And the 'Poster of the Day' Award goes to . .

This is British actor John Barrowman who plays character 'Captain Jack' on the British series 'Torchwood'.

He has joined with 'Stonewall' a UK Gay Rights Group in a public ad campaign to fight homophobia.

I think it's brilliant.

Oh, and just in case you didn't know, he's gay.

I know. 'Get over it'.

Unless, of course, you're a gay man, then it's 'Quit your drooling. You'll ruin your computer keyboard that way.'

25 Thrilling Years

It's been 25 years since Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video was released. It's still a classic but I confess, other than the one featuring the Filipino Jail Chorus, and ignoring the 'Lego', 'Wedding' and Football Versions, I like this one best.

I know BYU (Brigham Young University). Go figure

Giggle of the Day Award goes to MadPriest

Click on the picture for a larger, clearer image.

P.S. He means "Sings", I think. The Grand Tufti Sings to Motown. 

I know we're two countries separated by a common language, but let us not be further separated by a common typo.

The First Lenten Sunday Experiment

Readers of this Blog will know about The Great Lenten Experiment going on at St. Paul's in Chatham. If you don't, you can read all about it here.

Basically, we're taking Bishop Mark Beckwith's challenge to look at the quality of our worship life - why we do what we do with prayer, the space, the hymns and psalms, 'our souls and bodies' etc. - and what that says about our relationship with God.

During Lent, we will be looking at the 'transcendence' vs. the 'immanence' of God by 'Facing (Liturgical) East'. In other words, my back will be to the people, and I will be endeavoring to lead them to a deeper awareness of the transcendent nature of God.

To keep with the solemn nature of Lent, we have also moved the Passing of the Peace (which has become like half-time or intermission) to one of its ancient places in the liturgy - right after the Great Amen and before the Lord's Prayer. The Announcements have also been moved to the end of the service - right after the Post Communion Prayer and before the final blessing and recessional hymn.

I wish I had had the presence of mind to ask someone in the choir loft to take pictures. I will next week. Choir members were almost universally in awe of what they experienced. They LOVED it. Most in the congregation, however, did not.

The reactions have been interesting. And, most have been exactly that - reactions as opposed to responses. It was visceral. Deep. "I hate it. HATE it!' one member exclaimed. "I feel cut off from the altar. You are not leading us to God, you are cutting us off from him."

"WOW!" I responded. "What a GREAT reaction! This is FABULOUS! When was the last time you felt that passionate about something that happened in church?"

She looked at me completely befuddled. I suppose I was expected to cower and then grovel as I apologized profusely for having the unmitigated nerve to change something in our worship. So, no fool, I seized the moment.

"You have exceeded my wildest hopes and dreams for this experiment. The whole point is to get you to think about what we're doing and why we do what we do when we worship God, and to consider what that says about our relationship to God."

She walked away, muttering incoherently.

"But, you have spit in the face of tradition," said another, anonymously, of course, in the written survey form I have been circulating for two weeks about this Lenten Experiment. (We'll do another 'post survey' in Easter.)

The ironic thing, of course, is that the tradition of the Church has been to face East. Facing the people is a 'recent innovation' - only with us since Vatican II in the late 60's.

Those who grew up in The Episcopal or Roman Catholic tradition were flooded with memories of their childhood or teen years. There were lots of stories about 'watching Father' as a child from the choir stall, and feeling part of 'some Great Mystery."

Most were cautiously guarded. "I trust you, Elizabeth, in this experiment, but at first blush, I don't like it."

Me? I was too caught up in the mechanics and pragmatics to really weigh in at this point. I didn't like the disruption in the 'expected' flow of the liturgy. The altar space suddenly felt much smaller. It felt really awkward to have my back to the people. It also seemed more . . . 'natural' . . . to face East while using Rite I, as has been our custom at the 8 AM service during Lent.

On the other hand, I have never before felt the power of the moment of the elevation of the consecrated elements as I did as I faced East. I felt a participant in 'the sacrifice of the Mass' in a way I never have before.

Interesting.

We also did The Great Litany, chanted in procession. That's one long sucker, isn't it? In the second week of Lent, we'll begin with the Penitential Order and read the Decalogue. After that, we'll "simply" begin with the Penitential Order, Confession and Absolution and Kyrie and the rest of the service will flow . . . as 'normal'.

I'm glad I prevailed upon the Organist / Choir Director to select old, familiar hymns, including the Doxology (Old 100th) as the Presentation Hymn for the next two weeks. There's got to be some 'anchor of the familiar' for balance.

I'll keep you posted on how this progresses. And, next Sunday, I'll post some pictures.

The Bishop's Annual Visitation is scheduled for March 2nd. I'm sure he'll get an earful.

Please keep us in your prayers.

Vestry Retreat

I'm fresh from Vestry Retreat and have a thought about a Vestry Community Building Project. I'd like to float it by you and get your thoughts and ideas and solicit any resources you might have.

As an 'opening ice breaker' we asked folks to say their birth order, the constellation of their family of origin, and their greatest challenge in that family - as child, teen, and/or adult - which is an operational dynamic in their lives today.

Yes, I'm an unashamed devotee of Ed Friedman's Family Systems approach to congregational life and leadership. I am also an unabashed fan of Walter Wink's approach to Bible Study.

It was fascinating. Of the 12, 8 of my Vestry are first born children. There are three 'middle children' and one 'baby". Seven of us are Adult Children of Alcoholics (mostly mothers, one father) and one is an Alcoholic in good recovery. It's easy, now, to see why most of us are in 'responsibility over-drive' - a good thing, which also serves as a cautionary parable about the potential for 'burn out'.

As we were forming goals for the year, I said that as 'Rabbi' one of my goals is to get them - and the congregation - to think more biblically, and to see how God's revelation is on-going in our lives of faith. Specifically, I'm hoping that more and more of us can identify a scriptural passage which animates our sense of ministry - individually and corporately - to be able to more clearly articulate how their story, our corporate story, is part of the Gospel story.

For example, I said that I read the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew's gospel (15:21-28) as one that is a source of inspiration and validation. You know the story. This woman tries to get to Jesus for healing for her daughter but the disciples keep shooing her away. She uses her persistence with them and her wit and intelligence with Jesus, inadvertently confronting them all on their sexism and racism. Jesus says to her, "Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish."

I saw lots of heads nodding in recognition around the table. I also allowed as how I often see them as Bible characters, which gives me a perspective of the holiness of their ministry. "Ah, there you are, Peter," I often say, "Come here, you big lug, and let me 'splain some things to you." Or, "Oh, hello, Ruth. Great is your faithfulness." You know. Like that.

They were intrigued by this thought and were immediately curious to know who they were for me. I then suggested that what I thought of them was less important than how they see themselves and each other. I explained that I wanted them to think about everyone with whom they worked on Vestry and come to Vestry meetings prepared to lead our opening meditation in a different way.

Our current practice is to start with 30 minutes of Bible Study before our Vestry meeting. We close that time and open our business session with a meditation or prayer offered by one of the Wardens or Vestry in rotation. I'm suggesting that the 'opening meditation' time be used with one or two of them, in turn, identifying each of the Vestry members in terms of a Bible character, keeping the focus positive, of course.

They were both excited and challenged by this task. After the Retreat ended, more than a few of them came up to me saying, "You know, I confess that really don't know much about the characters in the Bible. Can you give me a list of characters from which I can choose? Is there a book that gives a little synopsis of a character from scripture that will point me in the right direction to the story in the Bible?"

Which leads me to my question to you. Oh, I can do a google search and undoubtedly find some books which do this. I'm wondering if there are any resources you know - even if it's a children's book (which are often much better than adult books - that does this. Sort of a "meet the family of God" Social Register or a Biblical version of the Clerical Directory (what we used to call 'The Stud Book'). It doesn't have to be definitive or exhausting - just a little something to jump-start the process, arouse their curiosity, and send them to the Scriptures for more information.

I am enormously excited by this project. It's creative and helps to accomplish my goal of helping them think more biblically to see how God's revelation is on-going in our lives of faith. I'm hoping that more and more of us can identify a scriptural passage which animates our sense of ministry - individually and corporately - to be able to more clearly articulate how their story, and our corporate story, is part of the Gospel story.

I would be most grateful for any help you can give me in finding a resource that can 'jump start' this process and point them in the right direction. Thanks for your help.

The Temptation of Scripture

“It is written” (Matthew 4:1 – 11)
I Lent – February 10, 2008
The Episcopal Church of St. Paul, Chatham, NJ
(the Rev’d) Elizabeth Kaeton, rector and pastor

Temptation. It’s an important theme of this morning’s readings from scripture on this, the first Sunday in Lent. We hear it in the first lesson from Genesis, the story of the Temptation in the Garden of Eden, when the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, were tempted to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

We hear it echoed in the Epistle to the Church in Rome. Using the rhetorical style characterized by pristine logic, St. Paul helps us understand that Jesus in the wilderness has redeemed the temptation that Adam could not withstand in the Garden. “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:12-19).

Matthew’s gospel wants to help us connect the dots from the Garden to the Wilderness. He wants us to be absolutely certain to know that, unlike Adam, Jesus was able to resist not one but three temptations by Satan - and, when he was at his most vulnerable point.

Famished after forty days and forty nights of fasting, Jesus was clearly at his weakest moment. It was then that ‘The Tempter’ appears before Jesus, enticing him to turn stones into bread, to risk his life on the promise that God will save him, and to offer him dominion over all the whole world.

These three temptations are at the very core of the vulnerability of being human: Never to be without basic need. Never to suffer pain. Never to be without possessions. This is even more tempting that a measly apple – even if it was from a ‘magic tree.’ No hunger. No pain. No poverty. Pretty basic, core stuff. Who wouldn’t have been tempted?

It is important to note that this passage, along with its parallel in Luke, is what prompted Shakespeare to point out in The Merchant of Venice (scene iii), that even “the devil can quote scripture for his own purpose.”

Which brings me to the real message about Temptation that I wish to address this morning. It’s about the temptation of scripture.

Allow me to begin my illustration of this by introducing you to my neon-pink “Answer Me Jesus”. I brought this with me to the last General Convention and it was an instant hit. In fact, the deputation from the Diocese of Massachusetts borrowed “Answer Me Jesus” for three full days. I had to talk pretty fast to get him back to The Diocese of Newark's table.


In the bottom of this statue of our Lord rests one of those Magic 8-Balls. You may remember them from your youth. You ask it a question like, “Will I have a date for Friday night?” And the Magic 8-Ball will give you an answer – something frustrating like, “Ask me again later” which was never helpful if you procrastinated an didn’t ask your question until Friday afternoon.

Sometimes, if you were lucky, it would be definitive: ‘Yes!’ or ‘No’. And, if you didn’t like the answer, you could try it again and again until you got the answer you wanted. Or, take the best three out of four. Heads I win, tails you lose. No matter. Whatever method you chose, you had an excuse for your joy or your misery. No need to take any responsibility your life.

‘Answer me Jesus’ works in much the same way, except his answers are for spiritual questions. He might answer, “I’ll have to pray about that.” Or, respond flippantly, “Offer it up.” Or, my own personal favorite: “Let me ask my Dad.”

Many of us come to the Season of Lent the same way we turn to Scripture. We move through sacred rituals just as we sift through the words of Holy Writ, looking for magic answers to the questions and temptations that are basic to being human.

We think secretly to ourselves, “If I give up chocolate or television or fried foods, will I be a better person?” We turn to the rituals the way some turn to the Magic 8-Ball or Answer Me Jesus for the answer we want to hear. For some reassurance that our sacrifice is ‘worth it.’ And, if all we hear is ‘Ask me again later” we will. Again. And, again, until we convince ourselves that we are, indeed, righteous in the Lord for this simple sacrifice.

Reading scripture often provides the same temptation. We read the passages we want to read. We hear what we want to hear. Or, as we see in this Sunday's gospel, it can be tempting to do what my friend Dylan Breuer names as the process wherein we "selectively cull words, phrases, and sentences from what we know of scripture -often from entirely different documents, written at different times and in different contexts - and to read the resulting combination as a kind of secret message to us to us today. This tells us less about the meaning of scripture and more about our own psychology and interpretive prejudices than they do about God’s will.

Satan tells Jesus that as God’s son, he can find bread in the desert. That was true in the past – God provided manna in the wilderness for the people of Israel after their exodus from Egypt. It will be true in the future when Jesus feeds thousands from a loaf of bread and a few fish. Satan tells Jesus that the kingdoms of the earth will bow before Jesus, and they will. This is true to this very day. Satan also tells Jesus that God will care for those God loves, especially Jesus, God’s own Holy Child, and that is also true today as it was then.

In every instance, what Satan says is ‘biblical’ and every point Satan makes is, in a sense, true. But, the words of Satan are not the ‘whole truth’. The points he makes are not necessarily the point Scripture was trying to make at the time they were written for the specific audience they were originally intended. Context is important to a full understanding of scripture.

It is tempting to read scripture in this way, isn’t it? To be smug and certain that we have the truth – the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

Which brings me to the biggest temptation of all – the temptation which is at the core of a Holy Lent: impatience.

It's certainly one of my biggest flaws. Jesus has an important message about that for us this morning, in this Temptation in the Wilderness. It is not yet time, when he is vulnerable, and this is not the place, in the wilderness, for Jesus to use his powers. He must wait until the time and place are right. Jesus says this very thing just before he performs his first miracle at the Wedding Feast in Cana.

It’s hard to be patient, isn’t it? Especially when you already know the end of the story.

The real temptation of Lent is the same temptation of Scripture – to rush through it. There are still temptations to quote scripture to prove our point or make our argument for us. Jesus shows us a different way. He invites us to come in from the desert, to be nourished by the Body of Christ.

Jesus resists the temptation to play a round of 'scriptural gymnastics'. Instead, he invites us to wrestle together with what we find in scripture, and to help one another listen for the voice of the Spirit, who leads us into the truth of God's call to us here and now, in our day and time.

The temptation to rush through Lent is much the same. We are impatient. We want to skip the struggle. We want to get on with it. We know how the story ends, so what’s the point?

As you enter into the discipline of self-sacrifice, allow yourself the luxury of time to really live into the fullness of the experience of Lent. Savor it. Marinate your soul in it.

There are few places in your life where you can afford this kind of luxury. Church is one of those places. With all due respect to St. Paul, scripture is not about pristine logic. With the same respect due to St. Matthew, neither is it about connecting the dots.

Scripture is about faith, not certainty.

So is Lent - a season of forty days and forty nights to live into taking the risk of your faith - to trust your hunger, to embrace your pain, to understand your own poverty. To have patience and listen to what God might have to say to you about these three things that are central to the enterprise of being human.

The world will try to tempt you away from this important spiritual discipline. Be patient with yourself. Enter into Lent fully – w/holly – that you may have a Holy Lent. It may leave you with more questions than when you began. Live the questions, as the poet Rilke writes, into the answer which God has for you, that you may have life and have it more abundantly, if not righteously.

If all else fails, you can always ask Jesus. Not this neon-Pink one. Ask the one who lives deep in the wilderness of your heart.

Just don’t be surprised - or disappointed - by his answer. Amen.

Update: Mother

The news is good: My mother's condition has stabilized. She will be transferred to a Rehabilitative Center not far from home where she will continue to stabilize while they work on increasing her strength and endurance. We're figuring she'll be there for about 30 days or so before they evaluate whether or not she can return to her home (she lives with my youngest sister and her family).

"We'll take it one day at a time," Mother rasped into the phone, her oxygen shushing loudly over the phone line, adding, "I'm going to be 85 in July, but I'm not dead yet. Far from it."

Thanks be to God - and to all of you for your prayers and concern and love.

She's a tough old bird.

And yes, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Snakes in the Baptismal Water

"I think I've found a spiritual home!"

Even the one-dimensional aspect of communication in cyberspace couldn't hide her absolute delight. My friend, a woman very dear to my heart, has been searching for a long time to find a church. A community of Christians. A place where she can be nourished by the Body of Blood of Jesus, be inspired by the Gospel preached with passion and intelligence, and find some solace in "those old, old songs of Jesus and his love."

She has the worst track record of church shopping of anyone I know. It's as if someone has placed a 'lune magnet' in her soul. So, I was understandably cautious when she wrote to say that she went to church on Ash Wednesday and was thrilled with the community, the priest, the music - and just couldn't wait to go to church on Sunday.

I immediately googled the place. In ten seconds flat I was gasping in horror. The church still identifies itself as "Episcopal" but the only links on the home page were to rabidly orthodox organizations that are hell-bent on destroying The Episcopal Church. No links to the local diocese or the national Episcopal Church.

Hmm . . . Seems to me there are more than a few red flags in the center aisle of the church.

When I checked under the heading "Information" there it was - a link to "Virtue on Line." At that point, the warning buzzer was going off, the strobe lights were flashing and a neon-sign appeared crying, "Danger! Danger! Danger!"

Curious, and trying to keep hope alive, I went to the Rector's page. It began with some fairly innocent ruminations about the Diocese of San Joaquin and ended with this little tidbit (These boyss just can't help themselves, can they?):

"Found while researching and provided with no comment.

"Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention because he regards it as providing a particularly graphic image of the way in which humans distort God’s created order. God the Creator made man and woman for each other, to cleave together, to be fruitful and multiply."

When human beings exchange these created roles for homosexual intercourse, they embody the spiritual condition of those who have exchanged the truth about God for a lie."

I began to cry. My friend is decidedly heterosexual (she can't help it - that's just the way she was born ;~), but as she says, "I'm straight, not narrow." She is a justice-warrior and a spiritual healer. She has a seminary education in the Methodist tradition, and is intelligent and articulate and incredibly creative and resourceful. She does have a decided preference for the evangelical, charismatic style of worship. She just has a 'lune magnet' for dysfunctional churches. I wept for my friend and the bitter disappointment she would, once again, have to face.

How long, O Lord, how long?

After I dried my eyes, blew my nose and pulled up my socks, I did two things: First, I wrote a short note to the good father, thanking him for the clarity of his website message. I wrote it from a thankful heart. Truly. Genuinely.

There are lots of snakes in the baptismal water - those who say one thing about themselves and then pull the old 'bait and switch' routine. They are ecclesiastical predators hiding behind the banner of Evangelism.

Their favorite catch is exactly like my friend - not from The Episcopal Church or knowledgeable about either our tradition or the recent troubles, much less all the political innuendos and subterfuge. The only 'virtue' she knows about is the classic kind - not what's presently online.

They lure in folks like my friend, molding them to their image of The Episcopal Church, and then the next thing you know, you can hear Billy Joel singing in the background about the angry young man, "with his fist in the air and his head in the sand."

I was at least grateful that this man seemed to have some integrity and transparency about his theological and political inclinations. So, I wrote and told him so.

Then, I wrote to my friend to warn her of what to expect. I wasn't expecting her reaction. She FLIPPED OUT. How could I say these things? I hadn't even met the guy or been to the church? How could I be so mean-spirited and judgmental? I should step back, take a deep breath, say my prayers and, if necessary, see my therapist.

Then, she wrote to the priest at this church and asked him"Do you and your congregation receive God's children, whoever they are, whatever lifestyle/ orientation/ wealth/ size/ age/ ethnicity/profession, or other ism nature or nurture has provided for them, is there judgment of them for any reason whatsoever, or are some just not welcome?"

And, no fool, he answered: "Absolutely, yes to the first part, no to the second part! And third, we welcome every person who comes through the door. I don't know how to do otherwise. I suspect you felt that from me and from the people at the service. It's unfortunate when people make judgments about others without ever meeting them. It's actually stereo-typing that some so often complain about when done to them, but don't seem to be aware of when they do it themselves!"

She sent it on to me, triumphant. "There, see!" she exclaimed. Shame on you!"

"Okay," I wrote back, "but when you see him, ask him what he says or does after he says, 'Hello' and 'Welcome.' Can an LGBT person serve in a leadership capacity in his church? Would the commitment of LGBT people to each other be recognized and blessed in that church? Would an LGBT person with a vocation to ordination receive support from him and the church? Might they be elected to represent the church at diocesan convention? "

She promised to make these inquiries after today's church visit when she would set up a time to meet with him in the next week or two, as their schedules allowed.

This just appeared in my 'inbox': "Ok: you were right. The service was high mass, RC, sung. (minus the smells and bells however). The sermon was one narrow minded, oppressive and unappealing barrage of on-the-surface gleanings from Luther and Calvin, at the heart of it, murmurings of a man on a mission. Not a good mission. How you saw that before me is absolutely amazing to me. Nice man. Means well. Has no clue what he is creating I think. And that woman I was very sure was his wife. Nope. Whatever the relationship there, not his wife.

So, I will just say sorry. I really didn't understand the implications.

I won't be going back. Not for me. No joy there. I need joy. But the music was okay. Just not enough of it. "

I take no joy in any of this. Indeed, it absolutely breaks my heart.

For me, this is one of the microcosms of the macrocosm of The Episcopal Church. It's tragic. And, it's going on all the time. This is exactly how things like San Joaquin, Pittsburgh and Fort Worth happen. Slowly, over time. One parish after another. I do believe even Jesus weeps to see this kind of damage done in His Holy and Blessed Name.

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but the sooner this guy takes the word "Episcopal" out of his church's title, the better off we'll all be.

Lord, have mercy.

Oh, and please pray for my friend, that she might find a way to disengage her internal 'lune magnet' and find a spiritual home.

Friday morning 'Ticklebox' Repair

Don't blame me, blame Doug.

Two bees met in a field. One said to the other, "How are things going?"

"Really bad," said the second bee. "The weather has been cold, wet and damp, and there aren't any flowers, so I can't make honey."

"No problem," said the first bee. "Just fly down five blocks and turn left. Keep going until you see all the cars. There's a Bar Mitzvah going on and there are all kinds of fresh flowers and fresh fruit."

"Thanks for the tip," said the second bee, and flew away.

A few hours later the two bees ran into each other again. The first bee asked, "How'd it go?"

"Great!" said the second bee. "It was everything you said it would be. There was plenty of fruit and, oh, such huge floral arrangements on every table."

"Uh, what's that thing on your head?" asked the first bee.

"That's my yarmulke," said the second bee. "I didn't want them to think I was a wasp."

Scenes from a Diocesan Convention Banquet

Ross Wisnewski, a dear friend who also happens to be the Diocesan Stewardship Chair, took these pictures at the Diocesan Convention Banquet a few weeks ago.

Most of these affairs are deadly, boring necessities.

If you want theological types like priests and their spouses to act out, put us in a situation where we have to behave while those in authority are about to drone on for an hour about admittedly important topics like justice, poverty, vision, hopes and dreams.

It was my good fortune to sit with two great clergy friends - Orion Davis and Ken Near - at the dinner table.

It all started because Orion liked my jacket. I told him that I liked his. So, we swapped.

Jackets, that is.

That's Ken in the middle, trying to negotiate a deal where he could wear my jacket, too, some time.

What you can't see is that everyone else at our table is stunned by Orion's 'behavior".

They think of him as a conservative, sedate, nearing retirement country cleric. Clearly, they don't know the man I know - and love dearly.
And, this is the beginning of the Annual Diocesan Spoon Contest.

I hold the all time, undefeated record, balancing six . . . count 'em SIX . . . spoons on my face.

One each on each of my ears, my nose, cheek bones, and chin.

Hey, girls just wanna have fun - especially with two of her favorite clergy brothers!

(Somehow, I have a feeling we won't be sitting together next Convention Banquet.)

Note to the RCCL: Please DND

I promise I will write about my mother-daughter experience but I have to get this off my chest first. I also think it's important to know what preceded it.

While we were visiting, a Eucharistic Visitor from the local RC church came by to bring the Holy Sacrament to my mother. I was really appreciative of that wonderful gift and felt happy that my mother would be able to partake in Holy Eucharist, even though she was unable to attend church.

A woman in her mid-70's, she appeared to be very professional if not in a uniform of sorts: A green plaid pleated skirt, solid green, tailored jacket with several pens neatly lined up in the chest pocket, a white button-down lightly starched shirt, the 'peter pan' collar straining to be held together at her neck by a silver religious pin that said, 'Eucharistic Visitor'. She wore black orthopedic shoes and black tights. She also wore a cross with a corpus in obvious agony hanging from her neck and held in her hand a very large well-polished silver ciborium that was wrapped into a computer-generated list.

You would never confuse this woman with the 'TV Lady' or even the Nutritionist or Physical or Occupational Therapist.

She was the very model of efficiency. I'll just call her "The RC Church Lady." That's RCCL for short.

The RCCL said 'good morning' to my mother who, in turn, introduced my daughter and I, going at lengths to mention that we were visiting from NYC and NJ. RCCL glanced over our way and gave the most miserly small, what could only be described as very sour smile (no, I was not wearing a clerical collar).

The RCCL looked up at the clock over my mother's bed as she asked, "How are you doing today?" in a way that told you immediately that this was a strictly perfunctory question.

As my mother politely answered her question anyway, the RCCL made a great fuss about unfolding her computer visitor list and then, interrupting my mother's response mid-sentence asked to verify her name. "Why yes," my mother said sweetly (I recognized the tone immediately and knew exactly where this might lead).

"And you're Catholic, right?"

"Yes, of course," said my mother, as if to say, "D'uh!"

"I'm Catholic, too," I heard myself say. My daughter quickly chimed in, "Me, too!"

It was very fleeting, but I do know that a tiny smirk appeared in the left lower corner of my mother's lips. We've had this conversation before. My daughter and I are 'Anglo-Catholic' and we refuse to let Rome claim sole propriety on that word. Even my RC mother gets that.

That smirk on my mothers lips as she recognized the boldness of her daughter and grand daughter dissipated her own need to show the RCCL, as my mother would often say, "the backside of my hand."

The RCCL never looked our way, much less offered us the Sacrament. Instead, she snapped a pen from her jacket pocket and placed a check by my mother's name. "Okay," she said, getting right down to the 'real business' of the visit, "It's time for communion. Let's say the Lord's Prayer together," adding sternly, "Girls, I know your mother taught you this, so you say it with us."

Ah, sweet inclusion!

"Yes, course," I said, startling myself at how much I sounded like my mother. The RCCL forged ahead, blessing herself as she said, "In the name of the Father, and the Son . . . ."

I decided to let go of any anger that was brewing within me, close my eyes, and pray with and for my mother. But, as we ended that wonderfully familiar, universal Christian prayer, something in the RCCL's voice annoyed my ears. I looked up and saw that she was saying, " . . .and lead us not into temptation . . ." while looking up at the clock and writing down the time on her paper.

My mother didn't even have a chance to say a full 'Amen' when the ciborium was popped open, a small, paper-thin, round communion wafer emerged and the RCCL was saying, "Body of Christ" in the same tone as she might say, "Today is Tuesday."

As my mother said, "Amen," the RCCL snapped shut the ciborium, smiled one of the most inauthentic smiles I have ever witnessed and said, "I hope you feel better. I'll be back tomorrow."

And, without so much as a fair-thee-well or a a fiddle-dee-dee, the RCCL turned on the heel of her black orthopedic shoe and left the room.

My mother looked over to my daughter and I and, noting the stunned looks on our faces, performed the second miracle of the day. She said something to us that she has never, ever said before - well, at least concerning her church.

"I'm sorry," she said, apologizing for the woman's obvious rudeness and bad manners.

"It's okay, VaVoa," my daughter rushed to comfort her grandmother. "It's not your fault."

"Never mind about us," I offered, "We're fine. Think how awful it must be to be a daughter or grand daughter of hers."

"Yeah," said my daughter, "She was just a jerk. One bad apple. Don't let her spoil the whole barrel."

"No," my mother said sadly, "They're all like that. They are all so full of themselves and too proud of the privilege they've been given. They're wrong. You're right. And, I'm sorry."

I'm not sure, but I think the heavenly chorus started singing at that very moment. Then again, it might have been something over the hospital intercom (over which they also say the Rosary promptly at 8:45, immediately preceding the announcement that visiting hours are over at 9 PM. My mother thinks the woman who leads the recitation of the Rosary is this woman's sister. "She's very annoying," my mother says.)

I'm told that this hospital has started a new classification of religious affiliation. There's "Catholic" - clearly, 90% of the book. There's a much, much smaller "Protestant" section - which has sub-sections of "Methodist," "Lutheran," "Episcopalian," "Baptist," "Pentecostal, "Jehovah's Witness," "Non-denominational" and even, "Seventh Day Adventists."

But, the section that is even larger than that is the one entitled, "DND".

That stands for - are you ready? - "DO NOT DISTURB".

That's the newest 'religious category' and it's the fastest growing, I'm told.

If I'm ever a patient in that hospital, promise that you'll make sure I'm classified "DND." Otherwise, this mother's daughter just might have to show someone "the backside of my hand."

I wish I had Robin Morgan's ovaries.

An award-winning writer, feminist leader, political analyst, journalist, editor, and co-founder of the Women's Media Center, Robin Morgan has published 21 books, including six of poetry, four of fiction, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.

Her work has been translated into 13 languages. A founder of contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in the international women's movement for 25 years. Recent books include A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999; Saturday's Child: A Memoir; her best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, updated and reissued in 2001; and her novel, The Burning Time. Her nonfiction work, Fighting Words: A Took Kit for Combating the Religious Right, came out in September 2006.




Goodbye To All That (#2)
by Robin Morgan
February 2, 2008

“Goodbye To All That” was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting women (for an online version, see http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).

During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women’s movements, I’ve avoided writing another specific “Goodbye . . .” But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities—joint conscience-keepers of this country—been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.

Goodbye to the double standard . . .

—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who’s emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.
—She’s “ambitious” but he shows “fire in the belly.” (Ever had labor pains?)

—When a sexist idiot screamed “Iron my shirt!” at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted “Shine my shoes!” at BO, it would’ve inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.

—Young political Kennedys—Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.—all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort “See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him.” (Personally, I’m unimpressed with Caroline’s longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)

Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .

Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.

Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.

Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.

Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.

Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?

Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women’s movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments (www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC’s Tim Russert’s continual sexist asides and his all-white-male panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN’s Tony Harris chuckling at “the chromosome thing” while interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And that’s not even mentioning Fox News.

Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all women are white . . .Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations, ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages—not only African American and European American but Latina and Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t given birth to it. A few non-racist countries may exist—but sexism is everywhere. No matter how many ways a woman breaks free from other discriminations, she remains a female human being in a world still so patriarchal that it’s the “norm.”

So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?

Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which whites—especially wealthy ones—adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were blackor he were female we wouldn’t be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn’t stand a chance—even if she shared Condi Rice’s Bush-defending politics.

I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their vote—until a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me they’re being called “race traitors.”

So goodbye to conversations about this nation’s deepest scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.

Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men—though not all the same as one another—and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran for this high office and barely got past the gate—they showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female president they were even willing to abandon women’s rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)

Goodbye, goodbye to . . .

—blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys—though unlike them, he got reported on). Let’s get real. If he hadn’t campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.

—an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it’s “cooler” to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.

—the notion that it’s fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.

Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts “entitled” when she’s worked intensely at everything she’s done—including being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.

Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears, failures, fantasies.

Goodbye to the phrase “polarizing figure” to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women’s movement that quipped, “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” She heard us, and she has.

Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn’t as “likeable” as they’ve been warned they must be, or because she didn’t leave him, couldn’t “control” him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn’t bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement. She’s running to be president of the United States.

Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries’ history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our “land of opportunity,” it’s mostly the first pathway “in” permitted to women: Representatives Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.

Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous “Obama Girl” flaunting her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it wasn’t her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which she said “made me feel like a dork.”

Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten thestatus quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”

I’d rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do identifywith Hillary, and all the brave, smart men—of all ethnicities and any age—who get that it’s in their self-interest, too. She’s better qualified. (D’uh.) She’s a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on. (Also, yes, dammit, let’s hear it for her connections and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)

I’d rather look forward to what a good president he might make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical know-how—and he’ll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually he’s an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who’ve worked with the Kennedys’ own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it’s only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn’t it about getting the policies we want enacted?

And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse U.S. youth from torpor it’s useful to triage the single largest demographic in this country’s history: the boomer generation—the majority of which is female?

Old woman are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age—and we are the generation of radicals who said “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we’re back!

We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include female anatomy; who inspired men to become more nurturing parents; who created women’s studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography, who put childcare on the national agenda, who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.

We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S. voters.

Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There’s not a woman alive who, if she’s honest, doesn’t recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media’s obsession with everything Bill.

So listen to her voice:

“For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

“Women’s rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely—and the right to be heard.”

That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing (look here for the full, stunning speech).

And this voice, age 21, in “Commencement Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969.”

“We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.”

She ended with the commitment “to practice, with all the skill of our being: the art of making possible.”

And for decades, she’s been learning how.

So goodbye to Hillary’s second-guessing herself. The real question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves?

“Our President, Ourselves!”

Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy—as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she knows how to get us out of Iraq. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly “uniter” with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.

As for the “woman thing”?

Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.

On Mothering, and Visions and Healing

I got in about an hour ago (as I begin this, it is 9:30 PM, Tuesday), spoke with my beloved, loved on the puppies, unpacked, checked in on my email, poured myself a glass of wine and started to write this blog.

I'll get right to the good news: My mother's condition has stabilized. She is still very, very ill, but out of ICU and in a step-down, telemetry unit. The new antibiotic seems to have gotten the pneumonia under control, as she is no longer running at temp (had been as high as 104) nor is she in septic shock (had been as low as 94).

Her pulse oxymeter was reading at 94% at noon today. Her kidneys are now functioning within normal limits (her BUN/Creatinin level down from 12 to 7). Her diabetes is back under control (down from 350 last night to 180 at noon today). She is on continuous oxygen and very, very weak, but for now, she is out of the woods.

Her appetite remains good, and she regaled my daughter and I with story after story after story during our 4 hour visit.

Here's one she told that surprised even me: She reports that at about 8 PM last night, she could feel herself beset by a chill that began, she said, somewhere "deep in my core". She began to shiver with such force that it shook her body violently against the bed.

She remembers the nurses coming around and wrapping her in a thermal blanket ("It looked like something from a science fiction movie.") while others were shouting out medical orders.

She remembers that someone - she thinks it was the priest who had come to give her "last rights" (she refuses to call it 'unction', even though the Roman Catholic Church in which she practices her faith has called it that since Vatican II) - whispered in her ear - "Hang on, Lydia, hang on. Your daughter Elizabeth and grand daughter Julie will be here in the morning. Just hang on."

Shortly after that, she says, she saw a very bright light, and emerging from it, a vision of St. Therese of Lisieux, 'the Little Flower of Jesus', her very favorite-most saint in all of Western Christendom, who came to her and said "It's okay, Lydia. Everything is going to be okay. I will take care of you."

At that moment, she says, the chill subsided, she stopped shivering and was overcome by as sense of deep peace. And then, she says, she fell deeply asleep.

When she awoke at around 4:30 the next morning (today), she said she was filled with a sense of hope and knew she was going to be alright. When Julie and I arrived a wee bit before 10 this morning (having left NYC at 6 AM to escape 'Super Tuesday' and the Victory Parade for the NY Giants), she was sitting up in her bed, in a private room on the Step-Down unit (out of ICU), and was obviously delighted to see us.

The only time she stopped talking was when her lunch came and she took a bite of her egg salad sandwich, ate her lime fruit jello ring, or sipped her tea.

My mother is 84 years old (she'll be 85 in July, God willing). To my recollection, she has never reported ever having either a spiritual 'vision' or an 'audition'. While I do not discount the veracity of either of her experiences, I think her report of them is an indication of just how gravely ill she really was.

I have other miracles and healing to report. I must pray on them and consider them deep in my heart before I write of them. I only know that there was, in the hearts of three generations of women in that room on the telemetry ward, some powerful, I would dare say 'miraculous' healing.

For now, I simply want to thank you all for your prayers for my mother. And, I want to thank St. Therese Lisieux, the 'Little Flower of Jesus' for showing up and bringing my mother a sense of hope.

As I left, Mother gave me these meditations from the Society of St. Therese, of which she has been a member for as long as I can remember. She was most insistent that I take them home to read tonight.

I share them with you in what the nuns of my youth would refer to as a 'spiritual bouquet.' (My mother reminded me of this. A lovely term, no? I think we ought to reclaim it as our own.)

From the writings of St. Therese of Lisieux: "How few there are who accept failure and weakness, who are content to see themselves on the ground and to be found there by others."

2 Sm 18:9-10, 14b, 24-25a, 30–19:3

Absalom unexpectedly came up against David’s servants.
He was mounted on a mule,
and, as the mule passed under the branches of a large terebinth,
his hair caught fast in the tree.
He hung between heaven and earth
while the mule he had been riding ran off.
Someone saw this and reported to Joab
that he had seen Absalom hanging from a terebinth.
And taking three pikes in hand,
he thrust for the heart of Absalom,
still hanging from the tree alive.

Now David was sitting between the two gates,
and a lookout went up to the roof of the gate above the city wall,
where he looked about and saw a man running all alone.
The lookout shouted to inform the king, who said,
“If he is alone, he has good news to report.”
The king said, “Step aside and remain in attendance here.”
So he stepped aside and remained there.
When the Cushite messenger came in, he said,
“Let my lord the king receive the good news
that this day the LORD has taken your part,
freeing you from the grasp of all who rebelled against you.”
But the king asked the Cushite, “Is young Absalom safe?”
The Cushite replied, “May the enemies of my lord the king
and all who rebel against you with evil intent
be as that young man!”

The king was shaken,
and went up to the room over the city gate to weep.
He said as he wept,
“My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom!
If only I had died instead of you,
Absalom, my son, my son!”

Joab was told that the king was weeping and mourning for Absalom;
and that day’s victory was turned into mourning for the whole army
when they heard that the king was grieving for his son.

Responsorial Psalm
86:1-2, 3-4, 5-6

R. (1a) Listen, Lord, and answer me.
Incline your ear, O LORD; answer me,
for I am afflicted and poor.
Keep my life, for I am devoted to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God.

R. Listen, Lord, and answer me.
Have mercy on me, O Lord,
for to you I call all the day.
Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.

R. Listen, Lord, and answer me.
For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in kindness to all who call upon you.
Hearken, O LORD, to my prayer
and attend to the sound of my pleading.

R. Listen, Lord, and answer me.

Gospel: Mk 5:21-43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat
to the other side,
a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea.

One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward.
Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying,
“My daughter is at the point of death.
Please, come lay your hands on her
that she may get well and live.”
He went off with him
and a large crowd followed him.

There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years.
She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors
and had spent all that she had.
Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.

She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd
and touched his cloak.
She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.”
Immediately her flow of blood dried up.

She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him,
turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my clothes?”
But his disciples said to him,
“You see how the crowd is pressing upon you,
and yet you ask, Who touched me?”
And he looked around to see who had done it.

The woman, realizing what had happened to her,
approached in fear and trembling.
She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.
He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.
Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”

While he was still speaking,
people from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said,
“Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?”
Disregarding the message that was reported,
Jesus said to the synagogue official,
“Do not be afraid; just have faith.”

He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside
except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.

When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official,
he caught sight of a commotion,
people weeping and wailing loudly.

So he went in and said to them,
“Why this commotion and weeping?
The child is not dead but asleep.”

And they ridiculed him.

Then he put them all out.

He took along the child’s father and mother
and those who were with him
and entered the room where the child was.
He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,”
which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”

The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around.

At that they were utterly astounded.

He gave strict orders that no one should know this
and said that she should be given something to eat.

Meditative Prayer:

"Mighty and Mysterious God, You have a wonderful and strange way of mixing defeat and victory, joys and sorrows. We celebrate David's triumph yet weep with him over the death of his beloved son Absalom. We have wept over relatives whose loss empties our heart. Sometimes we want and even demand miracles, like the healing of Jairus' daughter and the hemorrhaging woman. Touch our lingering pains and immediate hurts. Teach us to trust you, especially in times of painful darkness. You are the God of life and You make what seems like losses, death and disease into victories, life and wholeness."

Somebody in the church give me an Amen.

The Annual Meeting - The Transfiguration

“But Jesus came and touched them and said, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’” Matthew 17:7

There are no coincidences. Today is our Annual Meeting. Today’s scripture reading, for the last Sunday in Epiphany, the Sunday before Lent begins, features the Transfiguration of Jesus as told to us by St. Matthew.

In almost every scripture story, whenever someone is being asked to do a mighty work in the name of God, you can bet you bottom dollar that the angel will say, “Be not afraid.”

Jesus, in turn, says these words to Peter, James and John after they witnessed his transfiguration on “a high mountain” (probably Mount Hermon, near Caesarea Philippi), as reported in Matthew 17:1-8). They had just seen an incredible vision: Elijah and Moses, talking with Jesus. Each had highly symbolic presence for the ministry of Jesus: Elijah represented the prophets and Moses, the law.

Jesus, about to fulfill both prophecy and the law, was transfigured before them, his “face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.” The disciples then heard the voice of God say, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. . . “

Those words are also familiar. We heard them spoken at the Baptism of Jesus, but this time, God adds, “Listen to him.” The disciples then “fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.” And Jesus goes to them and, touching them, says, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

“Get up.” Jesus adds these new words to the old command to “Do not be afraid.” This is significant to us this morning as we look back on all that we have accomplished and all that we are yet being asked to do.

These are anxious times. The War in Iraq and Afghanistan continue unabated with no easy end in sight. There is unrest in Kenya and the genocide in Darfur seems to continue despite international attention. The ‘r’ word (recession) hangs heavy in the air, and some who had previously enjoyed a sense of economic comfort now struggle to decide how to balance the increasing costs of fuel and food. We have come to know that many of us (more than we care to admit) are only ‘two paychecks away’ from financial crisis.

The political process to elect a new President place all of these issues and more before us as our daily bread, which seems only to feed our fears and anxieties. We eat the bread of anxiety at our own peril.

This church is also facing into some difficult decisions. As you will hear, our Stewardship Campaign has been one of the most successful in years, and yet fell short of our financial goals which were admittedly very high. While the new understanding of our budget process is both enlightening and exciting, we have come to see that living into a deficit budget all these many years has taken its toll. We can no longer afford to live this way, and difficult decisions, and the changes they require, must be made.

The stewardship of our buildings and grounds has been demanding our attention, and will continue to take center stage in our common lives: we have wisely replaced all of the windows in the undercroft of the church, which will bring substantial savings in terms of the cost of utilities; however, we need a new roof, new equipment for handicapped access, new front doors. Our sanctuary and bathrooms also need to be made more handicapped accessible. Our organ is in serious need of repair and/or replacement. All of these things are ‘big ticket’ items.

In over twenty years of ministry, I know this much to be true: I have never seen a congregation grow and thrive while being focused on these things. I’m not saying that they are not important and deserving of our time and energy. We must be good stewards of all that God has so abundantly given us – including our buildings and grounds.

I am saying this: A congregation that is focused on the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ will grow and flourish beyond our wildest imaginings. I know some of you are tired of hearing me say this, but it remains true: A church alive with the outward look of mission is a growing, thriving church.

Let me be clear: I’m not just speaking about numerical growth. While that is always wonderful, it is not an imperative necessity for the health and well being of the Body of Christ. These things are:

• Spiritual growth.

• Deepening our prayer life.

• Sharing our faith stories with one another and how we understand ourselves to be living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

• The maturation of our relationships as sisters and brothers in Christ.

• Living into our baptismal promise to “grow into the full stature of Christ.

• The mission and ministry of the church.

• Discovering our unique vocation as a Body of Christ.

As human beings, we are unique among the creatures of God. We are blessed with intelligence, reason and skill – and, we are blessed with the divine gift of free will.

We have choices – sacred choices. We can stand by and be dazzled by the brilliance of all that has brought us to this “high and holy place’ today. We can hunker down, lower our heads and stay focused on ‘the bottom line’. We can fall to the ground in fear.

And, all those things would be perfectly normal, human things to do.

I am saying to you that Jesus has come over to us and has touched us in our anxiety and fear. Jesus offers to us not the stuff of anxiety but the Bread of Heaven. Jesus says to me and to you and to everyone who enters this sacred place, “Get up!” “Get up and do not be afraid.”

God has said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.”

A we reflect on all that we have done, and all that the world is challenging us with, and all that God is giving us to do, my prayer is that we listen even more closely to what Jesus is saying. Listen. He is saying this: “Get up, and do not be afraid.”

And, let the church say, “Amen.”

A poem as prayer for Mother.

Blood is thicker than water.
It has of’t been said.

I’m off to see my mother
lying in the Intensive Care Unit
of a hospital where

I might have been born
except it wasn’t where
immigrants bore their children.

That was a place for the rich
the established.
the ‘landed gentry’.

Which we were, decidedly, not.

I am off on a quest
not seek an answer
to a question,
but to answer
the questions she has
with the truth of my life

I am off to tell my mother
what I need to say to her
before she dies.

To offer forgiveness
to bring true repentance
and amendment of ways.

To carry on the family legacy
of telling secrets
and ‘the truth’, as I know it,
buried deep in my heart.

I have freed myself of the need
to hear her response,
whatever it may be.

I have learned the lessons
this life has brought me.
She has learned the lessons
of her own life.

Buried deep in my heart
I know the truth.

Buried deep in my heart,
I hold the secret.

Blood is thicker than water.

And, blood is what binds us,
She to me and I to her.

Forever.

(With grateful thanksgiving to my Chief Pastor, Mark Beckwith, who provided a clarifying conversation while in his car, on his cell phone, on his way to Philadelphia.)

Sunday afternoon update: Mother went into septic shock in the middle of the night and was transferred to ICU. She was started on a new antibiotic and when my sister went in to see her at noon, Mother was sitting up in bed, eating a light lunch. A born fighter with stubbornness deeply imbedded in her DNA, she has rallied once again. I'm awaiting a call from one of my daughters who is out of the country to determine when it is I drive up to see her.

Thank you all for keeping this vigil of prayer with me. It is good to watch and wait with 'ye watchers and ye holy ones'. Alleluia! (Whatever is it that people do, in times like these, who don't have communities of prayer to support and sustain them?)

Keeping a Vigil of Prayer

My 82 year old mother was admitted to the hospital on Thursday. Again. I've lost count. I think this is the third or fourth time since October when, at that time, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.

She now has pneumonia. Her kidneys are failing. She has received two units of blood. She has been difficult to arouse. I'm told she was awake this afternoon - ate some soup and some jello, and although weak, she was able to hold her own in conversation. Her two strengths: food and talk.

Ah, and the apple does not fall far from the tree, eh?

It's just a matter of time, really. If she goes into kidney failure, she'll have 72 hours to a week, at the outside. Having a medical background can make one very pragmatic about these things. No magical thinking. No thoughts - if there ever were - of "well, if I just pray hard enough - get enough people to join me in prayer - a miracle can happen."

Death, I have come to understand, can be as much a miracle as life.

My mother has had a long life. Not an easy life, to be sure. She suffered at the hands of parents who came to this country as peasants who lived with even less hope than the necessities of life. Poverty without hope can do strange things to a body. Her parents were often as cruel to her and her 15 sisters and brothers (of 21) who made it to adulthood as life had been to them.

She lived through The Great Depression and knew what it was like to go to bed hungry and awaken to a breakfast of a slice of bread and be thankful for it. She lived through a war and worried that her young husband would not return to her alive. She worked as a 'mill girl' in a factory that saw her as just another cog in the wheel of progress - a bottom line in the margin of profit. As long as she kept the assembly line moving, she was of value. Her humanity had worth in direct proportion to her productivity.

She lived for 56 years with a man who had turned to alcohol to ease the pain of his childhood losses, adult frustrations and the horrible memories of war which scared him for life. He could be as physically abusive as her father, but it was all sanctioned by the holy men and women from Rome, so it had to be alright, didn't it?

She struggled hard but found it next to impossible not to participate in the repetition of the cycle of abuse in her own family. Children will listen. Children will learn. Parents regret. She suffered the loss of two children and one grandchild - something no parent or grandparent should have to endure.

I find myself praying as memories intrude, a family album of images cascading through the deep thoughts of my heart. I have come to embrace these intrusions as part of my prayer. God's response to my petitions. As each image comes, I find a deeper way to forgive, bless and send them on as prayers to the heart of God on her behalf - and mine.

Forgive us, for we know not what to do with this awesome gift of life you have given us, so we often mess up. We make mistakes. We hurt the ones we love. We repent. We seek forgiveness. We try to move on, doing better the next time. We have some glorious moments until, once again, we fail - ourselves and each other.

And so it goes in the enterprise of being human and the great mystery of God's unconditional love.

Pray this night, dear friends, for Lydia, a sheep of God's flock, a lamb of God's own redemption. Although I have my doubts, she may yet pull through to live another day. Even so . . . even so . . .

She has fought the good fight. She has done the best she could with what she was given.

Would that each of us might have that said of us when our time comes.

Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Thank you for joining me in this Vigil of Prayer.

Sunday afternoon update: Mother went into septic shock in the middle of the night and was transferred to ICU. She was started on a new antibiotic and when my sister went in to see her at noon, Mother was sitting up in bed, eating a light lunch. A born fighter with stubbornness deeply imbedded in her DNA, she has rallied once again. I'm awaiting a call from one of my daughters who is out of the country to determine when it is I drive up to see her.

Thank you all for keeping this vigil of prayer with me. It is good to watch and wait with 'ye watchers and ye holy ones'. Alleluia! (Whatever is it that people do, in times like these, who don't have communities of prayer to support and sustain them?)

White Smoke in Rochester from Newark

By the grace of God and the movement of the Holy Spirit, in convention at Trinity Episcopal Church, Geneva, The Rev. Dr. Prince Singh was elected to become the 8th Bishop of Rochester.

The majority of Bishop and Standing Committees of the Episcopal Church consenting, he will be ordained and consecrated a bishop by Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori and all Bishops of The Episcopal Church present on May 31, 2008 at the Eastman Theater, Rochester, New York.

Prince is a priest in the Diocese of Newark, the second priest to have been elected bishop in the Diocese of Rochester where the present Bishop Diocesan, Jack McKelvey, was formerly Diocesan Suffragan in Newark, having been elected as rector of St. Paul's, Englewood.

I'm thinking the Diocese of Newark ought to begin charging a 'finder's fee' or 'surcharge' on all priests nominated from our diocese. It might be a great fundraising strategy.

Please hold Prince and all the candidates in your prayers.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!

A Lenten Discipline: Where are your tears?

I've been thinking about a Lenten Discipline for this year, my last one concerning regular exercise having been so successful. No, really. I am now a regular fixture at my local YW/MCA. It's been the best thing I've ever done for myself in a very long time.

It's hard to top that, so you understand my dilemma. Well, here's one that is probably just as difficult as getting into a regular pattern of physical exercise. I found this wonderful piece written by one of my favorite authors over at one of my favorite morning stops, Episcopal Cafe.

The gift of tears
By Martin L. Smith

I have a standing joke with a friend ever since he asked me about a sermon I was preparing: “Which bodily fluid will you be mentioning this time?” He had picked up on my tendency to gravitate toward symbols that derive from the body. So during Lent, long before we arrive once again in Holy Week to confront the primal imagery of the cross and “the water and the blood” which the evangelist John tells us to notice, we can think about tears.

What place do tears have in our spiritual lives? Tradition speaks of the gift of tears. Lent is supposed to be a time for reflecting on our own religious experience, and a rewarding discipline might be to question ourselves about our own tears, the tears we permit and the tears we repress. Here is an experiment: During Lent set aside half an hour each week, sit quietly in a private place with notepad and think where your tears are. Which are the kinds of tears that connect us with God and ourselves and one another? Do I ever allow any of these tears to flow?

I can already think of some of the headings I could use to help me focus on different aspects. Perhaps the first would be Forbidden Tears. Many of us have gone through life with unshed tears pent up inside us because some authority figures forbade us to cry. I’ve lost count of the men whom I have had to help release the tears their parents shamed them into suppressing. It is one thing for parents to stop us whining in self-pity. It is another to censor the expression of grief and loss. The terrible truth is that many adults have been trained not to cry. So many griefs turned to ice in the deep freeze of the heart’s recesses! Many of us will never warm up, or become open and free, until those tears have thawed and we allow them to flow. The old hymn Veni Creator Spiritus prays “what is frozen warmly tend…” There is an entire spirituality of healing contained in that petition. Imagine what a breakthrough might begin if we had the courage to confess before God that we don’t know how to mourn, and need help.

Another category might be Tears of Truth. Here we venture into the territory of discernment. Tears tell us different things. Some tears expose our shallow sentimentality. We sob in spite of ourselves at tear-jerking movie scenes. We choke up at martial music and mawkish songs. Other tears reveal our vulnerability to manipulation. How easy it is for so-called evangelists and political orators to work us. The lump-in-the throat tears they stimulate warn us that hackers know exactly how to get into our emotions for their own ends.

But we also cry because we have allowed truth though our defenses. These are different tears that cleanse and heal us. They tell us that we don’t have hearts of stone after all, and that makes us grateful. We can be moved by what is true, what is good and what is beautiful. Tears can assure that we are touched by truth, braced by its painful realism, inspired to embrace its integrity, and honor its demands. Sometimes when I play songs by two artists who have touched my life, Mili Bermejo and Abby Lincoln, I weep, but not from sentimentality. These songs bring tears because they remind me what these women taught me about passion, and the wholeness that can only be discovered by honoring loss and desire, grief and yearning, fierce anger and tenderness.

And there are Tears of Connection. Paul sums up our spirituality of mutual service succinctly: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” (Rom. 12:15) And the shortest sentence in scripture is, “Jesus wept.” Tears of self-pity water make seeds of resentment germinate. Tears of empathy join us to each other. A heart that is open to God’s Spirit allows us to shed tears of joy at the successes and delights that come to others. (Saints even shed tears of joy at blessings given to those they don’t even like.) Tears of compassion allow us to share the burdens of others. Tears of intercession might even be ways we can cry on behalf of others, so that thanks to our connectedness in the Spirit, they might not have to cry as much.

Our list of tears can get longer. Tears of Compunction through we which we admit our own brokenness and surrender denial. Tears of Bliss. Tears of Relief. Above all, Tears of sheer gratitude. Think about them. It won’t be long before we realize why the spiritual masters spoke of the gift of tears. Most of us in our very emotionally controlled Episcopalian milieu haven’t opened that gift up yet. We need to ask God very simply and sincerely for that gift.

The Rev. Martin L. Smith is a well-known spiritual writer and priest. He is the senior associate rector at St. Columba’s, D.C.