Politics... Argh...Thomas Merton

I love The Peanuts cartoons- in particular, I love the exclamation of disgust/frustration/anger that Lucy (I think) used to do: it went something like this "ARRGGGHH!"

The one thing I loved about the Episcopal Church was that it was (seemingly) evolved beyond all the BS that I grew up with in The Southern Baptist Convention. Events of the last 4-5 years have proven otherwise. Lucky for me, I live in a liberal Diocese with a great Bishop (IMHO) and the politics have been agreeable to me thus far (at least on the local level).

Recent events in California are another matter. For the play by play, I defer to my friend "Father Jake." I find what happened at St. Nicholas in California most disconcerting. However, read the accounts of what transpired yesterday and you will see a classic example of how I feel the Holy Spirit can work in the worst of situations. I project myself into a "difficult" church situation like that someday and wonder what it would be like. Fr. Fred indeed experienced a "thin time" yesterday- I hope that he knows we are with him in prayer and spirit.

I also defer to Thomas Merton. I like this prayer for times like this:

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.


Shalom

timmah

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

I was talking to Liz, my therapist, last week about Christmas. I had decided that I did not like it much and that maybe that was the originating point for the funk that I was in. Funny, when I admitted to not liking it much, I actually started to feel much better. (Admitting the problem is half the battle, they say??)

But over the last few days I have been falling in love again with this season, much to my surprise. The Holy Spirit must have intervened in my house because we are finished shopping and 90% of all of our wrapping is finished. Today I had one of those things happen where I happened to take a nice gift for Tricia, the Priest I am working with at St. Dunstan's, and she had an excellent gift for me. She bought me my first Book of Common Prayer- Hymnal Combo like the ones that Priests use that have all the ribbons and the leather binding. I was struck down by her generosity (those things ain't cheap) and by the fact that it was SO appropriate to get my first "real" prayer book from her. (Luckily, I had purchased for her a creamer/ sugar bowl set from my good friend Polly the Potter! Generosity reigns supreme!)

To top it all off, I had the privelege of being a shepherd in the annual Christmas Pageant at St. Dunstan's. I think the moment that finally sucked me in to the Christmas spirit was when all the 2 and 3 year olds came up as the Heavenly Host with their little foil wings and halos and white robes. No more bah, humbug for me, I am afraid.

God works in mysterious ways- sometimes through tiny children, apparently.

Crisis Mode- Advent One Sermon

Note- This was the sermon I preached for the Advent One RCL scriptures for the Wednesday Night Eucharist at Candler Seminary. 3 weeks later, here it is:


Dead asleep…..2 AM. Something- a cockroach, dog, child getting water, inadvertently activates the motion detector on your burglar alarm system... You bolt upright, grabbing your robe.. your slippers.. the baseball bat or 9-iron underneath your bed. In a show of true valor you call the dog over and tell him to "go downstairs boy- see who's here..."

You inch down the steps looking for a burglar, heart racing uncontrollably, hands shaking. You check all the windows and doors. You wait for the alarm company to call so you can give them the code word and call off the police and then go back up to bed and try to calm down enough to go to sleep...the thief in the night was a phantom of electronics…

A “thief in the night” breaking in is a looming reality in my neighborhood. Recently, neighbors up the hill on Dekalb Avenue had their door broken down by robbers who then started shooting- one of them jumped from his balcony, suffering horrible injuries to his face and teeth. Thank God, no one was killed- but my neighbors are scarred for life.

I can't imagine anything scarier than someone invading the safe, secure place we make for our children and ourselves.. home. This horrible possibility puts us all into crisis mode- fight or flight, some call it. The worst part of even the possibility of a home invasion is that matter how much work you do- no matter if you stay up all night (as Jesus describes in the Gospel) you cannot know whether or not your preparation will keep you safe. You are truly out of control, in the end.

A lot of work has been done in the science of the brain on how we react to crisis. Dr. Paul Mclean, a Neuropsychiatrist, discovered years about that each of us has a "mammal brain" and a "lizard brain." Our "lizard brain" or reptilian brain is the part of our brain that is in charge of keeping us alive- in charge of things that are not the best of humanity: rage, territoriality, fear of strangers and our fight or flight response- keeping us alert to all danger. The lizard brain causes our heart rate to skyrocket, our blood pressure to go up, the surface temperature of our skin falls , our pupils dilate- it makes us ready to fight and defend ourselves.

When I hear someone telling me things like Jesus does in this Matthew 24, I find myself thinking with my "lizard brain." A thief in the night is unacceptable, frightening, and induces us to our worst, violent behavior in an effort to defend family and territory.

The Gospel writer has Jesus give us more terrifying one-liners in Matthew 24- the stuff of horror movies: "they will hand you over to be tortured and you will be put to death" in 24:9. He speaks of "desolating sacrilege" in 24:15 and he tells the disciples that "the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven." The Gospel writer also has Jesus saying that he will "send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

Our Advent lessons begin for us with a horror show, of sorts, scary stuff that could be taken to mean watch out... God is coming.. he is angry and you'd better take care, it seems to be telling us.

I'm a big fan of the Horror genre. Jesus does make us pay attention to when the Gospel has him sounding scary in Matthew 24. Why the apocalypse during a period when we are supposed to be happy- reinforcing for us a nasty underbelly of our month filled with family, friends, parties and all-round debauchery that is supposed to be “the most wonderful time of the year?”

Why all the things going bump in the night when we want sleigh bells and Christmas carolers? Why all the Stephen King when we want Santa and Frosty the Snowman and Baby Jesus in a nice, soft, manger? How are we to understand these passages that throw us into a crisis mentality instead of a peaceful state of joy and peace?

Two Psychiatrists published a study in which they studied the effects of fear and crisis on the Amygdala- an area of our brain that is important in processing memory and emotion. What they discovered was that things that produced outright terror used a small part of the Amygdala (the lizard brain I mentioned earlier). This was not surprising. The interesting thing, though is that hey also discovered that ambiguity- not knowing exactly what is going on or what will happen- makes the brain more alert than things that produce outright fear. They said in their study that "vigilance is the body's reaction to something new that promotes the various system's need to be alert to potentially important information." Vigilance is when we are truly awake. We use our whole brain- and perhaps our whole being and attention.

And see, Jesus ends the string of terrifying images with some great advice that helps us, during this often dark time of the lectionary year. He urges us to be alert - to be vigilant and awake and (most of all) to not be afraid. “
"Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming" “…for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

Keep awake. Be ready. Be vigilant.

He urges us to use our whole brain, our whole being, and get ready for Christmas during Advent. The Gospel has him telling us that we can release ourselves from the things that paralyze us- fear, darkness, anxiety, busyness- that are so much a part of what the culture calls “The Christmas Season- not through terror- through self desctructive emotional and mental energy but through vigilance and readiness.

How do we develop vigilance? How do we get ready for Christmas? Do we spend our time trying to stay off the naughty list ? And anyway, could any of us ever NOT be one it? (Well, my Mom is here, and she is definitely not on it, but the rest of us… I am not so sure…) Are we ever really ready for the kind of love God offers us through Jesus when Christmas does arrive? Are we ever good enough, clean enough, observant enough, or spiritual enough?
No- nothing we can do- no amount of vigilance we practice to conquer the fear and darkness of winter can get us prepared for God’s “wondrous love.”

God does not care a whit if we are ready or vigilant. In spite of all of our anxiety-hurry- busyness- over the holiday- Christmas comes anyway- whether we want it to or not- kind of like a thief in the night.

Jesus invades the territory of our lives and insists upon being taking part in who we are- ready or not. God insists upon coming into the earth- so much so that he finds the most humble, ordinary route possible in getting here- a young, impoverished, unmarried teenager, and shows up- ready or not.

Our God desperately wants to be a part of our lives and we are to prepare ourselves, during Advent, for this reality!

God’s going to come whether we like it or not - but not as a boogieman who steals us away during the night or on a white horse in the clouds or a behind the pulpit of a church , but as a tiny baby.

Some friends in my liturgy class gave me this poem by Madeline L’Engle. Listen how she reminds us that God did not wait for anything and showed up for us at Christmas:

First Coming- by Madeline L’Engle
God did not wait till the world was ready,
till . . . nations were at peace.
God came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.

God did not wait for the perfect time.
God came when the need was deep and great.
God dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. God did not wait

till hearts were pure. In joy God came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
God came, and God’s Light would not go out.

God came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

May you remember during advent to raise your songs in joyful voice sharing a God who came with love to heal the tangles of this world in the word made flesh.

Amen.

Seven Words

OK so some of the stuff I write for seminary gets put to good use... I am back to blogging. Here is the text of my first sermon I ever wrote and preached at St. Dunstan's Episcopal here in Atlanta.

More in the coming days. I got a veritable treasure trove of stuff to put up here that I wrote this semester! Some of it not even that bad, either.

Seven Words--

“Let’s pray about it.” Four words we have heard a lot during these last few, seemingly apocalyptic, days of wildfires, drought and middle-east foreign policy insanity.
I recently read this item in a small North Georgia church’s newsletter; written by a person I know.
“The latest ‘Let’s pray about it’ activity has been centered around the drought we are suffering. As Marge and I catch shower water to keep our withering plants alive, I get weary thinking that not a day goes by that I don’t hear someone wanting to organize a prayer meeting to ask God for some rain. It seems to me that if that were the drill, then somebody’s prayer would have been a winner by now. Seems as if our chances of buying a winning lottery ticket are better than that.”
The writer continues:
“I find it difficult to accept a theology that tells me God is sitting up in heaven somewhere jerking strings to make us behave. What about the 300,000+ people in California who have lost their homes to a raging fire caused by, as the insurance companies would say, ‘an Act of God?’ What did they collectively do to incur God’s wrath? Not so, you say? Then why do we pray for safe travel, for rain, for money, for a new car, etc., etc.? If we don’t get a good answer, does that mean we need to clean up our act and ask again?
“I don’t have any answers, except to believe that I am slowly growing in my ability to find a quiet place, clear my mind of the present and allow myself the luxury of feeling the presence of God.”
When the rains dry up or when they fall in plenty we look for some kind of justification. “Was it something we did, through global warming or maybe in the way of the Old Testament, the sins of our Fathers and Mothers, that caused God to stop the rains?” We wonder. “Why are all of these bad things happening to us,” we ask. Or, on the other side, when good things happen, we try to take credit for them ourselves, or we count ourselves lucky that we are not one of them – one of the folks “less fortunate” than we.
When pray for and get rain, someone else does not get rain. We pray that the storms miss our home, yet they destroy someone else’s. We pray that we win the lottery, the contract, the college admission, yet we forget that someone else loses. Life, it seems, can be a zero sum game for many of us, and it can seem hopeless when we inhabit the losing side and overwhelmingly hopeful when we are winning.
How can we, as our writer tells us, “find a quiet place, clear our mind of the present and allow ourselves the luxury of feeling the presence of God.”
What levels us out as God’s children? Is it righteous acts- is it charity- is it what we think or who we are?
Jesus shows us today how prayer and honesty with God will bring us back to who we really are, and he even gives us a template of sorts with seven, simple words – “God, have mercy on me a sinner.” It’s a prayer many people have called “The Jesus Prayer.”
Prayer and meditation have been getting a lot of attention around my school this last two weeks, in part because we have another set of exams coming up this week and also because of a new professor at Emory named His Holiness Dalai Lama. During his time at Emory, Dalai Llama did a lecture that was open to the Tibetan Buddhist community, and in it he said over and over that we are all light and that the harmful things we do (sin) are all contrary to that true nature.
Maybe it is getting to our true nature – who we really are- that is at the heart of “allowing ourselves the luxury of feeling the presence of God.”
Three different times in the Gospel we get variations of this prayer- - A blind man sitting on the side of the road in Jericho intones – “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Ten lepers cry out, “Jesus, Master, take pity on us' and our publican prays from the back of the temple, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner."
Who are these people in our parable today- this Tax Collector and Pharisee?
I don’t think they are so different from us. One of them is at the very top of his game, the Pharisee. The other, perhaps, at the bottom of the pit, the tax collector. We sometimes feel as if they are different because they are from an ancient world but I think they live among us. I think at different times they are we.

We might say, to paraphrase the comic strip character, Pogo, “we have met the Pharisee, and he is us.
In fact, if Jesus had been born in Gainesville, as Clarence Jordan offers in his Cotton Patch Gospel, the parable we read today might have gone something like this:
“Two men went to church one Sunday morning. One was a deacon, and the other a mortgage banker. Times had been hard around the city, and he had recently foreclosed on the houses of four church members’ houses.
The deacon sat in the front row and the mortgage banker sat in the back of the huge sanctuary that morning. The Deacon prayed to himself, “Dear Lord, I am soooo thankful for my life, that I am a good man who pays his mortgage, that I have not lost my home. Thank you Lord. Thank you for my good job, my great house and my three beautiful children. Thank you for this church I come to three times a week. I pray for forgiveness for that man back there who took away my friends’ homes.”
Our mortgage banker, sitting in the back, doesn’t even feel as if he can pray, “This has been a hard week. I had to take four houses away from people. My children hate me, my wife won’t speak to me and I hate my job. Dear Lord, have mercy on me – I can’t seem to do anything right.”
We know these two men, don’t we, and at various times in our lives “they are us.”
Who were these men in Jesus day, though?
The community hated tax collectors in Jesus’ day. They would profit from other people’s misfortune and oppression by pre-paying the taxes owed by their neighbors to the Romans, and then collect back from people what was owed and skim off the top everything that was left over. They would “hold the paper” on the debt owed to the government or the bank.
Pharisees were self-important jerks, sometimes, but they sort of get a bad rap; from Luke, especially. Some scholars believed that they were Christianity’s main “competition” and that perhaps these folks are usually cast as villains.
In their day, though, they were the pillars of the community.
They did the daily office, gave their money to the poor, went to church every chance they got, served on all the committees and ran the place. If they sat among us today, we would look to them as examples.
The “publican “ or the “tax collector” or “mortgage banker” might be pretty repugnant to us as well, though, perhaps because of the choices they had made in life or because of a collection they had made from our bank account.
Don’t we encounter people that we might call “repugnant.” How many times do we see people and catch ourselves thanking God we are “not like them?”
I know I catch myself looking out the window of my house or car sometimes thinking “Thank you, Lord I am not him” or “Thank you God, my day is not as bad as hers.”
How many of us have driven down the highway in any given rush hour, have seen the broken down car in the heat of the day, or the wreck, and thought- “At least I am not him.”
Jesus shows us that even when we believe we are at the bottom of the heap or when we are at the top, we are blessed by God.
Jesus offers that simple prayer that can draw us closer to God and, most importantly, closer to one another; “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” This prayer comes from an outcast, the hated character in our parable. From a notorious sinner we don’t get excuses like “Well, God, next week I will collect the taxes honestly, so hear my prayer,” or, “Thanks, God, for the profit I made tax collecting the last month. I’ll give some away, so forgive me.” We get seven humble words. He realizes who he is (lost and separated from God), and he speaks the truth to God saying when he says “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
The Pharisee is all of us when we are at our best. When we have made the sale, survived the recession, made the “A” on the exam, or beaten the traffic home. From a notoriously righteous person we hear words that use earthly evidence of success as signs of God’s favor. We see someone comparing himself their self to others to justify their self before God by saying, “Thanks be to God I am not like other men.”
When we are at the bottom financially, emotionally, physically, or spiritually even, we can have what my friends in recovery call “a moment of clarity” and remember, as our tax collector does, that God still just might love us in spite of it all, and we can say, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
When we are at the top sometimes we can forget that our success comes at the expense of others. That our successes, like our failures, can be opportunities to search the fabric of reality for evidence of God’s grace and not just a time of personal triumph or loss. Our accomplishment and piety does not make us loved any more or less than those less fortunate than we.
What would it be like if, when we walked out of the doors of our temple, we remembered always, first and foremost, that we are, as Tricia says in her blessing, born blessed?

What would it be like if we remembered, as we breathed in and out during the day, that God’s grace is enough to get us through the day?
Our friends who know Latin know that Sin, after all, means separation. Prayer is, Jesus offers us, the ultimate opportunity to remove that separation, no matter how desperate or difficult our present circumstances.
Our own Jesus prayers can take many forms. Sometimes they might sound like, “God help me, I am broke! Have mercy on me, a sinner.”
We are all equally loved by God, mortgage banker and deacon alike, rich man and poor.
Or, we might pray, “God thank you for this rain, this check that came in the mail, my health…”
We are all constantly loved, even in times of darkness, even though we separate ourselves from what Basil the Great called “The mad love of God.”
“God please help me because everything I do and say is wrong, it seems.”
We place ourselves at the bottom, away from God, wallowing in our erroneous comparisons with other people or our self-pity.
Or, our Jesus prayer might say, “God, please find me because I am lost.”
We place ourselves at the top, reveling in our latest victory or our good fortune, forgetting that we are there on the mountaintop by the grace of God.
“God help me to see you in the good times and the bad…” we might pray…
By our own doing, we divide ourselves into tribes, families, exclusive communities of faith, groupings that separate us from God and one another.
Maybe we pray this Jesus prayer, “God help us remember you are with us always no matter who we are or what we do or where we go.”
We are, in spite of what we come to believe about ourselves, as our Tibetan brother might have said last week, the light of God.
God be merciful to me, a sinner, Jesus teaches us to pray.
Seven simple words.

I am a big fan of two highly under-rated things: unstructured free time and long, meandering conversations.

This Summer, the summer before I plunge headfirst into the waters of Seminary and full-blown postulancy in the Episcopal Church, I have made an intentional effort to practice both with great regularity. Both of my girls are at camp right now, so my boy, wife and I have been a threesome since Saturday evening. Today, Aidan and I whiled away the morning, working hard at time-wasting activities like Legos Star Wars, the Video Game, Season 5 of The Simpsons and comic books. I hope I will always remember the image of my son, silhouetted by the emerging daylight in his pajama bottoms (not shirt!) with his sleepy grin he always wears as he creeps into the kitchen following his usualy 830 AM or so reveille's.

When I was growing up my home had a constant flow of overnight guests. During them summer, it was unusual not to have a family from out of town Mom and Dad knew from their Army days, choir members on a tour to our Church or some former exchange student friends staying in our house. Maybe it was because we lived on the lake or something or maybe it was our decidedly 70's split-level house with the private downstairs that made us and other people feel comfortable with visiting. One highlight of these visits were the hours-long conversations we would have with our friends that started in the dining room during the fantastic dinners my parents whipped up (chili, seafood chowder, burgers, fish fries, red beans and rice) and wound up in the living room.

I remember the ugly green faux Louis XIV couch placed against the long wall of the living room. Facing them were the other 4 "company chairs) that our guests usually sat upon while we talked about nothing and everything in particular. I recall listening to our friends from Turkey tell us all about this strange religion called Islam and inform us that "Esau" (our Jesus) was a great prophet. I recall Bozorg and Hussein, two Iranian students (I wonder where those dudes are now??) chain smoked Marlboro Reds (back in the day when one smoked indoors) and discussed their Economics degrees. Friends from church, the neighborhood, Atlanta and all over seemed to wind up in that living room after dinner and before we knew it someone would look at their watch and say, "Wow, 11:00, we have to get to bed" (or get going, if they were not staying).

This enormous house we live in was built during a stressful, adversity-ridden period of our lives- so much so that when we moved in, we did not want to live here. The antidote for the bad energy, karma, juju or whatever we felt filled this place upon our arrival, has been filling the house with friends and long, meandering conversation. Last weekend, we had a friend come over at about 3:00 and stay until 11:00. We had conversation the whole time with her about God, business, college, sobriety and what must have been a huge list of topics. I love the fact that our house is silent much of the time due to the fact that no TVs take residence here. Interesting people can come over and we can talk over good music, a couple of bottles of wine and silence. The bad spirits of the years we built this house are being crowded out, one by one, with each word uttered by guests finding comfort underneath our roof.

Make sure you make time to do nothing and to talk about whatever. Aggressively pursue boredom. Sit still long enough to remember that you are alive.

The Gospel of Gryffindor

Never mind the hystrionics of one of my fellow Georgians, I think Harry Potter has plenty of the Gospel (as in Good News) hidden within its mythology of magic and witchcraft. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was my favorite so far because it has a lot of challenging messages within it that are not inconsistent with my brand of Christianity. I liked the scene when Harry is fighting off the mind-control of Voldemort and Dumbledore says to him, "You are more unlike him than you are like him" and Harry winds up screaming to Voldemort, "I feel sorry for you! You'll never have what I have..." (which is love- real, selfless love). Hmmmmm... sound familiar?

John 15:13 "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." What saved Harry in the first book, as well as in this latest film installment, was nothing he did with his will, or his wizard skill. What saved Harry was his relationship with his friends and the self-sacrificial love that he practiced as a part of who he was. (Can we say "Holy Spirit" anyone??) "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is a great sermon. As Jesus once said , "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. (Matthew 12:50)

See, even liberal Christians can use proof texting to serve our ends. At least the end I am trying to reach here is that, in the end, love wins. Argue with that, my fundie friends!!!

I've been making my way through 2 books slowly- The Seeds of Heaven by Barbara Brown Taylor and Subversive Orthodoxy by Robert Inchausti. One theme that seems to be going on in my head lately is the idea "The Kingdom of God is like _____."

I like the passage in Matthew 13 when Jesus seems to be tossing metaphors around left and right to describe the kingdom of God. Sometimes his all over the place description can be frustrating because he never seems to nail it down into one tangible idea. "It is this, it is that it is treasure, it is mustard, it is leaven," he tells his friends.

Wow I have found that to be really powerful because lately I have found the Kingdom of God to be a little bit of this and that as well.

It is a dishwashing line and cooking asparagus for Rockell at Cafe 458.

It is hanging out with my children, reading them books and driving around Atlanta in my Mom-Mobile.

It is being with someone struggling with addiction, giving them over to God and sitting with them after their relapse.

It is all around us in everything we do, Jesus seems to be telling us. God's Kingdom is tiny, yet big.

So many people in our culture seem to think that God's Kingdom will be a big, magnificent, geo-political location. I couldn't disagree more. We are addicted to our own conceptions, molded by culture and personal history and ego needs, that God's Kingdom has to look and feel a certain way in order to be real or valid. God's Kingdom, Jesus seems to be telling us, is right under our silly noses. If we only stop looking far off in the distance for it we will see it , plain as day.

Generosity of Spirit

I just read a great book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer - "Life Together." Boenhoeffer was a part of the Confessing Church of Germany, a church that stood in opposition to the German Church who accepted and embraced National Socialism of Adolph Hitler during the 1930's and 40's. Before and during Hitler's rise to power, Boehnhoeffer was a pastor and a founder of a seminary at Finkenwalde. In the seminary, he began an intentional community ommunity called (and this is a translation) "The Brother's House." Life Together is a guide and rule for community and outlines some of the expectations, needs and requirements for healthy Christian Community.
One of the chapters that has gnawed at my mind is his chapter on Confession. One of the basics of confession that he asserts is that we must name our sins out loud to one another in order to begin healing the rift- the separation from God that the sins have caused. When I first read this, I had my basic Episcopalian aversion to this idea of Sin and confession, in that it seemed kind of severe. I pictured these harsh, uptight Calvinist types speaking German and sternly muttering their grievances and errors to one another.
Boenhoeffer believes, as do I now, that speaking our sins to one another in confession in order to seek forgiveness from God (first) and then one another, is of the utmost importance. Otherwise, as he puts it, we run the danger of just "praying to ourselves." Practically speaking, I have tried practicing this "speaking my sins" with my wife and life-partner first off before anyone else. I will admit right now that I do not do this as much as I can nor have I spoken all of them. In fact, if she ever reads this, my beloved bride will probably scoff and wonder when I EVER did this (but I know I did). I tried the experiment on my common sin of grumpiness (which, I have conjectured, translates into pride, but that is another entry). I said to her, " I was grumpy with you earlier and I should not have been and I am so sorry." Then, I took it to God and asked for forgiveness for being impatient and unkind and uncompassionate. This may sound like hooey, but I really felt forgiveness in a new way when I practiced this "Finkenwalde" form of confession.
Prayer is also about how we live, I have learned. I remember from my "Jesus Freak" days as a youth, I liked a singer named Keith Green who had this great song called "Make my Life a Prayer." It went like this

Make my life a prayer to You,

I want to do what you want me to,

No empty words and no white lies,

No token prayers, no compromise,

Using confession like DB tells us to in Life Together feels like life as prayer. I have noticed a ping-pong like pattern of prayer to life to prayer and it seems like we should move toward the two merging together. Prayer and life often seem isolated from one another. I crack open my Book of Common prayer once to twice a day on average, and many days (especially lately) it seems rote. The kids from our church went to Cayman Islands and did prayer 4 times a day. Most of them had an eye-rolling, "Oh it was something we had to do" attitude about it that I have often felt with my BCP, candle and early morning, solitary prayer service.
The isolation of the morning prayer alone, though, has moved me to unisolate it through things like the "Finkenwalde Confessional" (my term) of Bohnhoeffer. Both acts, in of themselves and alone, lead to empty stabs at piety. I sense a tension between the two, keep doing both of them, and this tension, I think, is God's voice.
It's like something else that occured to me today during the Eucharist I attended at a small church in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I noticed for the first time the words "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again." We spend so much time trying to rationally defend, describe, convenantize, and make tangible those three assumptions that run to the very heart of Christianity and we always, inevitably, fail in the attempt.
I laughed when it hit me that that is why they call it a mystery. We can't figure it out with our heads, can we? It runs beyond our reductive, science-clad, rationally equipped brains.
I don't know why confession like DB recommends works for me, moves the separating agent of Sin out of my life in a more complete way and allows God to fill the hole shaped like her with her love instead of my notions of what that should be. I love the "mysteries of faith", but I most of all love the fact that we are given the gift of forgiveness from God. We can pray the "token prayers" in order to be led to make our lives, how we spend our time and energy, prayers as well and do what God wants us to do instead of what we will.

There are Others Like Me!

I got this today and found it to be most enlightening. Media Matters, my favorite liberal attack dogs, put together this report Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media .

I get tired of people like the Pat Robertson and the clowns on TBN and Peter Akinola getting to be de facto spokespersons for Christians. They don't speak for me and this report certainly highlights how progressives and liberals such as myself have been left out in media coverage.

A Heartless B-Word

I heard this cool song on XM radio the other day- basically the lyrics were speaking out against opinionated record store employees. I guess they were addressing folks like the character Jack Black played in High Fidelity- people who find bad music offensive and a sign of a shallow soul and worthless life. The lyrics talked about how the record store kid knew nothing about him and had no room to judge him for buying the bad music. (What was he buying" I wondered?? Leo Sayre? Jimmy Buffett?? Sister Sledge??) Indeed, I am of the ranks of the music snobs- I have solidly refused to ever let musical crap cross the threshold of my home. The radio gets turned off if Dad, the musical Dictator, hears subpar tunage on the radio. I am arbiter of Music Taste here, like it or not. Luckily, I have indoctrinated my people well. No Britney.. No Justin... No Boy Bands (ever!!!) in my home. My kids are growing up with a good music pedigree, and I am to blame.

Like right now- I just downloaded what I consider to be one of the best records I have heard... ever.... (at least in the last couple of years). It is called "All This Time" by "Heartless Bastards" (not to be confused with James McMurtry's backup band The Heartless Bastards.. note the lack of the definite article here). I have a real yen for girl singers (Kasey Chambers, Lucinda, Cheri Knight, Chrissy Hynde..) and Erica really, well, to borrow an overused Rock and Roll phrase, kicks ass.

I played the cut "Into the Open" for my Twelve Year Old and she said she didn't like it. But, it pleased me to no end that she then piped up with "But I downloaded this cool Dandy Warhols Song" and she began to bang her head in the air, shaking her long, hippy-straight air in time with the song. Yes! I am an Alterna-Dad supreme!

Music is sacramental in our house. We listen to it to start up our day and end our evenings. We lack televisions (killed them a couple of years ago in a fit of self-righteous New Years Day Resolution making- that's another story) but regularly turn on the crappy stereo to listen to Satellite Radio and CDs and classical music (usually late at night).

Music contrary to my tastes is fundamentally offensive to me and subject to expulsion from my household due to the fact that I am the Daddy and the Musician in Residence who regularly gets up in public and makes music for others. I am the Musical king. I am the pre-Vatican II of musical doctrine for the Babuka Black Household. I am Cardinal Timmah defending the faith of music against the onslaught of commercial heresy. Cross me and you will face musical ex-communication and be forced to listen to your tunes forever on your headphones. Hear my inflexible, literal interpretation of musical belief and disobey at your peril.

Praise George, Paul, Ringo and John! Let Dylan Ring!

Great Post about TEC and "The Situation"

This might be kind of weird- posting a post that was in response to something on another blog. However, I did not know how to link to the post (it was on the comments on Father Jake Stops the World- a blog I read every day- sometimes twice a day).

This was from Harry in the comments section. I hope he forgives me for reposting it without his permission...

Having gays as scapegoats makes everything that is murky about American Christian life easier.

Everybody in America knows gays are everywhere. We have hit TV shows based on gay characters. We have constant revelations of gays in high and low places.

So, if we can pretend gays don't exist in our churches and base it on the idea of 'the one true orthodoxy' then we create a formula for dealing with everything else that is murky in our lives as Christians. If I say ridiculous things like, 'God Hates Fags' (from the extremists), to 'homosexuality is a choice' (from the slightly less extreme) to 'celibacy is an option' (from many Christians who know nothing about psychology or celibacy) to 'they can be cured if they ask Jesus to do so' (from those who have no idea what statistics on cures are and how dangerous they are for the individuals and their families)...if we can convince ourselves that the complex problem of homosexuality can be buried in blind faith, then the rest of it all becomes easy.

Witness the 70% figure for people who identify as Christian. Everyone who lives in this country knows that as time goes by fewer and fewer people go to church. I come from West Virginia mountain people, and I spent years as a farmer--so I'm not just talking about my arsty-fartsy intelligentsia Episcopalian friends! But, because we have a model for burying things--the gay model--we can bury the 'definition' of being Christian as easily.

One could make the argument that a 'yes' answer to the question 'are you Christian?' would be possible only if one answered yes to the following questions:

1. Do you actively feed the hungry?
2. Do you visit prisons?
3. Do you work to make sure people have places to sleep at night?

etc.

But these aren't the kinds of questions that matter when we start counting Christians. What matters is:

1. Are you Evangelical?
2. Where do you come down on the gay thing?

For Christ's sake, let's do the work and stop raising high the cross that's built of a million splinters over arguments that only mask the sloppiness of everyone's practice of Christian religion.

BY THE WAY--THE BIG GUY got really mad at King David for counting his troups, and I wonder if he likes it when we do....
Harry
__________________________________________________________

Nicely put, don't you think?

Tim Edits a Prayer Chain!!!

I got the following chain mail from someone. I have not confirmed if it is an Urban Legend or not. At first I thought it harmless enough, but it got me thinking. This prayer is subtly xenophobic.

ONE MINUTE EACH NIGHT

In WWII, there was an advisor to Churchill who organized a group of

People who dropped what they were doing every night

One minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people

And peace. There is now a group of people organizing the

Same thing here in America. If you would like to participate: Each evening at 9:00 PM Eastern Time

(8:00 PM Central) (6:00 PM Pacific), stop whatever you are doing and

Spend one minute praying for the safety of the United States, our

Troops, our citizens, and for a Godly nation. If you know anyone who

Would like participate, please pass this along.

Someone said if Christians really understood the full extent of the

Power we have available through prayer, we might be

Speechless. Our prayers are the most powerful asset we have.

Together, we "CAN" make a difference!


I offered the following edit and sent it out to the same email list that I was on.

ONE MINUTE EACH NIGHT

In WWII, there was an advisor to Churchill who organized a group of

People who dropped what they were doing every night

One minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people

And peace. There is now a group of people organizing the

Same thing here in America. We have the opportunity, however, to
remember all people in prayer and not just the people of our nation.

If you would like to participate: Each evening at 9:00 PM Eastern Time

(8:00 PM Central) (6:00 PM Pacific), stop whatever you are doing and

Spend one minute praying for the safety of all of the people everywhere,
for the cessation of all conflict , the citizens of all nations, and for a world at peace. If you know anyone who would like participate, please pass this along.

Someone said if people of all faiths really understood the full extent of the

Power we have available through prayer, we might be Speechless. Our prayers are the most powerful asset we have. Together, we "CAN" make a difference!

____________________________________

OK- so I get the sentiment of it and am sure that whoever sent this meant well.

However, as a Christian, I think I am called to pray for all people everywhere. My sister's church, First Baptist Chickamaugua, GA has a great slogan "Everybody Matters." If God's grace is real, then God loves all people - even people who might hate us and want us to die. That's a hard thing to swallow. Anne Lamott made the remark in one of her books (I think it was "Plan B") that God does not "have the same taste in people as we do."

Time Out World

We listen to XM Kids on the satellite radio every morning during our short commute to school. Many of the songs I find insufferable and often will insist that we switch over to X-Country or XMU. Any song with Elmo or any of the "Crazy Frog" tunes will necessitate a rapid channel change.

There's one song that I heard recently that I wish they would play on the radio. It's probably one of the best anti-war songs I have ever heard and the first "message intensive" kid's song I have heard in a while. Time Out World by The Sippy Cups says that we need a "Time Out World."

Many days when I hear the news, I wish that I had a huge loudspeaker I could get on and yell to everyone on earth "OK, let's just all chill the hell out... Time-out everyone. No hitting or yelling or (especially) shooting at each other." Put us all in opposite corners until we apologize to each other and admit our mistakes. Ground us all from our TV's and Ferraris and SUV's and Merlot until we are really sorry for hurting each other.

Time-out world. I'd like to live there.

Orthodoxy for Liberal Christians

I've been reading a book by Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Common Prayer on Common Ground- A Vision of Anglican Orthodoxy, so far, has been pretty engaging and enlightening. I like that Fr. Jones has not fallen into the common trap of associating "orthodox" with "fundamentalist." In fact, he argues quite well in his book, especially in a chapter called "Fundamentalism and Scientism, a Plague on Both Their Houses," that overlying on rationality is just as "fundamentalist" as believing in biblical inerrancy. Both "houses," he contends, have an overeliance on a type of empiricism that destroys any need for mystery, contradiction and tension that is a natural part of this life.

I like this quote from Archbishop Peter Carnley that deals with the idea that Christianity is, at its heart, supposed to be a Theology of "transcendant mystery":

"Others of us, in contrast, appreciate the Word of God not so much as a body of information, but as a form of questioning of the inner motives of our hearts, or as an invitation to relate with God, who ultimately remains essentially an unfathomable mystery to us, and as a Word of promist to be with us always as we wrestle to discern his truth for the living of our lives."

I also like the idea he espouses that there are fundamentalists on the right and left and what marks one a fundamentalist is that they believe so fervently in their "fundamentals" that they do not listen to one another or even want to be at the same table.

I think what he is driving at is that Anglicanism, at its best, (especially through the liturgy of Eucharist) strives to create a "table" where people who disagree vehemently about practical issues (Gay priesthood, evolution, biblical inerrancy) can sit down together.

I like this image. Even if we are all sitting at opposite ends of the table, at least we are at the same table. We can't get "food" without asking someone to pass it to us (or at least salt or dessert??)

This is the first book about the whole divide in Anglicanism right now that makes any sense. If you are of the Anglican persuasion, you should read it.

Renewed Interest In Blogging

Hey- if you are from Atlanta, be the first person to email me and I will personally buy you the beverage of your choice at my favorite drinking establishment, The Euclid Avenue Yacht Club.
Or, if you don't like to drink, some coffee at Inman Perk.

I guess I decided to start publishing some stuff that I have written over the year during a discernment period I entered for the Priesthood through The Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta.
I'm not going to publish stuff that I wrote for the group that I was in- a lot of that was not for anyone else's eyes. But, hey, I got a lot of other stuff.

Anyway, God Bless you for giving a minute to read this blog...

Diagnosing Huckleberry

Diagnosing Huck

We've been reading Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn over the past couple of months. We are nearing the end of our work with the book. The experience has been most gratifying because this novel remains my favorite book of all time. Every time I get to read it with a student I learn something new and find another level of understanding about the “moral” that is not supposed to be in the book.

Huckleberry Finn is a boy who is rough around the edges. He lives in a mud shack in the woods. He’s a child of an abusive, alcoholic parent. He smokes, curses and never wears shoes. Huck, in spite of all the romantic treatments he receives in Hollywood, is probably someone we would turn and walk away from if we bumped into him in downtown Atlanta. He’s barely literate and, for the most part, and lives by street smarts and innate wisdom.

We tried to figure out what the modern world would make of Huck. He certainly would have received some kind of diagnosis and had a hard time adjusting to the confines of polite society. Would we of the 21st century see beyond the dirty, pipe-smoking exterior enough to realize that inside this young boy beats the heart of a hero? Would anyone recognize his unbending faithfulness to his friends and his unerring kindness?

It occurred to me that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Community School have a lot in common. Jim and Huck find peace while floating on their raft and are at odds with the world around them whenever they have to go ashore. Whenever our students go “ashore” or spend time in conflict with one another or the world around them, we help them negotiate each problem they encounter. During the time they spend with us, we get glimpses of great wisdom that they have absorbed in spite of (or perhaps because of) their difficulties.

We seek to be a raft for our students. We try to create space and time for them to relax, put their toes into the mighty river of learning and float. Whenever their raft is intruded upon by the various neurological enemies that decide to travel along with them, tricking them into doing things that are not typical of who they really are, we are there to escort the Duke and Dauphin ashore or at least encourage conversation with the riders. Sometimes, of course, life- the river- gets filled with whitecaps from storms- family conflict, death, bullying,etc.- and they crash. No one here drowns, though, because if we are not on the raft with them, we are close behind watching them pilot through the rapids until they tire out.

Rival Siblings

I had to write this for a devotional for Lent. I'm also going to post some other stuff I have written during discernment for the Priesthood that is relevant and appropriate. Sorry i have not posted in a while, it's not like anyone actually reads this anyway.


“…Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” Luke 15:29-30

After working himself to the bone saving the family farm, he sits in the shadows, hurling curses toward the party they are throwing for his ridiculous brother. At the fringes of the celebration, he silently wishes his younger, returned brother would go back to his place in the pig sties.
The Older Brother is our source of lamentation in the story after a pleasant reunion scene and party complete with fatted calf, gold rings and music. What has given rise to the anger and bitterness he feels for his lost brother and his welcoming Father? During this time of joy, reunion and resurrection, all he sees is how unappreciated and undervalued he is in the family. He feels ignored by his Father in spite of his choice to stay home and do the right thing. He believes his righteousness and hard work are trivialized and ignored as a result of the celebration his Father is giving for the returned brother.
How many times have we have separated ourselves from the Family of God as rival siblings? How do we keep ourselves apart from God, our loving Parent, who desperately wants us to join in the celebration of grace set before us? The Kingdom of God remains fractured many times because