HouseHusbandry

Seeing and Hearing

2011-04-03T11:31:00.003-04:00

OK I have not posted on here in nearly a year... Kind of busy with the New Priest thing.

I preached this sermon on John 9:1-41.

Our gospel today is about a man who could see because he could hear. Healed, through what must have seemed to him to be a really strange ritual. As wonderful as it was for him, it had to be bizarre when this itinerant Rabbi, (this “Yeshua”) rubbed mud on his eyes and told him to go wash himself in holy water.

I am sure that this formerly blind man found it even more bizarre
that no one would believe what happened. Even though they had eyes that worked and that witnessed everything. He was a a man who showed an entire community their own blindness. Showed them all that they did not see because they could not hear.

I grew up with a person who taught us all how to hear and see. My friend Mark Dowdy could see in some amazing ways because he could hear, even though he was blind. I first met him When I was 13 years old. I had agreed, as a long-term Eagle Scout Project, to be his guide, and counselor and friend. I escorted him about the scout cabin. I taught him how to build a fire and put on his uniform and cook scrambled eggs over a fire. And yes, we even made this blind boy dig latrines. Later on, I drove him around.

(And incidentally, I did not teach him how to drive, though one of our friends did. When he got pulled over by the State Patrol the man asked for his license. Mark said, “Sir I don’t have one.” The trooper asked him, “Why?” Mark said, “Because I am blind!” I think they dropped the charges…)

I recorded things for him to read and taught him the Scout Oath and Law and generally helped him to be a good Boy Scout and became his friend in the process.

One of the first things he taught me to see was that he was not helpless. He hated it when people grabbed his arm and tried to guide him around. “I… Will hold your arm” he would tell folks who tried to help him. We learned how well he could see because he could hear. He taught me how to understand people with disabilities in ways I never would have known. Up until I knew him I was not friends with anyone with any kind of disability. We did not have a lot of that in the mostly middle class, white, over-achieving suburban enclave we lived in around the lake.

His first year at Scout Camp, the rifle instructor wanted to give him a chance to shoot.
He’d never shot a gun before. He rigged a bell behind a target on the rifle range. He connected a string to the bell and ran the string through an eyehook to behind where Mark was shooting. We would ring the bell And Mark would fire at it I remember that afternoon thinking that this was a waste of time and that I was angry this was cutting in to my swim time. He’d never get close, we knew.

Mark lined up the rifle and shot once toward the bell, and was slightly to the left of the target. He shot again and hit the outer rings of the target. On the third shot I felt the string jerk a little right after Mark shot. We put the rifle down and went out.He had put a bullet right through the center of the bell. Mark could “see” the target and “see” the bell that was hidden right behind the target. He could see because he could hear, and we had evidence to back it up!
Even though they could see and touch the evidence and even though the healed man walked among them. Nobody could believe it. He goes back to his parents-
“That man healed me….”
“What? Impossible!” they say… “Go to the Priest,” they tell him, “This does not happen…” He goes to the priests and pleads, “But he healed me..”
The Priests reply, “He’s no healer… no prophet… he can’t even obey rules..”
They cannot see him… even though he stands right in front of them.
“But he healed me…but but I can see!” the blind man keeps pleading.
The Priests will have none of it, “You are born of sin.. yet you teach us? ” they tell him…”Get out of town….”
They see nothing because they cannot hear him.

Our hero heads out of town, probably to the next village where he can start anew. Cast out from his friends and family because he saw and heard. On his way to the next town, he sees a group of men walking along. They seem strangely familiar to him. But he’s never seen them before with his new eyes and his brain and eyes do not connect.
The one that seems to be the leader stops him and asks him what had to be a question from left field-

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
The man stutters a reply, saying, “Who is he, where is he so I can see him now..” Staring Jesus in the face ……yet he does not recognize him until Jesus speaks, saying, “You have seen him… the one speaking with you is he…”

The blind man hears and then sees because he remembers Jesus’ voice. His brain probably not trained to recognize Jesus’ face. Funny how John caught a really interesting neurological fact. That a newly healed person who was blind will take a while before his eyes and brain will connect and be able to take in the amazing array of data it requires to recognize a face. Even the newly sighted must hear in order to see.

Years later I saw Mark at a Boy Scout reunion. We got our Eagle Scouts together about 2 years after he joined the troop. My friend had been healed, I had heard, through the miracle of ophthalmological surgery and could see, with the help of very thick glasses. I walked over and stood in front of him and held out my hand. He did not have any idea who I was until I said, “Mark, it’s Tim.” And immediately he recognized me. Hearing my voice, he knew who I was.

We are called today to learn how to see and hear. We are called to connect our eyes with our hearts and souls. We are called to listen for and hear Jesus’ voice so we too can recognize his face in every person and see him in all places and situations and times.

We are called to hear and see, so we can, many of us, finally open our eyes for the first time.

New sermons online!

2010-06-30T13:00:00.002-04:00

For those of you who were there, and some who weren't, who would like to hear my sermon from Tabernacle Baptist Church on 6.27.10, I just posted it on my podbean site. It will also be up on itunes as soon as it works through the system. (I have no idea how long that will take). Preaching at Tabernacle was fun-- the Baptists are big fans of preaching, and I felt under a lot of pressure. The preparation for this one was kind of amazing. It is interesting how the prep process for sermons is usually more of an experience for me than the actual preaching. So many interesting things happened to me that week. I'll write more, later. Meanwhile, thanks to the kind and generous folks of Tabernacle their warmth and for listening.

Church Monuments

2010-05-13T09:08:00.004-04:00

If you have never read any George Herbert, I commend him to you today. (Especially you Anglican types out there). I am a big fan of poetry. Lately I have been looking at George Herbert and some Billy Collins as well. (Not that they belong in the same breath... but I think Billy Collins has produced some beautiful poetry lately).

George Herbert was an Anglican Priest, and he took up holy orders late in life (kind of like me). He left a rock star life as a scholar and politician to become a parish priest in a small town near Salisbury, England. He was known as a kind and compassionate pastor providing comfort for the sick, food for the hungry and a love for the sacraments. I think he ought to be the patron saint of second career clergy.

A couple of spots in this poem that are worth noting:

I like this line:
"That flesh is but the glass which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust."

I like how he juxtaposes the image of an hourglass on to the image of human flesh being "glass which holds the dust..." I can picture him going to his old Parish church and praying by himself in a pew, looking around at all the dust covering the ancient structure.

I also enjoy how he captures the moment of being still- doing what the Buddhists call "stopping." He seems to be "stopped" thoroughly in the moment of prayer, taking in what surrounds him in the moment.

Enjoy!

Church Monuments- George Herbert

While that my soul repairs to her devotion,
Here I intomb my flesh, that it betimes
May take acquaintance of this heap of dust;
To which the blast of death's incessant motion,
Fed with the exhalation of our crimes,
Drives all at last. Therefore I gladly trust

My body to this school, that it may learn
To spell his elements, and find his birth
Written in dusty heraldry and lines;
Which dissolution sure doth best discern,
Comparing dust with dust, and earth with earth.
These laugh at jet and marble put for signs,

To sever the good fellowship of dust,
And spoil the meeting. What shall point out them,
When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat
To kiss those heaps, which now they have in trust?
Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem
And true descent, that when thou shalt grow fat

And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know
That flesh is but the glass which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust. Mark, here below
How tame these ashes are, how free from lust,
That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.

On My Way

2010-04-28T09:05:00.003-04:00

I have a song stuck in my head. This happens to me on many a day, because I think in song lyrics. Perhaps I inherited this habit from my Mom, who, at the drop of a hat, would take any opportunity to sing song lyrics that she was reminded of in the moment.
Someone would say, "I saw her face..."
And Mom would sing, "The first time... ever I saw your face..."
Or you might say, "It's a beautiful morning..."
And then she would sing, "Its a beautiful morning..."
You get the idea.

Today I have a Simon and Garfunkel song stuck in my head. Luckily, it is one of the happy ones. I keep hearing, "I'm on my way.... don't know where I'm going... I'm on way...Taking my time but I don't know where..."

Strange. At the same time, though, not so strange. Here I am, on the cusp of finishing 3 years of intense study, discernment and work as a seminarian, and I feel as if I am scratching the surface of what I need to know to work as a member of the Episcopal clergy. I am no expert or master of the divine. (I find that degree ironic in its implications. As if anyone could master divinity-- or would want to, for that matter). However, I am on my way. Being on my way feels good, too.

More than anything, I am struck how public ministry is a collaboration with God. The more I "work" to be "good" at this stuff relying simply on my own hutspah and drive, the more frustrated I get. The more I worry about the next job interview, the next day, or the next sermon I preach, the less I progress. However, the more I engage God with prayer, silence, remembering to breath in and out, praying centering prayer, and simply saying, at times, "your will be done..." (whatever that means), the more I seem to move along.

Am I worried about finding a job? Yes, I am. Do I want you to hire me as your priest? Definitely, I do. Do I need some source of income and a place to exercise my public, ordained ministry? I do indeed. However, the more I remember to continue "scratching the surface" in a life of collaboration with God, the further along I move "on my way."

Tim LaHaye- Fish in a Barrel

2009-02-10T12:37:00.004-05:00

OK, I hate to pick on Tim LaHaye. He's living proof of the old axiom "If he's so dumb, how come he's so rich?" Yes, his series Left Behind has been an international phenomena.Yes, he's got more money than most of us right now... Yes, he got Kirk Cameron to come out of retirement. Yes, he has really wicked looking plastic surgery. Yes, I have spent hours of my life watching him on TV.

However, this stuff he purports as "biblically-based" is a bunch of, well, sensationalistic, isogetical, poop, and he's pumped lots of money out of people's fears. He's turned God and a beautiful book of poetry (Revelation) and made it an entertainment franchise. He seems awfully sure about what's going to happen (and has the color flowcharts to prove it!)

This probably is too easy-- like shooting fish in a barrel, but what the hey--

He wins "Religious Nutjob site of the Day." I must honor his nuttiness. It is epic.

Religious Nutjob Site of the Day-- February 5, 2009

2009-02-05T15:41:00.002-05:00

Left Behind Dog Tags!

If you get raptured, how are you going to let people know that you were taken (and they were left behind?)

These folks have a great solution to this problem-- Were U Left Dog Tags.

The site reads:

If you have been directed here by a set of dog tags you found, one of two things is true.

Either the person to whom the dog tags belonged lost them or the person to whom the dog tags belonged has been raptured (caught away) by Christ, with His church. If there are many folks missing then the latter is most likely true and you, like the dog tags, have been left behind. This site is intended, in either case, to offer you hope and to give information on what you might expect next.

This is really creative Evangelism! Let's say you're hanging out with your buddy, you "turn around, he's gone" just like the song says, and you find these dogtags. You can come here and it will give you instructions on what to do next.

Kind of like medicalert bracelets for the saved.

New Feature

2009-02-02T22:31:00.002-05:00

I am starting a new feature that will somehow fill the void that not having a TV has left me (especially late at night when I used to watch religious programming).

It is called "Religious Nutjob Site of the Day"

We begin with a dandy-- Rapture Ready.

A full-service, pre-tribulation website! You can leave left behind letters to your unsaved loved ones. (I wonder if I have any. I know they probably take a dim view of us Whiskeypalians).

It also has a top ten feature listing the ten most alarming modern events that are pointing to the rapture!

You can get entertaining wallpaper for your computer or look at their 10 most likely candidates for the antichrist. (Hey, President Obama looks really good in Renaissance versions of Middle Eastern clothing! I'd bet Jesus actually looked more like him than he does the white dudes with beards we see in Sunday School rooms!)

This site is fantastic. Read it and get ready.

(I just hope that I'm not driving my heathen 14 year old around when it comes or cooking eggs!! Oh Lawd!!!!)

Evaluation-- Forgiveness- Light

2008-12-11T20:05:00.003-05:00

One of the ever-present realities of this journey toward Priesthood that I am on is that I feel like I am constantly being evaluated. And I suppose that I am because I am in school right now and I have lots of stuff to do that people with lots of letters next to their names are going to get to evaluate. I think that evaluation is a real struggle for me. You wouldn't know it from the look of things sometimes (because I am kind of a slacker when it comes down to it sometimes) but I am pretty hard on myself. I am much harder and less forgiving to myself than I am to others and they are to me, in fact.

I am probably not alone in this, though. Get a room full of people- especially Pastors and pastor wannabes like me, and you will probably find people who have fairly high standards for themselves most of the time. You will probably find people who care deeply about others and genuinely feel other people's pain and are comfortable with descending into the abyss with others to bring hope. Good, kind, compassionate folks line the halls of Candler Seminary- some of the greatest human beings this world has to offer, truly. But what I have come to realize about myself this Advent season is that I am really tough on myself. And I feel bad that others are probably the same way.

I think that this is kind of a sin, though. Not to compound things and make anyone feel worse- but if you look at sin as something that "separates" us from God, then when we are too hard on ourselves, we are calling bullshit on God's grace. We are hedging God's forgiveness. "I know you forgave me God, but I still feel horrible..." we seem to say. As a wise man told me recently, we have a God who forgives everything..... period.... So, we should do the same for ourselves, since our creator has done it already... Easier said than done.

The same wise man recalled Martin Luther for me and how his confessor, Van Staupitz, said to him once, "Martin you are wrong-- God is not mad at you!!!" Even Martin Luther had a hard time with forgiving himself.

This Advent, good people, I pray for all of us the grace to forgive ourselves, give ourselves a big fat hairy break and the room to bask in the forgiving grace of God. Let us chip away at our darkness this Advent so when the light of Christ comes on Christmas, we can soak it in and share it with everyone else as truly forgiven people. The good news is that God has done the work through Jesus. We just have to believe it for ourselves.

For Faith, Risk Everything-June Johnson

2008-12-04T21:46:00.002-05:00

Advent gets short shrift in Christendom. Another reason I'm a fan of The Episcopal Church is that we try a little harder at paying attention to Advent in preparation for Christmas.

One of my classmates, June Johnson- a most lovely, engaging, and extremely gifted lady who is a Postulant from The Diocese of Georgia- did this sermon for Wednesday Night Eucharist at Candler. It really spoke to me, so I asked her if I could post it here. I hope someone reads it on this blog.

For God Risk Everything…

Christ has died

Christ is risen

Christ will come again

CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN!!!!

Each Sunday as we prepare to celebrate the Eucharist we affirm these mysteries of our faith – that Christ died for us, that Christ conquered death and that Christ will come again into our world. We say these things because the truth expressed is at the very core of our faith. Our readings today help us to understand what we affirm in these words.

Isaiah asks that God tear open the heavens and come down to earth – God did just that when Jesus came to us in flesh just like ours and offered Himself as a Sacrifice for our redemption. The greatness of God humbled and contained in the flesh of men and women – God proving to us that we are loved so deeply that God chose to become like us.

Jesus in the flesh who contained all of the power and mercy of God and all of the sin and helplessness and aspirations to goodness of humanity – revealing to us the way of reconciliation and eternal life.

In our Gospel reading we hear Jesus teaching the disciples that they must stay awake and alert – that the Son of Man would return to the earth with great power and glory – rending once again the heavens and sweeping away all darkness and fear, gathering the beloved children of God into eternal life. Jesus speaks of the sun being darkened and the stars falling out of the sky.

I must admit to you that I have never been a great fan of apocalyptic writings, even the book of Revelation. The “Left Behind” series will never appear on my reading list! In part, this is because it seems to me that half the horror books and movies take the images of “end times” in the Scripture and present them in blood-drenched, squirm-inducing, fang-flashing prose or pictures. Not my favorite way to spend “entertainment” time! More than that, these books and movies always miss the point.

We are not given these images the second coming to frighten us – we are told these things so that we will be assured of God’s love and power to save us. We are promised not just that we are saved from sin and evil – a glorious mercy in itself – but that we are saved to be with God in life everlasting AND that God will come again to bring us into eternal light with God’s own being, with Jesus Christ the Lord.

Advent reminds us that God fulfills the promises that God has made in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Our life everlasting with God is here and now as we love and serve Jesus and will continue throughout eternity because God holds us in God’s heart.

Advent calls on us to live everyday not as if it is our last,

but as if it is the last day before the Lord returns --

our last chance to mend our relationships and

heal the hurts we have caused others

our last down in service to others in Christ’s name

our last at bat to confess our sins and open ourselves to forgiveness

the final putt to good stewardship of our wealth and possessions

the final chorus of our praise and worship of the one true God.

Advent reminds us that we have forever with God, but not forever here on earth to work for justice, for the welfare of those in need, for peace with our enemies. There will be an end to this world and our time in it. There will come a moment when we face all of our words and deeds in the clear light of God’s judgment. We will be able to offer to God only what we have done in Jesus’s name – not what we intended to do or would have done if only…

Advent calls us to sit on the very edge of time and see what has been,

what is and what will be all coming together. To reflect on the power of a God who came into our world loving us enough to put the fullness of God into the life of Jesus. To reflect on the power and love of a God who comes to live inside our hearts and minds in the form of the Holy Spirit and never, ever leaves us, who knits us to Christ Jesus by threads that will never become loosened. God sought us, God seeks us and God will never let us go from God’s self. What have we to fear?

We have to fear our own smallness, our inability to lift our eyes to the magnificence of the glory of God. We must fear our indifference to the gifts of God, our restrictions on the blessings we are willing to receive, our inattention to the work of God in us and around us. Our refusal to stand at the heart of Advent and to see the promise of what will be in the promise of what has been.

The poet Thomas Troeger writes these words:

For God risk everything!

since everything we own,

our laughter, tears, the songs we sing,

our breath, our flesh and bone,

are no more ours to keep

than the wind that rushes by

or dreams that flicker in our sleep

or clouds that fade to sky.

How shriveled, Lord, the soul

that grips what it receives

and dares not free its anxious hold

but foolishly believes

that you are too severe

to pardon any loss,

forgetting how your son made clear

forgiveness on the cross.

From hearts that hide and hoard

the treasures that you send,

free us, till we by faith, O Lord,

shall act as you intend,

till we risk all for you,

risk everything you give,

and risking learn what Jesus knew:

by risking all we live.

-Troeger, #45, Above the Moon Earth Rises

Oxford University Press, 2002

Advent calls us to risk everything on the future with God. Everything!

Are you ready to do that?

Our Song

2008-11-07T09:08:00.002-05:00

I preached this last Summer at the Feast of the Virgin Mary Holy Eucharist at the UGA Episcopal Center. I had a really great time there and enjoyed hanging out with Fr. Dann Brown and the Epsicopal students.

This is the first pilgrimage I have made to your blessed city for Church. Most of my life, I have come here for music- but now I get to come and talk about music of a different sort-the Magnificat, or the Song of Mary.

It’s fitting that I get to preach about a song in Athens. Athens is a city where many songs that have been a part of my life have been created.

Play any REM song off their first 4 or 5 album-
you are listening to the soundtrack for my first two years of college.

Play any song off of “Fables of the Reconstruction,” in particular (and my sentimental favorite of REM albums) and you’ll hear songs with strong musical memories that are tagged with North Georgia, in particular.

There’s an old song they did called “Driver 8” that I think is my song every time I hear it. It seems like Michael Stipe and company wrote that song for me because

Every time I hear that song I think about, well,
driving to Athens. I see the long stretch of road between Gainesville and Athens. When Michael Stipe sings, “The power lines have floaters so the airplanes don’t get snagged..”

I see those giant orange balls on the power lines on the side of the road through Arcade and Pendegrass. Whenever I see those floaters on the power lines, wherever I am, I sing that line from driver 8.
I’ve incorporated the song into my life—it is my song.

There are hundreds of other songs that are incorporated into my life and I am sure yours as well. We could spend all night talking about this- listing them:

Any song by Journey takes me back to any day of my freshman year of high school.

Any song off of Who’s Next or Quadrophenia makes me remember riding around with my High School buddy and tennis partner John Carter in his green 1974 Gran Torino.

Any song by The Police and I think about my best friend from growing up, Scott Adams.

Any hymn in the Baptist Hymnal and I flash the red carpet and humongous chandeliers of First Baptist Gainesville, where I grew up. I remember the boredom of half-hour long sermons and give thanks that I found the Episcopal Church…

The Mozart Alleluia always makes me remember my wedding day because our friend Sharon Blackwood sang it for us.

The folk song “Turn Around” (sing a few lines) guarantees tears from my Mom, wife (or any mother over the age of 30 with children, for that matter.

Our songs remind us of things that are true for us – They help me remember our lives— help us remember where we have been no matter where we happen to be at the moment…

My kids all have songs that are “their songs…” these songs happened to playing in the room while they were, of all things, being born.

Our oldest, Madeline was born to one called “Galileo” by the Indigo Girls.
It’s really weird, But this song is about the difficulties of believing in reincarnation. The singer asks, “How long till my soul gets it right??” I like to think that my daughter feels like her soul has finally gotten it “right” this time around…
Every time I hear it, I think about the moment she was born, which was one of the happiest days of my life. When I hear “Galileo” I often ask the question—how long until our souls get it “right.” What is it that our souls need- what song do we need to get it “right??”

The Gospel Writer gives us what is known as The Magnificat to sum up who he thinks God really us and to help us remember who we really are. He gives us The Magnificat to, maybe, in the words of Amy Ray, help us “get it right.” Luke was pretty sharp in how he took language from the old testament- took a religious Pop song the greek-speaking Jewish people of the day knew and turned it on its head- made it about this new way that Jesus was going to show us.
He gave us a song with notions of God that were entirely different from what people might have thought about God then- from what we think about God now!

Luke hammers home some radically different assumptions about this savior, Jesus.

The Magnificat is kind of ironic, though-a song of hope in spite of the fact that any girl in Mary’s day would, under normal circumstances, be pretty hopeless in her predicament. It’s an anthem of God’s truth and greatness with words we might have heard from a warrior- from a psalmist- from someone of import but yet it is delivered by a nobody. Mary is a kid- some think around 13 years old, an unwed mother to be. She has no immediate prospects for marriage at the moment- she has no reason to believe that Joseph is going to be a good guy and father this child that is not his. She is one of “the lowly”- what they called the anawim in the ancient Hebrew culture Anawim were often looked upon by their community as people who had lost favor with God. Their songs were unheard by the larger community- they were discounted and left for dead by the culture- pariahs. The anawim were the undocumented Mexican laborer of their day, the Federal Prison Inmate, the people I see lining up at the food stamp distribution center downtown- the man who bathes in red mud every morning in my neighborhood, they were those people…

Yet she sings of favor! She rejoices that she is the one to bring Jesus to this world-
This lowly nobody! The mother of Christ!

The Magnificat is no soft, sweet lullaby.

It’s song of revolution and upheaval and change.

Mary’s voice is a voice that we must heed if we are to build God’s kingdom, Luke is telling us. This anawim voice is a voice that tells us who we really are and who we can be.

Our culture today, not unlike the culture Mary was in, is inundated with voices. People have always been oversaturated with white noise from authorities who are all convinced that they know who we are and what we need.

Bob Dylan once sang, “Come gather round people wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around your head grown and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone.. Oh the times, they are a changing..” Mary’s voice brings us a new song that tells us that times then, indeed, were changing- would keep changing, with the arrival of this Jesus.

A song …that, like all good songs from Dylan and others, calls us to see a world drastically different from the one we know . We are called, with this song, to give this life a different soundtrack. A soundtrack that is radically different from the one that is convinced that some basic, dog eat dog assumptions about the world are true-

It is a song that is as revolutionary as any protest song every penned by Dylan and as full of upheaval. This little girl sings to us that the coming savior will turn the world upside down.
I like what a favorite preacher of mine, Fred Craddock, says- he says Mary’s song has within it not one, but 3 revolutions- that are spiritual, social and economic…
-Spiritual in that God is a God who scatters the proud in the plans of their hearts….
Christianity is the death of pride. With Jesus, we have the freedom to push our needs aside, our wants aside and make room for others through the grace of God. We can look beyond politics NS beyond religion and beyond all the things that we perceive are so important and realize that , in the end, we all need one another and we need God.

Social in that He casts down the mighty and exalts the Humble- a social revolution for us all—Christ, we realize when we really hear this song, died for all humanity.
What Christ did was for everyone so, everyone, in the end, matters. The implications of this are mind-boggling…

Economic, in that “he has filled those who are hungry – those who are rich he has sent away empty..” is, and this is really hard for all us.. economic.. Christ calls us who have to “get so we can give away…” This is a hard one for us, but true.

Making the song of Mary our song is a terrifying leap of faith, isn’t it?
Suddenly, we have a new notion of the messiah that runs counter to everything we are lead to believe about this life from our surrounding culture-Runs counter to our instincts for survival and success.
But, We must seek ways to sing The Magnificat..

Let us challenge assumptions (like the ones we will surely be hammered with in the impending election ) that will galvanize us all into red and blue and (unfortunately) good and evil. Challenge assumptions that make us forget that we are all children of God. Challenge assumptions that make us want more without giving any.

The Magnificat gives us a new soundtrack for our lives that can remind us constantly that we are (and I mean all of us) are and always will be children of God.

The voice that God will give us in the coming days of Advent and Christmas will bring this song to life…

May we remember its sweet melody in the coming year.

And Make the Magnificat our song.

Theologian Inspired Shots

2008-10-30T00:07:00.004-04:00

Some ideas for drink recipes

the schleiermacher

1 ounce of jagermeister, chilled
one ounce of pepper vodka, chilled
drink it and dont pray to God to make the taste or burn go away

the bishop of wittenberg

1 glass of german beer
1 shot of goldschlager

drop goldschlager in beer and drink quickly and enjoy the gold part

the calvin

From Fire Insurance to Blessed Assurance

2008-10-30T00:07:00.001-04:00

From “Fire Insurance” to “Blessed Assurance” – A Shared History
In his book “How Then Shall We Live,” Wayne Muller talks about the importance of knowing who we are. He says, “Many spiritual traditions begin with a single question: Who am I?” I have asked myself this question many times during my life but have asked it even more at seminary. And, I have wondered many times , “Who is the Episcopal Church?” Like many people, I had little previous understanding of who began The Episcopal Church. The Church as I knew it seemed to be kind of foreign and impersonal. I could not and did not think of the church in a personal way and know who “she” was.
In John, Jesus talks about the “church as the bride of Christ. ” This imagery always bothered me with all of its sexual connotations and patriarchal language. But I understand now that John’s Jesus was thinking of The Church as a living being with whom we are all in relation. I think I have had a hard time seeing the church as a living being. However, my introduction to the history of our church has lead me to understand her in a more personal way and to identify with her better. I am learning her story and starting to find points with which I can identify with the church as a living creation and know who she is and also know better who I am as well.
One of the most interesting experiences that I have had reading Prichard’s “History of the Episcopal Church” is that I am constantly comforted in the fact that some chapters of the story of the Episcopal Church seems to be my story in many ways. Like most members of the human race, I tend to search for commonalities between myself and other people in order to establish connections with them and build a relationship. I see tensions that have existed in the church and I recognize these same tensions in my own life.
In particular, I was especially touched by the fact that within our own church we have had an historic tension between people who are aligned with “covenantal” theology and people whose theology is more of what Pritchett calls “conversion oriented. Learning these things about The Episcopal Church’s story has been a bit like getting to know someone and then feeling as if we have been friends for a long time. I find a reflection of my own struggles to reconcile who I am today with who I once was. I read in the history a story that is fairly parallel to my own in some ways.
I became Episcopalian about 13 years ago when I was 29 years old. Up until then, I had spent most of my life in the Southern Baptist Church. I grew up with a “confessional” theology that centered on conversion and avoiding Hell and recruiting others to my brand of Christianity. Little did I know that these same tensions existed in The Episcopal Church between more “evangelical” priests and believers whose theologies were “conversion” based. I was surprised when I read the following lines in a sermon by Rev. Whitefield, who preached wrote and taught in The Episcopal Church back around 1740 that had him saying to the congregation, “Now, my dear friends, did God ever show to you that you have no faith? Were you ever made to bewail a hard heart of unbelief?” This sermon sounded like ones that I heard growing up in the Baptist Church.
I was genuinely surprised that there were Anglicans who had appealed to emotion in their preaching and teaching in order to “convert” people. Prichard describes it well in his “History.” He describes “sentimentalist” approaches to theology, saying, “It was not enough to understand the basic Reformation doctrine of justification by faith; one had to ‘feel’ that doctrine on a personal level”. Now I am all for appealing to emotion in church teaching sometimes, but one of the things that I found in common with my story is that I grew up in a tradition that made regular, if not weekly, appeals using this kind of approach that asked believers to “feel” doctrine. Every service in the Baptist Church ended with urgent pleas to the congregation for people to make “decisions of faith” and “walk the aisle and come to Jesus.” Religion was based almost exclusively on emotion and not intellect.
I “walked the aisles” when I was seven years old and came to what the Baptists liked to call “A Decision of Faith.” I do not doubt the veracity of that decision, even to this day. But, I have no doubt that it was influenced heavily by the kind of preaching Rev. Whitefield did in the Episcopal Church. I remember when I decided to do this I had just been to a week-long series of revival services in the church. During one of the sermons, the guest preacher spent a long time describing what Hell was going to be like and how we who were not believers were going to go there and be separated from Jesus. He described how Jesus was broken-hearted that we were going to go there as well. I was terrified, touched and sad that this man, Jesus, was going to be sad that I would be missing from his fold, so I “walked the aisles” and joined the Church and was baptized by full immersion a few weeks later.
One thing that I have sincerely struggled with since becoming Episcopalian (and that I have reconciled, I think) is this tension between a “fire insurance” type of faith and a more “covenantal” faith. I found it profoundly moving a few weeks ago when we were talking about baptism and Bishop Whitemore reminded us that what our baptism meant was that we did not have to “do” anything to receive God’s blessing, salvation or love. In baptism God “reaches down” and “saves” us without our having to have thought out or decided upon or felt emotionallythat our faith is “real.” The God that I grew up with the Baptist church damns pretty much everyone to Hell, really, other than the Baptists (and a few other righteous folk). The God we were describing saved us all and not once in a walk down red-carpeted aisles. This God saved us over and over throughout a life lived together.
Learning about the “confessional” element within The Episcopal Church has given me the opportunity to grow closer to my church by seeing that we share some personal history. Like the church I am living within as a member and a Postulant, however, this personal history has not defined me and has been something that I have had to reconcile with the present theological realities I have matured into over the past 13 years as an Episcopalian. I appreciate the emotional and confessional parts of my history and regard them as important aspects of my whole spiritual history. They are no longer at the center of “who I am,” however, much in the same way that they have not taken over the Episcopal Church. I have been able to move (like my church, I think) from a theology of “fire insurance” to “blessed assurance” and learned that I am, (to paraphrase Rev. Temple) saved “today, was saved yesterday and will continue being saved tomorrow.”

"Christianists"

2008-09-11T08:40:00.005-04:00

While it is never my job to judge someone (especially as an Anglican) I think it is OK to ask ourselves questions (often unanswerable) about other people. Like most people American, I have lots of questions about Gov. Palin.

Jean Fitzpatrick, on The Daily Episcopalian has a great column that asks some honest, valid questions of our own (well, not mine but you know what I mean) Republican Party.

"It's worrisome, seeing a Vice Presidential candidate who calls herself as a "bible-based Christian," prays for a natural gas pipeline, and thinks the U.S. mission in Iraq is a task from God. "A lot of people were praying," James Dobson said recently, "and I believe Sarah Palin is God's answer." What was the question?"

Read it yourself, cause she proposes we start using Andrew Sullivan's term for fundies who propose Christianity as Empire- "christianists." Wikipedia, (my favorite place for info-junk) links it (and rightfully so) to dominionism. Dominionism is a scary theology that is widely embraced by many people in the present Republican power structure. It supports things like having a theocratic government- including features like death camps for Gays and Lesbians and stoning adulterers. It is promoted by scary people like RJ Rushdoony and Francis Schaeffer.
These two "thinkers" work undergirds much (if not most) of the crap that spews forth from the Religious Right, and I wish they would get honest and out themselves for who they really are. Read it yourself (OK it is wikipedia, but it is interesting)

I think Sarah Palin's root theology is terrifying. I see it as being radical, anti-American and hateful. As Fitzgerald points out , "The God who loves me loves Muslims and Jews and atheists, blacks, whites, and browns, gays, straights, wearers of flag pins, snowmobile racers, Eastern elites, moms of special needs babies, teens who have abortions, Republicans and Democrats, loves us all."

I don't think our favorite future Grandma will say much of this in her invective.

OK I judged her, but hey, she's Christian so I guess she can forgive me.

Biology Happens

2008-09-02T11:55:00.005-04:00

I sort of like what Don Sipple, on of Bush 2's minions said in this New York Times Article, "When you combine the special needs infant with the pregnant teen, some voters might wonder why she is pursuing political ambitions at the expense of maternal or family responsibilities..."

Her son is deployed to Iraq, she's still got a state to run, her lovely daughter, Bristol, is with child, and she wants to run for office to be the first alternate for the most powerful person in the world?? I'm just speculating here, but I wonder if she would have treated, say Hillary Clinton with this much generosity if Chelsea had wound up in the family way?

I admire the fact that Bristol is having her baby and that she is supported so warmly and unconditionally by her family. The Palin family seems like a great family. (And, you know, there's a lot of cold dark weather up there- maybe not enough for the teens to do?? It could happen to anyone's kid). They are susceptible to the same kinds of problems we are, after all.

And, seeing that this blog is about "Househusbandry," let's not underestimate Todd's importance in all of this. I suppose he's going to take off time from snowmobiling to help young Levi and take Bristol to her Obstetric appointments and Lamaze Classes. I suppose he is going to send out the invites to the baby shower to Laura and Cindy and Mrs. Dobson and all the gang, buy the chick filet party platters and keep the wine (or should I say beverage) glasses full while Sarah is on the road helping John Mccain.

What I find confusing, however, is that she is getting a pass from her conservative brethren (especially the "Evangelical" end of the bench) on a lot of her own personal accountability as a Mother and Parent of a Teenager. How much of this came about because of abstinence-based education that she so stridently supported? Could it be true that the blessed event might have happened while Mom was at the state house? Sarah owes us all a little mea culpa. Biology happens, but when it happens to a teenager, I think any parent would agree that they are somewhat responsible for the "mistake." (Even though many fine children from great families like the Palin's get pregnant).

"Mistakes" like teen pregnancy don't happen in a vacuum, they happen in, around and (often) because of an environment of permissiveness, neglect and, well, good old-fashioned hormones. Teen pregnancy happens because kids get the opportunity to be alone and unsupervised. It happens because teenage boys "give love to get sex" and teenage girls often "give sex to get love" as a Priest I know once said. (Or, to paraphrase Billy Crystal, "Teenagers don't need a reason to have sex... just a place...")

Fundamentalist Evanglicals are no strangers to guilt. In fact, I think they help us all remember how to exercise it for our own good, on occasion. I'd just like to see a little from Mr. and Mrs. Todd Palin. Just a word or two acknowledging the fact that some of the choices they made as the adults who were presumably in charge of this girl perhaps provided her and Levi with the opportunity to make a baby. Maybe they could offer some advice to parents of teenagers like me so we can help our kid avoid "growing up too soon." Biology does happen, but it happens more often when Mom and Dad aren't around. I think their taking just a bit of responsibility for her lack of supervision might make me happier.

Of course, I'm a rookie parent of a teenager and I have a lot to learn about their care and feeding. I just don't think I'm going to be able to learn much from Mrs. Palin or Todd.

I wonder what Hillary would say?

The Fisherman who Could Not Swim

2008-08-18T13:03:00.001-04:00

I preached this sermon on August 10th at St. Dunstan's here in Atlanta.

A story has been circulating for some time that I need to correct. I need to set the record straight with you all about this water-walking that Jesus and I did together. I don’t suppose it ever occurred to any of you why I did not just swim back to the boat that night??

Why I didn’t just call it a night, laugh off the fact that I had gotten all wet and crawl back into the boat?

Why I couldn’t extract myself from the waves??

I’m just going to say it to get this over with-

I was a fisherman who could not swim.

Years of fishing- ever since I was a child- I never learned! I never stepped out of the boat…I was afraid of the water! But no one knew until recently. My secret was safe. I had made a life out of staying out of the water and in the boat:

Whenever the nets needed to be pulled off of the barnacles on the bottom of the boat- I got one of the other guys to pull them off. One of my brothers or one of the other young boys that worked the boats with me. Whenever someone had to jump out of the boat into deep water to unhook a line off of some coral or brush someone else was always around to do the dirty work for me.

I never learned to swim! I lived under the assumption that I could fool everyone all the time- That I could fool even Jesus with my secret.

I am the Rock, after all, I would think with great pride- an impregnable fortress!! They would never know—

Not too long ago, though one day-
Jesus was tired and he needed a rest. He’d been keeping a busy schedule of healing and feeding and preaching. Jesus told us to go for a sail while he took some time for himself alone.

“I’m gonna walk up there,” he pointed up a hill, “and believe it or not, I am going to take a nap. Why don’t you all go out on the boat and relax yourselves..”

It was late in the day- getting a little cloudy too-
We all resisted---

He smiled and said “Looks like a great day for a sail to me!! And that’s an order!!”

So we sailed the boat out to the middle of the lake- Jesus walked up the hill to be alone. I was getting kind of drowsy myself… I settled in a corner of the boat and drifted off to sleep.

I woke up after I don’t know how long- I must have been really tired because it was dark outside- there was a huge moon shining on the lake that night.

Everything was foggy- In spite of the silvery light, I could barely see the others sitting on the boat. I heard thunder off in the distance and the wind started to raise a bit the waves started getting white capped and the lake swollen--

Then, we all heard a rhythmic splish-splashing off the side of the boat!! Splish-splash- splish splash-

“Who on earth is swimming out there right now??” we all asked one another. But it wasn’t quite the sounds of someone swimming.

Then, we all see something in the distance- hovering just above the water. Our breath stops- a ghost, a phantom- some kind of devil??

This demon looks like Jesus, this phantom- - —walking on water.

I see this ghost motioning towards us- saying, I think to me, “Come on out here!!” I figure I’m dreaming. Or if I am not, then surely a ghost won’t know who I am-

So, As usual, I opened my mouth…

“If you’re Jesus… then… who am I???”

“Peter…. “ I heard him in the distance.. “Come on out here.. I want to tell you something..”

“Peter!!!”

I looked around the boat…

Yes you! You see any other people named Peter on the boat!! Come on out here!!!

I am not sleeping, I realize- and I also realize that Jesus- or whoever this is, wants me out of the boat!!

“Peter- come on over I want to tell you something!!!”

So, I stepped out of the boat.

WALKED ON WATER—like it was the street running in front of my house- like it was the beach.. Water has kind of a squshy feeling under your feet.
Kind of a cross between mud and wet sand. It felt good under my feet!!!

But then I realized-

IM WALKING ON WATER AND I CANT SWIM!!

I looked down –

AND I SANK!

(Like the Rock I am).

I figured it was all over- maybe one of the others would brave the cold water and rescue me. But as I sank underneath the waves… All I could think was , “LORD HELP ME!!”

And, then I see an arm reach under the water. It grabs my hand, pulls me up and makes me stand up again on the water… I stood there- shaking- freezing from the cold water- from the wind blowing – the fog and the elements

Jesus laughed!

“You’re all wet, Peter!!! Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t swim! “
“But how did you know??”
“It wasn’t that hard- The way you looked every time we got near the boats or waded in the water…I think we all knew…”

We stood there together and he told me something I never forgot.

" Peter- I love you even though sometimes you are rather rock like- you’re hard- hard headed- hard-hearted. Even when you feel your most helpless know that I will always be there trying to get through – trying to get you out of the boat…”

We walked back to the boat-

“And yes,” he added, “you need to learn to swim. That's why I put all these other people here in the boat with you…”

But master , I told him,, “I can’t….”

He cut me off- “You of little faith, why do you doubt?’ Peter- The first thing I ask if you is to love me and the second?”

“Love everyone else..”

Right.

I realized then that when I trust my brothers and sisters with my weakness I am letting them in- loving them- letting them be a part of who I really am as one of God’s children. I am stepping out of the boat.

I am learning to have faith that is rock like.

What this Rock learned that night is that we are all here to help each other swim- survive- thrive.

Jesus said to me, “Keep your eyes on me—on the love that I have brought here for you to share- to live out—and you will never sink…”

I once thought that ours was a God who did not suffer fools lightly. A god that did not tolerate weakness of any sort…Not a God who loved our weaknesses as much as our strengths. Not a God who required us to trust one another in our weakness- have faith in one another and God that we could overcome with God’s help..

Faith is a word we use in our little group quite a bit-

Some people say it is believing without seeing- Believing in things beyond understanding- beyond comprehension.

Faith is something we do, though, when we step out of the boat. When Christ calls us out of the boat, even though our gut tells us we will sink-

Faith beckons us to own up to our weakness-to own up to the weaknesses of others-to love ourselves and one another. It calls us to use our strength to bring those among us who are under the waves up upon the water and to throw our power and our resources- (in spite of all of our reasonable objections)- behind his children- the LEAST of all these – to bring them up out of the depths in spite of our obvious shortcomings that put us there in the first place.

We not only learn to swim-

We- walk on water.

Amen

Father Terry Starts a New World

2008-07-31T09:44:00.004-04:00

I'm a regular (well, was a regular reader) of the Blog "Father Jake Stops the World." About a month ago or so, I was greeted with this startling post from "Father Jake, " (aka Father Terry Martin):

" After much thought, prayer, and consultation with others, I’ve decided that it is time to close down Jake’s place.

This is not an easy decision. In some ways, it feels like a part of me is dying.

There’s many reasons for making this decision:

.....I believe that a constant exposure to some of the toxic rhetoric found on the net has had a negative impact on my spiritual health. I find it more difficult to discern the glory of God. Most likely this is because I’ve become too preoccupied with the depravity of man. I need to take care of myself."

At first, I was kind of sad to see him go. I had lots of online friends from the comments posting section on the website. I was a daily reader of his blog- he had kept me up to speed with all the stuff going on in TEC.

Then, I was greeted with this a few weeks later - a new website called "Father Terry Listens to the World."

I would commend everyone to check it out. Father Terry has taken on a great notion that many of us in the Episcopal Church (and other so-called "liberal" denominations have taken) that it is high time that we begin to practice evangelism. It is high time to take back the concept- the duty - the work of evangelism - from the hellfire and damnation crowd to take the loving, inclusive and all-encompassing embrace of God's love through Christ to the world.

He had this to say:
"We begin evangelism by listening. And then we listen some more. It is only when we really hear the stories of others that we will know how to proclaim the good news in ways that can be heard."

Amen.

I'm glad he's back.

Already There

2008-05-06T15:05:00.001-04:00

I preached this sermon last Sunday (May 4th) on Acts 1.

I am seeing more and more families with small children here, and one of the distinct pleasures you will have as they grow older will be taking road trips together

We have taken lots of them over the years- traveling to Myrtle Beach to see friends and Family .. to DC.. to Orlando..to the Floriday panhandle… My children, like most children on roadtrips get impatient. They want the trip to be finished.
Inevitably, they ask me many times, “Are we there yet?”
I have a few stock responses:

“No, we’re here…”
“Look out the window at the cows….”
“Hunt for license plates from other states..”
And MY personal favorite, “Well, you look around and tell me where we are.”
And I often use the old standard, “Not yet..”
Or, better yet, “We’ll get there when we get there..”

But grown ups are also obsessed with “getting there.”

Take a look next time you are out on the highway at the other cars. You’ll see GPS receivers in at least every 4th car.

GPS receivers that tell people where they are with nearly pinpoint accuracy. They tell them when exactly they will arrive at their destination. It’s an electronic answer to the question, “Are we there yet?”
It seems that each moment of our road-trip, we want a little guide to tell us exactly where we stand on the road, where we are in relation to the end and how to stay on the path.
It’s very comforting.
It satisfies our impatience with not knowing where, exactly, we are headed.

Our Apostles today ask Jesus, “Lord is this the time when your Kingdom will come?” They might as well have asked Jesus, “Are we there yet?”

They want answers! They want surety, security-on the road – on their journey following Christ. They’re unsure about their exact place on the path, unsure about their place in the universe, unsure about when they will arrive in God’s kingdom or when it will come to them and how, exactly, it will happen.

They’re uneasy, uncomfortable and scared because they are not going to have Jesus- their guide, their friend, their savior- in a bodily form.
They want to be finished with their journey- to have God’s kingdom now. They want a map: a spelled out, detailed plan that takes away their uncertainty and delivers them to their final destination.

Jesus gives them a good “front seat” answer to their “Are we there yet?”- reassuring and still vague! :

“….you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

You will he assures them. Not you may or you can or you have to option. You will! You will get there and you WILL be OK.
.
But, in spite of hearing all of this from the Son of God (and I find this kind of amusing) they continue to gaze heavenward, wondering wistfully just when, exactly, all of this will happen.
They don’t realize that the answer is already among them in the present.

Sounds kind of like all of us, doesn’t it?

We often find ourselves gazing heavenward, wondering when God will come. Then, the Holy Spirit comes and suddenly we find ourselves making unexpected pit stops on the road
We find ourselves doing things that we might not normally do!
The Holy Spirit moves us beyond the borders of our mapped territory The Holy Spirit moves our eyes to the road as it unfolds before us.

This life of the Spirit is kind of scary and unpredictable, isn’t it?
There is a certain lack of control we must live into - discomfort we must live with- to find our place on the journey. Our discomfort makes us wonder , “When, Lord, will you do what we want you to do?”

We want answers- we want certainty- we want to know just where , exactly, this road of the Spirit lead us to??

When the apostles ask a form of the question, “Are we there yet?”-

“Is this the time your kingdom will come, Jesus?”

Jesus says to them ““You’ll get there when you get there” by admonishing them with, “It is not for you to know the times or periods the Father has set by his own authority…”

Then, After watching Jesus ascend into the clouds, their gazes are still locked upward, wondering (wistfully) when exactly he will return. Then two “men clothed in white” (I like to think of them as angels), give them a nice scolding, I think, as they look upward for Jesus, instead of all around themselves and ahead..

They say, “Why do you stand looking up to heaven?”

God’s kingdom- is not up there- they tell them- God’s kingdom will come only through the love that Christ has set in motion with his life and his death. God’s kingdom will come but only with the help of the Holy Spirit- with “God’s help” (as we like to say in our prayer book) and the love of Christ.

Love Christ set in motion through faithfulness that lead to his death on a cross. See, they don’t realize that Christ has already
given them the map they need to get there.

I like the movie Bruce Almighty. God, Morgan Freeman, says to Jim, a man who is “playing God” in the movie, “People want me to do everything for them. What they don't realize is that they have the power. You want to see a miracle? Be the miracle.”

God urges Bruce to look ahead by directing his gaze downward, seeking God’s kingdom through being the miracle.

Next week, at Pentecost , the “miracle” will happen to us, the Church. The Holy Spirit will come. The church will be born
But, we hear that right now, right now- we are to be the miracle!

We are supposed to be God’s kingdom…

What does this kingdom look like,? What is it God has set us free to do- right now- with God’s Holy Spirit? What exactly do we do while we are “on the road?” How do we “be the miracle?” Is it through sacramental purity?? Biblical accuracy?? Orthodoxy??

I think maybe not…
A way I feel we can do it is we practice what my friend Father Terry Martin calls “radical inclusion.”Radical inclusion chooses grace and love as the default position when all else is in doubt.
Radical inclusion causes us to open our arms to all people and say “You- each and every one of you- are a child of God.”

I liked what Bishop Gene Robinson had to say when he was interviewed recently by Terri Gross on Fresh Air upon the release of his memoir, “Eye of the Storm..”

This specific question was regarding his lack of invitation to the Lambeth conference- he was not invited, like all the other bishops of the world, specifically because of who he is as a Gay man. I expected anger and bitterness.

Instead he gave us all a lesson on the Holy Spirit.

He said, “ Jesus says this amazing thing on the night before he died. He says to his disciples, ‘there are many more things I want share with you but you are not able to bear them right now.
so I will send you the Holy Spirit to lead you to all truth. ‘ “

He further commented, “I will go on to argue that full inclusion of Gay and Lesbian people is just simply another way that the Holy Spirit is leading us to a fuller understanding of God’s love for all of God’s children.”

I can imagine he has wondered, as a Gay man, “are we there yet?” as he walks on his journey

On days when he had to bear death threats- days when he had to wear a bullet proof vest to mass- the day he did not get his invitation to Lambeth.

But, his experience has not left him gazing heavenward,
asking God, “When???” It has lead him to a fuller understanding of the Holy Spirit.

We can learn this week that The Church- all of us who are God’s children-all of us who feel bewildered and lost -wondering why we are on this journey and where will it lead us-

We can learn we are called to find our place by directing our gaze down from the heavens to here on earth, where we are.

Here , where we can find a fuller understanding of God’s love and be lead to God’s Love through the Holy Spirit. Not from any “road maps” we feel compelled to follow and certainly not from craning our necks looking upward for Jesus in the clouds.

The kingdom of God comes – we get there- when we affirm to one another and treat one another as if we are all precious, Holy children of God.

Then we are already “there.”

Response from Ms. Pratt

2008-01-16T08:55:00.000-05:00

I thought it was classy of her to write me back and her response was very thoughtful. I think the lesson I have learned is to always, always, always try to understand before making my (usually highly flawed )OPINION known??

Actually, I don’t lean either way in reporting, but the people I interview certainly do, on both sides. Each only wants to see his/her own viewpoint represented! So much for freedom of speech. It’s a human characteristic and is true across denominations that we only want our own viewpoint mentioned. Anything else is perceived as bias or “negative.” Newspapers by design can only hit a few high points on any story, television even less with sound bytes. Now we have the Internet and blogs so that every viewpoint can be expressed to exhaustion! We are in an interesting time of transition in communications.

Back to the story, we don’t have that many Episcopalians in Lubbock, so until it heats up locally, we don’t do a lot of reporting on the issue, although we do run AP stories on the national developments.

Looks like if this new church start goes through here, the issue will become more local. Even so, the numbers are small compared to other churches here.

The bigger story is the future of the institutional church of whatever denomination. Will it recover or retool? Will people tire of doing their own thing? The latest trend predictions I’ve heard say that the churches with ultra-liturgical or ultra-contemporary worship styles will thrive and the various combinations between will struggle.

I don't think I would like being a Religion reporter... Not an easy job today seeing how polarized religion has gotten. "May we all be one..."

Online can be Rude

2008-01-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

OK I caught myself commiting the one sin of online writing- emailing that I would never do. I was really rude to a reporter in an email response I sent her regarding her article in lubbockonline about The Episcopal Church. Yikes. I was on the second day of a fast and was grumpy and it seemed like the thing to do at the time. I think one of the pitfalls of the Internet is that it gives us all one or two degrees of separation from one another and allows a little more rudeness that we would normally show towards one another.

OK. Judge for yourself- here is a link to the article by Beth Pratt ( a reporter from Lubbock and a lovely person, I am sure). Here is my email response to the article:

"Never mind that the system that they propose we live and believe under denies the dignity of all persons (re: homosexuals). You would have only gotten that bit of truth if you had talked to someone from The Episcopal Church. But, it seems that you are under the sway of either your distaste for gays, the PR machine of the Religious Wrong or an arch-conservative editor. Seems like in Journalism school (or did you go??) they would have taught you to tell the truth (try to get both sides in the story). However, it seems you must have skipped class that day. How unfortunate for your readers that they did not get the chance to hear from all voices in this story and get the perspective of The Episcopal Church. "

OK I could have edited a couple of jabs- the one about journalism school in particular...

Here is Ms. Pratt's response:

"Or. Possibly you just missed the first story from the church’s viewpoint. Or, you could be a member of the head-in-the-sand group that would like to pretend nothing is happening. If they would just go away quietly, no one would be disturbed. Right?"

OK so here is the article from the Church's viewpoint:

http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/031007/rel_031007041.shtml

Judge for yourself. Don't email reporters when you are on the second day of a fast if you want to seem like a nice person.

Epiphany 1 Sermon

2008-01-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

The Stars Shift
There’s a line in one of my favorite John Lennon songs, “Beautiful Boy,” that says “life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” We find ourselves busy with our daily lives, doing what comes normal for us every day and wham- something comes along and our plans change- life happens.
When I read the story in Matthew about the Magi, I see people who were busy making other plans and who had their lives turned upside down.
These magi- mysterious members of the cast of characters in our Epiphany gospel today-were probably people who made a comfortable living trying to divine the will of God or The Gods through what they saw in the stars. (If they lived today we would probably call them Astrologers- and would read a column by one of them in the daily paper).
Then, one day, the heavens moved- something new appeared in the eastern sky. A constellation moved a bit, or a new, bright star- perhaps a Supernova exploded- or a planet passed close by the earth much like Mars is doing now. Something miraculous happened, and they had to go and see what it was.
These people were observers- scientists, of sorts. The heavens were orderly for them, moved in pretty predictable patterns and made sense, most of the time. Then one day a new light appeared in the east and they started seeing strange things in the skies that were once so familiar to them.
Jesus birth, the gospel writer tells us, put their stars out of whack.
They were to pack up their stuff, load their animals and trek to a little town nine miles east of the seat of power in Jerusalem to Bethlehem (what we are to believe is hundreds of miles) to find the origins of this astrological change.
Imagine with me for a second the scene that Matthew tries to paint for us in this story. I see their departure from the camel yards, heavy laden with their telescopes and water jugs and formal turbans, talking excitedly about what they’re going to find underneath this new star. One jokes with the others that there might be some good parties for them when they get there, complete with dancing girls and music and a huge spread of food. They all figure that a person great enough to warrant a change in the skies will be full of pomp and circumstance and power. Little do they know what awaits them at the end-a humble child of working parents-a son of a carpenter and teenage girl.
This story has all the elements of a great adventure story. It is even complete with a maniacal, angry, frightened king who wants to find our hero, Jesus, and kill him because he feels threatened. Harod meets with our Magi and asks them to find this king “so I can come and worship him.” (We know better, though- and know that Harod wants to find the source of this astronomical change and snuff it out).
I also imagine their surprise when they see that the stars point to wherever this child, this poor child is living. I see them checking and re-checking their calculations. I hear one turning to the other and saying “This can’t be right” and the other telling him “I know I am right” and the third maybe saying “I told you we should have asked for directions back in Judea!!”
Upon arriving at the humble dwelling where Jesus and his family are living, they shrug their shoulders, hop off their camels pick up their gifts, and approach the humble dwelling from which they hear the cries and coos of the Christ Child and take their gifts to him in puzzlement.
We are pretty certain now that there were not three of these men. There probably were no camels. (And in deference to my friends at Mary and Martha’s place- )we don’t even know that they were men, either. The Gospel story tells us that there was no manger when they came by- they visited a house in Bethlehem. We do know that there were gifts for this “king,”this Christ child, living beneath the star. Much of the rest that we assume to be true about the Magi is legend- adornments to the story that have been added through the ages.
We do recognize them as a vital part of the Epiphany- the truth made plain – about Jesus Christ.
I like what Walter Bruegemann says about them- he says that “rather than hesitate or resist, they reorganize their wealth and learning, and reorient themselves and their lives around a baby with no credentials.”
How can we reorganize our lives around a “baby with no credentials?”
Epiphany calls us all to allow the presence of Christ in our lives to put our stars out of whack- to let Jesus shift our constellations- make us see things in a new light.
It is no accident, I think, that custom has us make resolutions during this time of the year - to make changes for the new year that will (hopefully) make our lives better. All of us, every year, try to re-align our own stars with promises to exercise more, eat better, sleep more, read more books, fight less with our big sisters or brothers.
I like how one writer I read this week put it. He said that instead of making “resolutions” for the new year we should “re-solution” our lives. I like that. When we “re-solution,” or come up with new ways to see the light in others and ourselves, we are following the Epiphany star. How will we “re-solution” our lives this year?? How can we drop what we are doing, let the Christ child happen to us while we go about our lives, making other plans?? I had a few:
-Instead of looking for new worlds to conquer, perhaps we can find new worlds to save.
-Instead of making our voice heard, perhaps we can learn to listen more.
-Instead of indulging all our appetites, perhaps we can find ways to want less.
-Instead of filling our lives with more stuff, maybe we can “re-solution” by clearing out space in our lives for more people.
-Instead of trying to lead through dominating others, maybe we can we can lead by serving all.
-Bringing this home to the Anglican Communion- now that a rift is a foregone conclusion, instead of being angry with the folks who have left us now, perhaps we can look at the folks who have left The Episcopal Church with compassion, realizing that in the end, whether we like it or not, we are still all the body of Christ and we need each other. They still need us.
Epiphany tells us that seeing the star is not the end of the journey.
In the end of our story the magi, being warned by God in a dream that Harod is out for the life of the Christ Child (and now perhaps them as well) , returned home by another road.
Once we meet the Christ child, the road we walk down is never the same. Christ calls us to continue seeking his star- continue being saved by him day in and day out through the power of one thing and one thing only- love.
Christ has come- the stars have changed for us now and we must walk a new road home with a new plan. Amen.

Politics... Argh...Thomas Merton

2007-12-24T09:43:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-23T19:10:00.001-05:00

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

2007-12-23T19:05:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-30T16:18:00.001-05:00

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.

2007-07-30T16:53:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-07-16T11:52:00.000-04:00

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!!!

2007-07-12T10:26:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-07-09T00:07:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-05-29T13:58:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-01T21:35:00.000-04:00

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"

2007-02-07T11:50:00.000-05:00

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!!!

2007-02-06T09:50:00.000-05:00

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

2007-02-02T13:43:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-31T11:38:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-23T14:46:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-23T14:18:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-20T13:07:00.000-05:00

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

Video Games Suck!!!

2006-02-27T22:16:00.000-05:00

It kills me. I teach these kids whose parents let them play violent video games for hours on end every night when they need to be reading to them, talking with them and playing with them. They want these boys to be normal and productive members of society and they stick them in front of the TV set with games like Halo and Doom and guns and guns and guns…. Then they send them to me for 6 or so hours a day and get frustrated when we can’t work friggin miracles and make them care about school or learning.

I really have an intense hatred for video games now especially that I have my own kids. My own son, the first thing he asks me about when I get home is, “Can we play LEGO Star Wars??” Granted, it is a cool game, but he is more interested in that than he is me or anyone else in the house. That just seems kind of ominous to me but maybe I am an over-reacting old fart now.

I sat with one of the kids I teach who shall remain nameless and we figured out that he does (on the average) 18 hours of video gaming per week! That just freaks me out. I think that all kids on the Autism spectrum should be video game free and I will urge my co-workers to make that a huge part of our contract with our parents next year. It seems like pissing in the wind to work with a kid who spends all that time stimming himself in front of a cathode ray tube.

I’m one to talk though. Many nights will find me lying in bed in another room from the rest of my family watching The Big Lebowski for the 50th time or so. I guess that’s no different from some kid playing Grand Theft Auto over and over with the infinite life cheat code. Jeff Bridges is a hell of a lot more funny, though, and there are some interesting metaphysics and theology somewhere in The Big Lebowski, I think. (That’s for another BLOG though, cause I am tired now from all the cooking, yelling and other reasonable activity I got to take part in today).

peace

Be Who We Are

2006-02-02T18:25:00.000-05:00

I work at a school called The Community School , a school for kids who, at one time or another, have been diagnosed with Ausperger's syndrome or other Autism Spectrum Disorders. Autism is a growing diagnosis among children in this country. (Is it because we know it better or is it the diagnosis dujour, a la childhood bipolar disorder?? Who knows??) Anyway, two of our older boys go to a homeless community center Crossroads, sponsored by St Lukes Episcopal Church every Thursday to run the mailroom.

The Guys have integrated themselves into the work of Crossroads Community Center. They are fully capable of running the mailroom on their own and frequently are taking over. Many times while we are there I have to step around the mailroom desk to help clients activate Food Stamp cards, fill out forms or find more help from another staff member. I have been quite proud of their ability to take our work there very seriously and they are extremely kind and patient with the guests of Crossroads, many of whom are in the throes of serious poverty, stress, mental illness or drug addiction. Homelessness, they are learning, is not just about "those people," it is about people who are human beings just like them.

People wonder what exactly we do at Crossroads and wonder what the big deal is about people getting mail. It often doesn't dawn on most people that homeless folks can have big problems over things that seem inconsequential to us. Many people simply need a mailing address so they can get things like Social Security Cards and birth certificates so they can get state-issued ID and get jobs. Many people suffering from mental illness or disability simply need an address so they can get Social Security checks so they can eat and pay for shelter.

Crossroads has been a crossroad of sorts for The Guys because they are getting to see themselves for who they really are- competent, caring people- people who other people want to be around and appreciate. It occured to me today for the first time that they, like many kids who have Autism-Spectrum challenges, have spent much of their time in education settings feeling marginalized and unwanted by the people around them. As I watched both of them interacting with clients and solving problems, it hit me like a ton of bricks that maybe at some point they believed those voices that sought to push them out or told them, through action or words, that they were not wanted. Here they were, I saw, giving their time and energy to help a group of people that society does not want or does not choose to deal with in a very healthy way. Here they were showing "those people"- the homeless- that somebody cared. At Crossroads no one sees them as anything but two nice young men who are giving their time to help. They see them as kind and intelligent and capable. They see them as who they really are.

This all fits in to my conception of God and Original Sin as well. I have to believe that God sees us who we really are and NOT as "miserable sinners" as the old prayer book would have us believe. He is constantly reminding us that we are good and wanted. God invades our being constantly and wants to be a part of us in a desparate way. We, on the other hand, deny who we really are and believe what we hear- that our self worth depends on things that are transitory and unimportant- social status, wealth, etc. Like my boys at school, if we can work to surround ourselves with people who see us as God sees us as much as possible (ie The Church...??) perhaps we can live out our real identity as Children of God.

Are We Like Rocks that have been Thrown Astray..... or An Alternate Exewhatever

2006-01-20T17:58:00.000-05:00

Are We Like Rocks... or What I Would Have Said if I Had Chuck's Job.....

My Daughter was using an expensive, cloth-bound scrapbook to bear down on while she drew pictures with Magic Markers. "Sweetheart, don't use that book to draw on it will ruin it..." I told her.
"OK Dad," as she kept on drawing.
"Sweetheart draw on something else.."
"OK Dad."
Until finally I yelled, "Get another book... now!"

If you have children, spouses, partners, or even roomates you know the experience of someone not listening to something you said in spite of the fact that you have repeated it over and over and over. You get to a boiling point until you yell out of frustration and then, finally, they respond. You are amazed/exasperated/furious that in spite of the fact you have repeated yourself over and over they just have not understood.

In the passage in Matthew on which Charles Stanley preached, (See earlier Blog- "Little Man in a Grey Suit..."- without quoting it directly it's the one where Jesus tells the boys about what he thinks is going to happen to him and Peter says, "Say it isn't so!" and Jesus gets mad at him for hinting that he might interfere). Peter is mad at Jesus’ talk about suffering because Peter, as usual, is clueless. He still is living in the old model of the Kingdom of God being a military rule, a tangible time and place. His thinking is Old-School and wants Jesus and the Gang to rule with the same type of power that rulers of that day used. Jesus scolds him, saying , “get thee behind me Satan..” (a later addition that Jesus probably did not say) saying to Peter, “Stop being an idiot.... don’t you listen...?” He had been teaching them, all along, that the Kingdom of God was all around them and within them and not a worldly time and place.

Jesus knew that his message was so revolutionary that the people in power going to kill him because his message of last being first, clean being unclean, up being down and in being out was too upsetting to the establishment. He knew suffering was imminent and that “in three days” (again another addition, but that’s another whole blog) his message would "rise" because according to what he knew about existence, the first was going to be last and the last first. The Pharisees’ political will could not keep the God's Kingdom from happening because it was within Peter, the disciples and all of his followers and therefore immune to any political power or violence.

Jesus, in his own way, though, gave up on “fixing” Peter and his ego and told Peter the truth about his inability to pay attention. Peter was beyond repair and in spite of that (or maybe because of it- who knows?? ) Jesus chose him as his man eventually, in spite of the fact that he was such a screw-up. He was "The Rock" not because of his solidity or strength but because he was, like rock, thick, and basic and elemental- just like all of us. Jesus frustration boiled up because Peter voiced what was probably a common misconception about what his mission was ("Judas, put away the dagger....we love the Romans and we do not kill them...") We are thickheads, like Peter, because we do not really understand the Kingdom Christ described because it is in direct conflict with our power-hungry, ego-obsessed reality. It violates Capitalism, Communism, Democracy, Republicanism and several other isms that we are so fond of.

How can our world exist when the first are last and the last first? What do you mean, God, that I have to sell my huge house and let all the weird homeless people in my neighborhood move in? (Try and sell that one to the Inman Park Neighborhood Association)?

God answers quietly to us, "Yes..."

"What do you mean, God, that I have to scaled back my expectations for ambition and power and spend more time at home with my kids at night??"

God says, "Absoultely..."

"What do you mean, God, that I have to give up more and more of what I hold precious in this life, the things that I crave and covet and think I need??"

God says, "Sure you are.."

"What do you mean, Lord" we plead, "Am I supposed to feed all the poor people standing out on Courtland street every day- go get lunch for them all at Mary Mac's Tea Room?"

God says, "Why not?"

"But Lord," we plead, "That just does not make any sense??? These events and things must happen for me to be happy and get what I deserve...."

And God replies, "What you deserve?? Lay those ideas and conceptions you have on your own cross, my friend, against all logic and worldly standards and you will suffer by the Pharisees, the world will call you stupid, maybe even take you down several notches.. and I will raise you up..."

These things are hard to hear and comprehend. We, like "The Rock" are thick and hard to break and heavy with the things that we hold as dear and vital.

But you know, if God can get water from rocks, he can also give them ears to hear.

Selah

Little Man in a Grey Suit

2006-01-16T10:17:00.001-05:00

I was listening to Charles Stanley preach last night during a broadcast of his daily radio ego fest, “In Touch.” I have a perverse fascination with bad theology- I spend some of my drive- time with the media-mogul “men of God” on WNIV, the local, so-called “Christian Radio” network. My favorites (notice that even though I make fun of them I am nice enough to give them a link so you can judge them yourself) are Revi Zecharias- “Let My People Think” (he uses logic to defeat the scourge of “liberal Christianity” and has a cute, middle-eastern accent to boot), Key Life with Steve Brown (he has an amazing radio voice and he knows it) and that pompous, self-important touter of the 5,000 year old earth theory, The Right Reverend James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries.

Dr. Chuck was preaching from a passage in Matthew in which Jesus explains to his disciples that he is going to be persecuted by the Pharisees and then rise on the third day. Peter then gets mad at him and tells him that they are not going to let him suffer because they have to protect their prospects for being head of the Kingdom of God. He tells Peter , “Get thee behind me, Satan..” He made a point that went something like this, "Peter got himself into trouble with Jesus because he was trying to interfere with God's plan for Jesus which was crucifixion and death. We cannot interfere with God's plan. When someone is in trouble we have to stop trying to fix the trouble because we may be interfering with God's plan."

1. First off, he argued that we can’t understand suffering because we don’t understand God’s ways. God's ways include causing suffering so we can learn or become Christians...

- Suffering comes at us randomly and in relentless bursts at the worst of times. We are born to die, it seems, and tthat just does not make sense.
- Suffering is a problem that Christians must wrestle with in their Theology because it presents many difficult challenges if God is to be considered a loving and caring God.
- He is wrong because he assumes from this statement that suffering originates from or is allowed by God. He assumes that God allows us to suffer to teach us a lesson. He assumes that God allows or causes us to suffer so that we can become one with Jesus Christ and not go to Hell. In his view, since God has our whole lives planned, suffering is pre-ordained and a part of a bigger plan.

I don’t think that God has our whole lives pre-ordained. I can’t believe in a God that looks down from the sky and says, “Hey, you, you get to get cheated/ beaten up/ depressed (insert hardship here) because I want you to pay attention to me.” I can’t believe in that God. If God feels it necessary to mess with my head and abuse me all the time to get me more dependent on him, then he is more like Zeus than what is depicted in the Bible. Isn’t it kind of anthropomorphic to assume that God gets upset with us when we don’t indicate our obeisance properly? I mean Zeus used to get mad at mortal hubris and throw difficulty into the paths of egotistical Greek dudes to bring them down.

My God is unlike anything we humans understand and to give God these human qualities is idolatrous and oversimplifying. He kicks Zeus's ass.

2. Second, he asserted that when people are in trouble, we should not try to fix the situation because we might be interfering with God’s plan.

-Isn’t it a sin to try and say that God is doing one thing or another- to assume that actions of the almighty and speak for God? Isn’t that what he is doing when he argues this point in his sermon?

-How are we to know when trouble for someone is God at work? Could we not assume, then, that all trouble that people encounter (homelessness, poverty, disease, depression, lonliness, divorce) is God at work in their lives and not just the result of our universe of physical laws at work?
- Couldn’t this assertion be taken as a rationale by white, upper class Baptists who moved their church from Downtown Atlanta, where there is lots of “trouble” (see above list) to Dunwoody, GA, a desperate Housewife- filled suburb not to “interfere” with the trouble that they encounter and thereby interrupt their extremely comfy lives by helping others? Is he going to apply this rule when God works in the life of his Grandchildren and they get sick, in debt , thrown in jail, depressed or have marital difficulty? Was he grateful when people did not try to help him when his wife divorced him?

I know that if my friends or children get in trouble, I am going to do everything in my power to, at the very least, alleviate some suffering if not facilitate healing.

You're damned right I am going to interfere if not do my best to fix what I can fix.

3. He is almost right on many counts in this sermon.
- He argues that we try to fix people’s pain out of a need to save ourselves the pain of living with the pain of others. We think we are powerful enough to change people and therefore assume the role of God when God is the only one capable of changing a person’s heart. I agree with this assertion in the following ways:
- You can’t fix other people’s pain. You can be with them, empathize, feed them, clothe them, give them shelter and put band-aids on their pain, but their pain is not going to be fixed by you. They have to choose to change.
- It is wrong to slap band-aids on people’s pain just to get them out of the way. I mean it is right and wrong, I suppose. For example, Copper John in Little 5 Points (my neighborhood) asks me for $28.00 for a room on a cold night. I give it to him to get him off of my porch and to alleviate my classic White Man Rich Guy guilt. He sleeps in a warm place for 4 nights but a year later he is still doing drugs and sleeping in doorways because he still has not chosen to improve his life. Yes, I enabled him, but you know, who the hell cares because my money bought him a little temporary pleasure in a life that is (by his own choice) pretty awful.

Chuck’s A Top-Down Leader and Theologian..... God is the Man in Charge of the Man in Charge...

When I heard this sermon I felt really bad for him and knew that thinking God was in control of his destiny in all ways probably kept him from being really depressed. I kept thinking about one night when I was picking up some take-out food about 7:30 and I saw this smallish, neatly-dressed, wrinkled looking man in a grey suit waiting for his food. It was Rev. Stanley and I wanted to go over and hug him and see if he wanted to come over and eat with us because I could picture him walking in his front door with a plastic bag full of a styrofoam container full of take out. I saw him opening it up and sitting on his sofa after turning on TBN and eating all alone by the TV light.

I probably have a lot of this story wrong, but from what I was made to understand by word of mouth and the media Rev. Stanley might have been left alone himself during his marital problems. He had a wife who was, from what I heard, suffering from mental illness and from what I know about him he still spent most of his time on his Empire, In-Touch ministries. We, the public, were all left with the impression that he was neglectful of her and his family. We've all done that before and can't toss any stones. However, I think he missed an enourmous opporunity at the time to let people "interfere" with his suffering by letting us all in his head and telling us how he was dealing with it. I may have missed this sermon, but he may have missed an enourmous opportunity to repent and confess his faults and teach us all how to be better husbands and fathers by hearing about his bad example.

I'll bet he was really lonely at the top and believe it or not, I pray for him often that he does not feel lonely. But, I'm sure that he's a happy guy and I am sure that I would like knowing him if not being his friend, even though I think the stuff he preaches is utter bullshit. I envy his ability to preach sermons and deliever them very well with his admonitions of "Watch This!!!" and "Write this one down!" He is good at what he does. One does not get two huge office buildings on prime real-estate and a huge church like First Baptist Atlanta without being extremely competent and charismatic.

To publicly confess to being a screw-up (like our man Peter) , however, might have meant the end of the In-Touch empire. I mean, the man does have to make a living, I suppose.

OK, So Effing What?
God gives us compassion and an ability to empathize and try our damndest to relieve suffering. He calls us to practice hospitality by sitting around the table with the hurting, the smelly, the ignorant, the lonely, the ill, the poor, the rich and the dying and diving into God’s banquet of life together. We can't always understand but we can be confused and scared together. We should begin by listening to someone’s story and trying our best to understand with judging them and inserting our own wisdom (or lack thereof) into the equation.

God calls us to ask the sad man in the grey suit home to dinner.

Rock and Roll Will Never Die

2006-01-16T09:54:00.000-05:00

I do not know why I chose that headline. I keep hearing that song in my head tonight. Not just the Neil Young Song but my friend from High School, Scott Adams, doing the song over and over. I also keep hearing him do the line about "...this is the story of Johnny Rotten..." Something like that I think, anyway. My memory runs like an endless scrapbook full of random and seemingly disconnected, weird memories that occupy a lot of my consciousness.

Like I have another recurring flashback about the same guy from my childhood. He was in this rock band- a U2 wannabe group and he got a bleach blonde mullet. Well, not really a mullet, but he had sort of a big hair look on top with the long hair in the back. They did a concert once at the local Civic Center and he wore acid-washed jeans. Scott is a really little guy, too, and he had like size 22 jeans. I think he shopped in the girl's department. I just remember that he liked to wear vests and he had some wrestling shoes he wore with his outfits as well as a dangly earring. Really 80's (it was 1989, so I guess that was OK, too).

Scott also was a Jaws afficianado and always was obsessed with technology, whatever he could get his hands onto. We made a stop-action movie with GI joes one time called "Laser Attack." The plot line was strikingly similar to Star Wars, i think (he saw it over 100 times the summer it came out. In fact, the little fucker had the coolest summer job ever wearing a Jawa costume at the theater). We used a Styx song as the soundtrack and played it over and over in the movie. He even recorded every voice on the soundtrack and could keep it synched up to the movie by stopping and starting it at strategic times. The Styx Song was the one on the record "Cornerstone" that was the prologue to their epic JRR Tolkien tribute "The Lord of the Rings..." Styx.. that bastion on late-seventies counter-culture.

I saw him a year or two ago and he was still obsessed with Jaws. In fact, he had turned his main hobby- TV Watching- into a full-time job because he got a job working for a company that installs home theaters. He had also been in a U2 tribute band as a singer. He was an incredible mimic and had a mind that remembered most everything it heard so he knew everything about U2 music. (I liked U2 before him, though. He learned about them from our friend Jon who moved down to Gainesville from Wisconsin). I was over there with my baby boy ( the visit was cut short by a really bad diaper emergency and my lack of supplies). He looked like he had grown a few inches, strangely enough, and he was not so skinny any more. He still smoked a lot and he drank low-carb beer. He also played a lot of video games and lived in a tract house as well. Oh well. No stone-wash jeans, however, and the mullet had been trimmed.

My Liberal Manifesto- Part One

2004-11-30T07:23:00.000-05:00

I still do a lot of thinking about Heaven and Hell. Maybe that’s a result of some kind of Baptist-itis I suffer as a result of years of Baptist Sunday School classes run by mean, blue-haired old ladies with attitude problems and horrific gas. Maybe it’s because I am drawing closer to 40 years old and the inevitability of that old friend Death. Maybe it’s because as I get older, what it really means to be Christian diverges so greatly from what I was originally taught and I worry that I am straying from the path. “Where will I go when I die if I think a lot of the stuff that preached to me when I was a child is bunk?” I still wonder. “Is there an afterlife? If there is, who will be there? Will I go to the bad place now because I doubt the literal truth of the virgin birth??”
Previously, my relationship to Christ was to function as a recruiter .We had backyard bible schools, collected clothes for the poor, invited folks to the Jesus Gym for basketball and a sauna. All of this we did because we wanted to keep the “unsaved” people who were our friends from going to hell by “saving their souls.” If the great unwashed just said a simple prayer and “asked Jesus into their hearts” they would be assured of going to the good place. They would join an elite society of people who were assured pleasure and happiness eternal when they died. All of our interaction with outsiders to out faith was in the end of getting others to agree with us. Ultimately, it was us and them and “them were not going to the good place unless they agreed with us. The more I know about who Jesus really was and what he really said and did the more I have to reject my old view of what it means to be Christian.
However, I find myself stymied by the force and emotional effectiveness of the preaching and “evangelizing” from the other ideological extremes of the protestant world. I shy away from theological argument with my “fundie” brothers and sisters silently suffering as a “liberal Christian ” I keep my mouth shut. At its best, my silence is my sincere effort to be present with others and really understand who they are. At its worst it is because I have lingering doubts that go back to my fear of the afterlife. “Maybe they are right…” I think. I must stop being a theological milquetoast. Through some good work done by theologians and historians whose work I have come to respect a great deal I see that the way I think is “biblical” and solidly based in who I think Christ really was. However, I am still, for the most part, part of a quiet group of seekers who shy away from confrontation and argument with the other side- these days especially. We are content to let the fundamentlists hold sway over their ego-gratifying TV shows, pulpits and 30,000 member mega churches with McDonalds franchises and Bible colleges.
Keeping my mouth shut, however, is to do a disservice to God and to the church as a whole. It is time to have theological arguments with others in “the church” (the body of all believers).
The Gospel, the good news, reveals itself in many unexpected ways. We watched Bruce Almighty again recently. I don’t care for Jim Carrey, usually. He’s a little over the top and most movies he is in become “Jim Carrey Movies” that are more about his schtick and less about the story. Who knew one of his movies held a big key to the Gospel according to who Jesus really was??
Morgan Freeman – The God character in the movie, says to Jim Carrey (Bruce) at one point, “You people keep looking up when the answer is in there (points to his heart). “You want a miracle….be the miracle…” In other words, this Hollywood God was saying that we spend so much time thinking about what is next versus what is here and now. We spend so much time begging God for the miraculous to occur without recognizing it in the every day or making it happen ourselves. Fundamentalist Christians want us to worry about where we go in the next world and to get everyone to agree with them so that they can go too. They are so busy selling fire insurance that they miss the flood of need, beauty and God’s truth in this world.
Fundamentalism is so attractive to folks because it is: 1) simplistic enough that our TV-addicted culture can get it quickly; 2) it provides a highly structured intellectual environment (“God said it, the bible says it, that settles it…”) 3) it provides comfort through a (usually male) authority figure who provides black and white solutions to problems- most of which are full of beautiful ambiguities that cannot be ignored.
Maybe the mission of “liberals” like myself is to come up with an alternative theology we can serve up as an alternative to the fear that most of the popular denominations preach. If the Kingdom of God is within us and surrounding us, is becoming present in each moment, that changes the spiritual landscape considerably. If we are walking in God’s Kingdom now it becomes incumbent upon us to create pockets of people who act accordingly: people who do what they say, who are kind to one another, who practice hospitality to everyone and are grateful for everything, recognizing the divinity in each person and moment. When we do this we cease being recruiters for the angelic ranks - we become worker bees who exist to do the work of love, forgiveness, reconciliation and truth that Jesus Christ did in his time here on earth.
However, if we are what God made us, why did God make us with minds that are so attracted to these types of isms? If moving beyond this type of legalistic fundamentalism to a new type of fundamentalism that embraces fundamental truth about Jesus represents an evolution of faith, shouldn’t it be apparent and simple enough to spread and evangelize to the masses? I mean, really, how many folks out in the Lakeshore Mall that you see Christmas shopping can stomach tomes like Spong’s “Liberating the Gospels” and Laughlin’s “Remedial Christianity?” How many folks are going to wade through The Five Gospels? Not many, I’m afraid, because that type of thinking is hard to do and pretty esoteric and boring to most folks.
If the truth we are finding is so apparent and real, it must be, in some form, easily discernible somehow to people who sit in the pews listening to Chuck Stanley feeling guilty ‘cause they notice his comb-over more than what he is saying from the pulpit. I would contend that there is another way that the people in God’s kingdom can and will embrace but we must shape, spread and evangelize with that message with a fervor equal to Mr. Stanleys and his weight-challenged counterparts on TBN. What a world we would live in if there were people on TV who, each week, found a new way to remind us to appreciate the present moment, love our neighbors, tell the truth and love God. It may never happen because it makes horrible ratings. Truth just can’t compete with hellfire and brimstone and fear.
Tell “the people”- The Kingdom of God is now and just now and not off in the clouds. Preach that the Kingdom of God is that woman who is suicidal from grief who needs someone to hang out with her and bring her dinner. Yell from the rooftops that the kingdom of God is paying attention and listening. Just doing those small acts is the hardest work there is in the human condition. . “Being the Miracle” means we have to be awake, pay attention and do what God requires us to do, which is 1) love our neighbor, 2) Love God 3) don’t tell lies. Who among us does this every day? Our job as “liberal evangelists” is to come up with ways to do these things and convince others to do them with us.
In this season of Advent, when our miracle began in some kind of birth of Jesus it is my prayer that all of us listen more than we speak, pay attention to the need that surrounds us and act accordingly. “Ye must be born again” we are told. Being born again happens to us every day and not just once. We are born again and again and again every time we are the miracle. Remember this during this season that speaks so strongly of birth and beginning. Begin to become the miracle and the Kingdom of God will reign in that moment.

A Clean Out Day

2004-11-26T23:57:00.000-05:00

It is funny how bitter arguments and hostility with someone you really love can just evaporate after a while. I think it can be true that the sun won't go down on the anger you have towards someone you love, sometimes.

My predictions as the househusband were correct: the amount of work was not satisfactory and she was upset with the state of the old house I have been fixing up. I could see her point- here I am, a teacher on summer hiatus, with no summer job lined up and all I have to do is get the other house fixed up. There still remained, as of yesterday, a lot of stuff to do. I had to finish the trim in the garage, begin the last stages of cleaning out the basement and many other little things that added up to not having enough done to be able to put the house up and sell it.

When we drove up to our shingled, three bedroom two and half bath house, I felt really tense. I even wondered if I had left the garage door down. I had, but things were not as they should have been.

No sugar tonight in my coffee, I sang to myself as my ass got chewed.

God I love her.

To Begin at the Beginning

2004-07-25T10:43:00.000-04:00

Today is post number one. How many people have begun a blog with this heading I will never know. Really unoriginal.

Today begins as a Sunday like many others. NPR til 10:00, paper and a smoothie- heading off to work on my old house I am trying to sell now. I have been working on this damned house for the entire summer and cannot seem to get it done yet. Today I am taking my wife with me to help. Undoubtedly she will be dissatisfied with:

1) The amount of work I have gotten done.
2) The quality of the work I have done.
3) The choices in decor that I have made (carpet style, stain color, etc) .

So what's the deal here? Do I apologize for the lack of taste and work and grovel at the feet of humility, recognizing that I am probably not a hard worker and have bad taste? Or do I defend my work as competent and adequate? Does it really matter and does any part of the universe hang in the balanace? I probably could have done more work and made better choices, but I like thinking that I do thebest I can.

later