007.

Senator John Kerry, then Democratic candidate for President and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, then Republican hopeful for the same office, were 'excommunicated' for their pro-choice stance. Jim McGreevey, then Democratic governor of New Jersey, was likewise 'excommunicated' for being a proponent of pro-choice. Others were similarly targeted and excommunicated.

A line seems to have been crossed, however, when conservative Roman Catholics, led by Rome-based Archbishop Raymond Burke, called on Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston not to provide a public funeral mass after the death of Senator Ted Kennedy.

Even some conservative Roman Catholic scholars seemed stunned by the impropriety of it all. When told of the archbishop's assertion that pro-choice Catholics should not be permitted funeral rites, Princeton professor Robert George was taken aback: "That's a very different, and obviously graver, claim than that with which I would have sympathy. I haven't heard before any bishop say that pro-abortion politicians should not be given a Catholic funeral."

The media today is all abuzz with the news that Patrick Kennedy, Democratic Representative from Rhode Island, has been asked not to partake of Communion. Apparently, the request was first made in 2007 when Bishop Thomas Tobin disagreed with Kennedy's stance on abortion rights.

This argument has resurfaced after Kennedy criticized the Catholic Church for their advocacy with regards to the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.

There has now ensued a fascinating if not intricately delicate dance being performed at the line that separates church from state.

Patrick has 'not exactly' been excommunicated. He has been 'requested to refrain' from receiving the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

See the difference?

If Kennedy were actually excommunicated because of his voting record on Reproductive Rights, that raises some interesting questions about the tax-exempt status of the Roman Catholic church - not exactly a smart economic move in the midst of a fragile economy.

Furthermore, in the Northeast, the excommunication of a Kennedy could cause even greater flight from the church than is already occurring. I understand from my Episcopal friends in New England that each week brings yet another Roman Catholic family inside the welcoming red doors of their church. I would say that, of the last 20 new families who have joined St. Paul's, 95% of them are former Roman Catholics.

I guess now we understand the real reason the Pope is so willing to accept disaffected 'Anglicans' in a special and different little arrangement for the homophobic and misogynist among them.   He's apparently just trying to balance the membership scales. See?

Truth be told, this entire situation pains me deeply. I have some fond memories of my days as a Roman Catholic and I will always be a grateful debtor to the RC nuns of my youth for teaching me the essentials of my faith, and for providing me with positive, strong role models of women in leadership in the church.

I also have memories which, from time to time, wake me up in the middle of the night - especially when I remember the look on the faces of the kids in my class known as "Father's Boys" who were "specially chosen" to "serve Father" at the altar.

I was always so jealous of them. Just because they were male, they could serve God at the altar. Just because I was female, I could not. Now I know why they always looked so sad.

I can tell you one thing - those boys were not born pedophiles. They were 'made'. It was 'learned behavior'. Neither were they homosexual. Theirs was a classic case of 'arrested development'.

I left the Roman Church years ago and never regretted my decision. I have nothing but great admiration for my friends - intelligent, deeply spiritual and faithful men and women - who have decided to stay in the Roman Church and work for change from within.

The saddest part of this present media kerfuffle is the image of tired, old celibate men in long dark robes flexing their weak moral muscles in front of Roman Catholics - and the world.

Faithful Roman Catholics may disagree with their church's position on human sexuality and reproductive rights, but they live out their faith in service to God and the imperatives of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through service to their local communities and their country.

Evangelical Protestants are not without sin. They are leading the faithful of their flock to do much the same. Except, of course, they have no sacraments to deny as punishment. The pressure, however, is still intense.

The level of the insanity of the rhetoric on the Radical Right is the same in Catholic and Protestant circles. The PRA, Political Research Associates has just released a report that clearly details the role that US-based renewal church movements have played in mobilizing homophobic sentiment in at least three African countries.

I don't know what you know about Calvin, but I'm guessing that while his mortal body may be turning in his grave, his spirit looks down from heaven and weeps at what is being done in his name and the Name that is Above All Names.

In 1960, while he was still Senator from Massachusetts and a democratic candidate for President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy said the following words.

"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accepts instruction on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source."

That's the America I believe in. That's the America I believe we still live in. That's the America our young men and women who are serving this country believe in so much that they are willing to travel to foreign lands to fight and risk their lives for.

While systems of belief will always influence moral decision making, and faith often informs politics and sometimes transforms into political action, there is still a clear line which separates church and state in this country.

When that line gets crossed, it is incumbent upon people of faith to stand at that line, toe-to-toe against The Adversary, and protest as loudly as we can.

I applaud the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church which, it is being reported, has called for a special teleconference on December 7 to discuss a possible statement on Ugandan legislation that would imprison for life or execute people who violate that country's anti-homosexuality laws.

Hopefully, this will put a little more pressure on the Presiding Bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury to also make a statement against this flagrant violation of human rights.

That is the church putting its faith into action.

That is the church being the church and doing the work of the church.

That is the church calling elected officials to remember the higher moral ground of their baptismal vows.

That is the church respecting the boundaries around the separation of church and state.

We are a democracy, not a theocracy.

Apparently, there are some so desperate about their sense of a loss of power and influence that they wish to cross that line.

We. Can't. Let. Them.

The sacraments of the church, indeed, the services of the church, are not poker chips in a high stake game of political power. What kind of Gospel encourages the Body of Christ to threaten to take actual food out of the mouths of the poor and the hungry?

What understanding of Jesus permits the withholding of spiritual food from the souls of those who hunger and thirst for Jesus? From the comfort and solace of the faith and rituals of the church promised at baptism in time of grief and sorrow?

An institutional church which treats its congregants like naughty children - practicing the ecclesiastical equivalent of sending them to bed without any supper - is an institutional church which has, sadly enough, lost touch with the spirit that originally animated it and gave it life.

These are some of the lines that simply can not - must not - be crossed.

Except, of course, the ecclesiastical lines that separate one church from another. I'm thinking that this would be a most excellent time to do a little evangelism among some of our RC brothers and sisters.

Invite someone to church on Advent I. That's how it started for me - with an invitation to church. Once I crossed the threshold of those Open Red Doors, heard the music, experienced the liturgy, I knew I was home.

Perhaps it's time you invited someone to cross the line and come home for Christmas.

I LOVE "indiscriminate inclusivity"

2009-11-22T19:30:00.000-05:00

This is Chris and Lily. They were married last night in an amazing wedding presided over by the Rt. Rev'd John Shelby Spong in a penthouse loft on the lower West Side in NYC. Chris' parents are members of my congregation.

The statistical odds of these two people getting together is so remote as to be staggering.

The Groom's lineage includes mainland Chinese and Hawai'ian via the Colorado Rockies and New Jersey.

The Bride's lineage includes Korean and Filipino via Argentina and New York City.

The Wedding festivities included a visit from two Chinese Dragons who came accompanied by loud crashing cymbals and beating drums.

The were 'fed' something green on a long stick which the bride and groom bravely fed to them.

It is said that now the Evil Spirits will not come into their marriage.

The dinner buffet included an absolutely amazing array of traditional Korean and Chinese food along with a few Japanese Sushi chefs, just for good measure.

During dinner, we were entertained by an Argentinian couple who danced four different versions of the Tango for us.

They were dramatic and romantic and very, very exciting.

As they moved around the dance floor, there were occasional gasps and ooh's and ahh's from the very appreciative audience.

One might think, with all this emphasis on things that are traditional to both families of origin that the wedding ceremony and wedding cake would be something more . . .oh, I don't know . . . exotic.

Not so. The wedding service itself came right out of the Book of Common Prayer. We all said the Lord's Prayer together and heard that magnificent section from St. Paul's letter to the Church in Corinth on love. We also heard some profound words about love from Mother Theresa and Kahlil Gibran.

And, as you can see, the wedding cake was pretty traditional. Okay, so the figures on the top of the cake are a little unusual, but they were thoroughly reflective of the sense of humor of the happily married couple.

After the cake was cut, the bride and groom changed into traditional Chinese bridal outfits for a formal Chinese tea service which welcomes the bride and groom into their respective new families.

After appropriate bowing and pouring and sipping of tea, the father of the groom makes a speech, after which some nuts and dates are thrown into the apron spread out by the bride and groom.

Whatever the couple "catch" in their apron is symbolic of the number of children they will have together.

The ancestors say that these two will have eleven girls and six boys. We don't yet know what Chris and Lily have to say about such generosity.

As we watched the magnificent sunset, high above The City That Never Sleeps, I looked around the community that had gathered there, to witness and bless the joining of these two souls in Holy Matrimony,

We were Korean, Chinese, Hawai'ian, Polynesian, African-American, Argentinian, and Western European people who held equally diverse faith practices - Christian and Jew, Buddhist and Taoist, several fervently committed agnostics, no doubt a few atheists, and a significant number of people from The Temple of Understanding.

I thought of the disdain with which the Bishop of South Carolina and his Canon Theologian speak of what they call 'indiscriminate inclusivity'.

And, I laughed.

It is, I believe, inherent in the nature of God to be indiscriminate in Her inclusivity. We can make all the rules we want about who is in and what is out. We can be selective in who we invite into the 'inner circle' of what we believe.

God, I think, has another idea.

That Divine Idea trumps any which happen to emanate from the limited inner recesses of the human mind which fervently believes itself to understand the Mind of God. And, wants to impose those beliefs and images of God upon others.

I looked deep into the dark sky of the City and imagined each of the bright lights twinkling there as representative of every person in that room, and the hundreds and thousands and millions of others who were not present in that room, but represented in the radically diverse cosmos of the landscape of God's Realm.

The present may look dark and foreboding, but the future is very bright indeed.

All we need do is open our arms in the same loving embrace with which Jesus stretched out his arms upon the hard reality of the cross.

Ah, and therein lies the rub, doesn't it?

I think these posters, designed by Larry Graham in Atlanta and featured in today's Lead at Episcopal Cafe, sum it all up pretty nicely.

What God has joined together, let no one - not even well-intentioned, pious theologians and bishops from South Carolina or any other part of the Church - put asunder.

Somebody give me an 'Amen'.

Belonging in the Reign of Crist

2009-11-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

A Sermon by the Rev'd Jon Mark Richardson

John 18:33-37 - Proper 29B

22 November 2009 - The Feast of the Reign of Christ

In the name of God, the Almighty: who is, and who was, and who is to come. Amen.

One of the ways that I made my way through college was as a bank teller. I loved it. While my friends worked in malls or at restaurants and had unpredictable hours and worked on holidays, I had a set schedule. And though I didn’t make as much money as many of my friends, I always knew how much I would make – I wasn’t dependant on tips or sales quotas or anything like that. I just showed up when I was supposed to and counted money.

It was satisfying work. I could look back at the end of the day and see the thousands of dollars that had come across my desk, the hundreds of transactions that I would perform, and as if by magic, it almost always added up. And on those rare occasions when it didn’t, it would always become clear what had gone wrong in the days ahead: some paper misfiled or some rogue number inverted.

There was order and clarity.

I worked for two rather small, locally owned banks that both, while I was working at them, “merged” with larger, more corporate institutions. In both cases, the new corporations brought with them better pay, better benefits, and new technologies that made my work even easier.

It was a good life.

At the second bank I worked for, I worked as a floating teller. Each day I would get a call telling me where I was to work for that day. I filled in for other tellers who were out sick or on vacation, and I rarely worked at any one branch for more than a few weeks at a time. It appealed to my burgeoning wanderlust, even though I was only traveling within a few dozen miles in a corner of southeast Louisiana. I enjoyed having the opportunity to work with a variety of people and in a variety of markets. There were the typical suburban branches, but I also got to work in downtown branches, rural branches, and branches on what most would have called “the wrong side of the tracks”.

Those were my favorites.

I remember in particular the Plank Road branch in Baton Rouge. It was in an impoverished neighborhood very much on the “wrong side of the tracks”. There were off-duty police officers stationed at the branch at all times – mostly to keep the homeless people from loitering and drinking all the coffee. But it gave my time there a sense of adventure.

I loved the ladies who worked in that branch. They were from the neighborhood, but had “made good”. They were somewhat looked down upon by the rest of the bank, but in this little corner of the kingdom, they were on top – respected in the community as some of their own who had risen above.

It didn’t take me long to encounter the reality that the corporate policies in which I had been so thoroughly trained didn’t work quite the same on Plank Road as they in the other parts of the bank.

One of my first customers at the Plank Road Branch was an older, African American woman named Mrs. Jackson. I forget exactly what it was, but the transaction that she was requesting was something perfectly innocent, but that required a variation from our normal corporate policies. Policies were rigid things meant to protect the bank – and me – from the customers.

I’ll never forget Mrs. Jackson’s face when I refused her transaction. She wasn’t angry, but seemed to be hurt, more than anything. She looked at me with sad eyes and said, “But I’m a member of this bank!”

There was an essential difference between how I had been trained to see her, and how she had come to see herself.

I had been trained to see myself – in my capacity as a teller – as belonging to the bank. As one who belonged, it was my duty to protect the bank from all those individual invaders on the outside.

But Mrs. Jackson saw herself differently. Through years of coming to the same building and building relationships with the same people, she saw herself not as an outsider – not even as an individual, but as one who belonged – part of the body of that institution. She saw her relationship with the bank as corporeal as my own. Through all of the corporate transitions she had not been trained in her new role: she saw herself as a member, but it was my job to dis-member her – to make her into an outsider.

Mrs. Jackson was from a different time in the life of that institution – a time when people belonged. And while she asserted her belonging, I worked to cut her off – to make her no more than an individual.

It’s not unlike the story that we hear in the Gospel lesson today. As was the case with Mrs. Jackson and me, we hear Pilate and Jesus engaging in fundamentally different understandings of belonging. In the arraignment, Pilate seizes the issue of belonging to determine the charges against Jesus. As the designate of the Roman Emperor, Pilate knows to whom Jesus belongs. Or at least he thinks he knows. The question is, to whom does Jesus believe that he belongs – or perhaps more importantly, who does Jesus believe belongs to him?

It’s no wonder that this passage should come across as sounding kind of confusing. Jesus is answering questions that are different from the ones that Pilate is asking. They are coming from such different perspectives that they are only barely speaking the same language.

Jesus is accused of insurrection. To determine the validity of the accusation, Pilate presents Jesus with the only two possibilities that he can imagine: are you claiming to be a king in opposition to the emperor, or do you belong to our kingdom? Jesus’ answer is beyond Pilate’s ability to imagine: “My kingdom is not from this world.”

They volley back and forth, but Pilate was never able to find a common language with Jesus.

Today, in the church calendar, on the cusp of a new liturgical year, we find ourselves in a position not unlike Pilate’s. We celebrate today, the idea of the Reign of Christ. But our culture is centuries removed from any experience of this kind of monarchy. Even in those Western societies where monarchs still exist, they are by no means the kind of absolute monarchy that would have posed a serious threat to the Roman Empire.

Though we don’t have a common language to speak about this kind of ruler or monarch, what we can understand is the same kind of thing that Mrs. Jackson understood – something about belonging. In proclaiming the Reign of Christ we are saying that we belong.

We are not just individuals at worship, but members of the Body of Christ.

We are not just customers of some Christian Enterprise, but we are members – sharing a stake.

So much of our culture tries to dis-member us – to make us individuals. Individuals are so much easier to control than members of a Body that is greater than its parts. Just as I participated in a system that tried to dis-member Mrs. Jackson, so, too, are all of us tempted by different kinds of participation in the cult of individualism.

Christianity is about belonging. And belonging is never about individualism. It is about recognizing the myriad of ways that our existence is tied up in one another. In proclaiming the Reign of Christ, we are proclaiming our belonging and our membership.

Like Mrs. Jackson, we are called to claim that membership. Amen.

Take a Bow, Mr. President

2009-11-21T13:55:00.001-05:00

I suppose if you are a 'Tea Bagger' your natural default setting would be to create lots of 'tempests in a teapot.'

There was a mild flurry when First Lady, Michele Obama, actually put her hand on the back of the Queen of England.

Gasp! Horror! Isn't that a breach of British Protocol - or, something? Anything? Bueller? Anyone?

Then, of course, the Right Wing Nuts spun themselves dizzy with that picture of the President bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia.

I saw a picture of the above, photoshopped with the caption, "Obama bows before his King." Honest to Pete! You just can't make this stuff up.

The most tepid and weak brew to be poured from the teapots of the Radical Richt however, is the kerfuffle over the bow the President made as he greeted the Emperor of Japan.

Some are calling it "Bowgate," seeing it as a sign of weakness. Others are calling it "inappropriate', noting that "Dick Chenney didn't bow to the Emperor when he visited China a few years ago."

Yup. That's who I want as my role model and guide. Dick Chenney. Watta guy! When he isn't approving 'water boarding', he's firing buckshot int the face of his hunting buddies.

Now, there IS evidence that President Bush did a lot more than bow before a Saudi King.

Oh, but wait.

There's more.

Much, much more . . . . .

I'm not sure, but I think if you looked up the word 'inappropriate' in the "Handbook of Presidential Protocol", these two pictures would be right next to it, listed as "Exhibits 'A' and 'B'".

Moving right along.

Our highly skilled but terribly paid research team here at Telling Secrets has conducted an investigation of our own.

Evidence abounds that this President bows.

A lot.

Here is Mr. Obama at the White House with Hindu Priest Sri Narayanachar Digalokote, bowing down before a Hindu Oil Lamp in honor of the Goddess Lakshmi, who symbolizes knowledge, brilliance, health and wealth.

Here's Mr. Obama again, bowing to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during Memorial Day festvities.

I also have one of him bowing to a wreath - a WREATH, a pagan symbol for goodness sake! - at the 911 Memorial in NYC.

I mean to tell you, this man is a bowing fool!

He just never stops!

Take a look and see if I'm not right.

Here he is, being a gentleman, and bowing as he shakes the hand of Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

Looks like Vice President Joe Biden approves.

That's him applauding the President for making such a gallant gesture.

Here's the President - again with the bowing - with a small child outside the White House.

I mean, really! Whatever was he thinking?

Doesn't this man understand that he's the President of the Free World? The King of the Universe? And, he's doing it right in front of the brave men and women of our Military Forces.

Oh, the shame!

Apparently, the man has no shame.

Here he is taking a HUGE bow at the Annual Easter Egg Rolling Contest on the White House Lawn.

You will note that the bow he gives to a little girl is much deeper than that which he gave the little boy in the picture above.

Indeed, it's an even deeper bow than anything he's ever performed for an official Head of State.

This one is a good effort - in the Oval Office and all - but it just can't compare to the deep bow he gave that little girl.

On Easter Day - the day of Resurrection, for Pete's sake - when he should be standing in solidarity with the Risen Lord.

Subliminal message or just coincidence?

I suspect the Right Wing Nut Conspirators are already on the case.

I mean, this MUST be an impeachable offense.

Truth be told, this President is making a statement. His 'body language' is loud and clear. His strategy is a deliberate, conscious rejection of the previous administration's approach to global politics.

Which is why, of course, some of the folks on the Right are positively apoplectic.

With every bow and at every turn, Mr. Obama has tried to avoid blunt confrontation in favor of something more collegial, more cooperative. His focus is on the common ground, hoping for what he once described as a clearing away of "old preconceptions or ideological dogmas" so that nations will be more likely "to cooperate than not to cooperate."

His message has been consistent. He wants to usher in a "new era of engagement with the world based on mutual interests and mutual respect."

So, what others see as a sign of weakness, Mr. Obama believes is actually a strength.

You know. What Jesus taught about Servant Leadership. And, the cross.

He's living his faith. What he believes. Quietly. With great integrity.

Funny thing is, his wildest critics (and there are some pretty wild critics out there) come from the Evangelical Right.

Never mind. Take a bow, Mr. President. Every chance you get.

It's these little investments of humility which don't cost much at all, save some sharp criticism now and again, that will pay big dividends over time.

Besides, there are some Christians out here who see what you do and who know what you're trying to accomplish.

Which is why you are not hearing thunderous applause. That wouldn't be appropriate. It's not about you so much as the future you're asking us to invest in.

You've had almost a year to make your opening bow. The show will go on for the next three years - and, please God, for four more years after that - the 'bullcrap' (as Mrs. Palin likes to say) from Tea Baggers and Birthers and Bowgates notwithstanding.