What’s Up? 06/15/10

Tags

Anglican, Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bill Kristol, BP, immigration, Neo-cons, oil industry, racial profiling, Recipes, salad, Sarah Palin, seafood, soccer, Steven King, teabaggers, wingnuttery, world peace day

Ummm, it comes as no surprise certainly that God likes water. Planet earth is more water than solid terra firma. Hello? Well, could I inquire SIR? Can you spread it a bit more equitably?

I mean we aren’t so horrid as Oklahoma and Arkansas yet, but good grief.

The weather (I hesitate to call them people) humans are reduced to throwing darts at a board or reading tea leaves.

Which all means that we snuck down to Cedar Rapids with the intent to get groceries, advised that a shower or two might occur here and there. Uhuh, yeah, right. Can you spell GULLY WASHER that went on forever and is still going on? The Contrarian was decidedly piqued as he carted in load after load of soggy fare into the kitchen. And I was none too joyful myself.

I feel a rant coming on, and so be prepared with seat belts and smelling salts tomorrow. I can so far control it, but by tomorrow, well, read fireworks.

Simply Recipes has a lovely summer salad of white beans and Tuna. This is, as she points out, extremely versatile, allowing myriad substitutes. Add some crusty bread, and ya got a really nice hot day meal. (Should we ever see the end of this freakin’ RAIN that is.) Oops, rant suppression!

Case you are unaware, when I’m ranty these days, I tend to channel Lewis Black. I used to channel Roseanne, so I think it’s a bit of an improvement. Try to think Black when you read. I promise it’s usually funnier that way.

As you know, we have our own resident wingnut in IOWA, name of Steven King (no not  the writer). This one managed to find 12 people who agreed with him and apparently are the only voters in his district. Anyway, said asshat suggested that racial profiling was part of the good arsenal of law enforcement which also includes the use of one’s sixth sense, and good foot apparel knowledge. None of this should be done for purposes of discriminating of course. Ahhh, yeah.  You should read to the end, and see what he said about Obama. Seriously, this man is an idiot. And he’s all ours. Go find your own. Reported also in the Iowa Independent here.

World Peace Day is next Monday. The world is ranked by dangerousness and you can see the sorry state of affairs. Iraq tops the most dangerous. It’s not a pretty sight, sadly. Much thanks to Joe.My.God. for the h/t.

Mauigirl has become a good blogging friend of many of us. Her mother, who has been having difficulty for some time, has passed. She writes a moving tribute here. Mimi, thanks for telling us all about your mother.

Probably only of interest to Episcopalians, but it seems the Archbishop of Canterbury, wishing to stir the pot further, denied our Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, the right to wear her mitre or carry her bishop’s crosier when she preached at Southwark Cathedral last week. Petty to say the least. How long can we stay in the Anglican Communion?

We all know that most mine owners flagrantly ignore safety regulations. What we learned is that most oil companies don’t except one: BP. Is there any sane reason why ANY country should allow them to drill offshore? This is a company that deserves bankruptcy and a slow slithering away into oblivion. They are beyond disgust.

TomCat didn’t pick up the Steven King wingnuttery but he got a few from the usual players, and some new ones. Like the loaves and fishes, there is no bottom to the barrel of idiots that rise to the surface of GOP political circles. Teabuggery on Parade is the article you’ll want to seek.

Andrew Sullivan has a pretty interesting take on Bill Kristol and the neo-cons. I like his conclusion–a Palin presidential run–which I can only conclude means we win!

Tengrain reports that Sarah (that woman is an idiot) Palinator is on her way to Britain to meet with the Thatcher woman. (Doesn’t England have a quarantine requirement for Mooselinis?) The Brits have this to say. Or perhaps she might tour that volcano in Iceland and slip? Getting her out of the country is step one. I figure we should come up with something to keep her from getting back in.

Okay…take a deep breath. Didyaknowthatworldcupsoccerisaleftwingconspiracy? Well, Rush and Glenn and all the usual batchitcrazy media nuts are sure to tell ya all about it. I’ve said it a gazillion times: YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP! Tomorrow, how Obama plans a world take over with ice cream (but only Chocolate of course!)

Enough for today kids. Be safe, be sane, and well, be on guard against the aliens among us.

Advertisements

Good for the Soul?

Tags

Anglican, confession, religion, sacrament of reconciliation, sin

Sin is not a big topic these days from the pulpit. In most pulpits anyway. People think such sermons are a downer, and church hierarchy theorizes that it keeps people home. Who wants to ruin a perfectly good Sunday being told you’re lower than a polecat in a chicken coop?

Sin is a big topic in some pulpits when it has to do with preaching about what others are doing wrong. Plenty of time is spent nodding as the preacher intones how this or that group is doomed to hellfire for practicing this or that thing. That packs them in, and makes most people feel good by comparison.

We had a sermon on sin today. And it wasn’t a sermon that made me feel bad, rather I found it enlightening, and a good reminder. Sin: Self Ish Ness. Sums it up pretty darn good doesn’t it? That’s what our rector said. And I think she is very right here. So what to do? How about Soul in Need? Yep, that works too. Or self image needy? Uhuh.

None of these were my thoughts. But they all are worthwhile in describing what is gone amok when we sin. We are not trusting God, not listening, not acting. We are stubbornly thinking of ourselves.

What to do? Confession is, as they say, good for the soul. We, in the Episcopal Church, generally do a community confession each week. I do one daily with the Office. The Episcopal Church has a rite of reconciliation, and provides for private confession. If one asks that is.

The Roman Catholic church is big on confession. Strike that. They used to be. By the time I joined in 1994, they had pretty much stopped regular confession. The priest was ostensibly there on Saturday afternoon, before Mass to hear them. He probably would have been shocked has anyone made the request.

Most parishes had a communal confession sometime during Advent and during Lent. You walked up to the priest (usually a few extra priests volunteered to help out) and you gave one sin, and then you all got a communal penance.

So in reality, TEC does more with confession than most Roman Catholic parishes, at least all the ones that I ever attended. One Our Father, three Hail Marys.

I don’t know what Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians do. I am pretty sure Baptists don’t do much in that vein. I don’t know about Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.

Many don’t consider it a sacrament. Many are especially against the concept that you confess to anyone other than God herself. I can pretty much understand that. I don’t think it’s required. But I’m still not sure it’s not useful.

My rector says she makes a private confession twice yearly. She thinks it is valuable. The more I think about it, I think I agree.

What stops most of us I suspect is that we develop relationships with our priests and pastors. We don’t want to tell them of some of the things we think and do. We’re ashamed. We’re not worried they will “tell” but we are concerned that they will think less of us. And most of us want our religious leaders to think well of us.

Yet, our clergy are trained to receive our confessions, at least those that use the sacrament. They have as they say, “heard it all before” and are all too aware of the foibles of the human being. After all, they know only too well their own sins, so I suspect they judge us a good deal less than we might think.

It is hard still to speak openly about our failures. It is painful.

But, I think it should be hard and it should be painful. As I sit at the kitchen table each morning and recite:

Most merciful God, I confess, that I have sinned against you,

In thought word and deed, by what I have done and by what

I have left undone.

I have not loved you with my whole heart, I have not loved

my neighbor as myself.

I am truly sorry and I humbly repent.

For the sake of your son Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, and forgive me,

that I may delight in your will and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your name, Amen.

I confess, that sometimes I recite without thinking much. And that’s no confession at all.

Our rector says we are going to pause before recitation from now on, to give us all time to think of our sins. I think that helps. But I agree with her, that forcing yourself to sit and speak to another person is of greater help.

It has little to do with the absolution given. It has everything to do with being forced to confront our own culpability head on. I recall the very few times I made private confession. I felt ever so much more at peace with God. I felt reconciled. I felt forgiven. This is not to say that it is required to be done this way to be effective–that would be silly.

What it means is that the process is not for God–he knows without our saying a word whether we are truly contrite. The process is for us. And the process of private confession lifts a burden from us in a way that simply doesn’t happen in our private admissions of guilt.

I wish my church would return to a practice of private confession as normative. Being a Christian is serious business, and we don’t seem to take it as such all too often. This seems a good way to start.

What’s Up? 06/10/10

Tags

Anglican, Anglican Communion, Archaeology, environment, Humor, Jacques Cousteau, oceans, Sarah Palin, The Episcopal Church

Well, ya know my day has been a bit troubled from the last post, but frankly, I’m letting it go pretty easily. I’m praying for a woman to re-prioritise her life in a more meaningful way.

Other than that, the rolls are baking in the oven, making the house smell wonderful and the Contrarian has completed his gardening for the day and is busy re-reading a number of his short stories–reading me snippets here and there, much to my delight.

I am turning to see what the intertubes have collected for me to read, and if I find a thing or two that you might like, I’ll pass them along. Agreed?

Okay, my first stop was over at vodkaandgroundbeef. I find her writing simply hilarious. Okay, I won’t mention it every day, but really you can’t miss her.

Almost as delish is the post from Joe.My.God–did Sarah get a boob job? Oh dish that dirt! And we aren’t even linking to Perez Hilton. Miz Feminista coulda? Ranks up there with Carly’s gossipy girl snarl about Boxer’s hairdo. Oh ladies, remember, we are about POWER and TRUTH aren’t we?

Don’t know about you, but I watched a lot of Jacques Cousteau specials growing up. He more than anyone taught us the beauty and fragility of the oceans. Stephany Anne Golberg has a nice story about his life at The Smart Set.

Who killed Otzi is the oldest murder mystery going.  Seriously, like over 5,000 years old. That’s older than Columbo by at least 15 years I think, or Hawaii-50’s “Book em DanO.” Heck if that don’t titillate you, then they have a story on the oldest leather shoe ever found too. I mean you gotta know this stuff right?

The Archbishop of Canterbury has turned a cold shoulder to the Episcopal Church for failing to abide by his wishes. Tobias Haller strikes the perfect note in his poem at In a Godward Direction.

For all you anal types (I tend to be one) here’s a way to rethink and revise that constant urge to live by the to-do list. Brought to you by Balance in Me.

Questions, questions, always questions. Answers are optional. How is God the Creator is a thought provoking essay on what exactly do we mean when we say that God created everything? Brought to you by Closer to Truth, via Science and Religion Today.

Enough for today. Have a good one!

Opening our Arms and Hearts

Tags

Anglican, Catholic, Episcopalian, faith, ritual, social concerns, theology, worship

It’s funny to me how a church picks me. Yes, you read that correctly, a church picks me. I don’t believe I pick it. I simply come into it and wait, with patient hope. Is this the one?

Plenty have not been the one, and I have tarried a few weeks, seldom longer before moving on. Sometimes I know it at the first step inside the door. This is not my place. God doesn’t speak to me here. I listen. I act. There are plenty of places to wrangle about truth and comfort. I follow the Spirit on where to church myself.

Similarly, the attributes of a church are not always apparent early on. Much must often be worked through, experienced and digested before the finer points of a congregation and its structure can be realized for the precious pearl that it is. Such has been my experience anyway.

I could write volumes day after day of the joy I find in Christ Church. Most of it, I was unaware of until months had gone by. As I become more and more a part of this family, I learn new things that make my choice (the Spirit’s choice) to reside here among these people of faith, the right thing for me.

One thing I realized recently is that Christ Church is a radically open atmosphere in which faith is tenderly received and nurtured. For those of you unacquainted, an Episcopal church is often referred to as “Catholic light,” meaning that we look a lot like a Roman Catholic church in ritual. Dogmatically we are not so much alike.

That means there is a rather extensive list of physical actions that are available. There is genuflecting,  deep bowing or head bowing, curtsying, kneeling, sitting, standing, crossing. There is worship with heads and hands uplifted, or not. There are those who sing during communion and those who don’t.

All of these are practiced in my church. Everyone does “their thing” as it were. Most anything is acceptable, though I suspect anyone dancing down the aisle speaking in tongues and waving snakes might meet with some shocked looks and sharp intakes of breath. But you get my point. Rituals are broad, and people execute them as they see fit, more or less.

We in a word, tolerate, some significant differences in our congregation and the means by which they wish to worship. (We actually have two rites, one much more conservative than the other.) Yet we are one family, and we come to, I believe, rejoice in our differences. They cease to be matters of tolerance and become the beauty of the diversity that we are.

We are told each week, that Jesus calls us to the table, not the church. He calls us whether we have been “good” or not so good. The church provides the facility for God’s call and serves in the capacity of “hands” for God.

While this is all well and good as is, there is more to this type of openness I believe. By supporting and upholding us all in our varied personal ritualistic practices, the church draws us toward being more tolerate of each other’s theological differences.

Indeed we have theological differences. And some of them are deep and painful to us. Some of them you know for they are published by article and lawsuit. Yet, we have come to find in the faces of those with whom we disagree fundamentally on some issues, more places where we are able to agree.

I don’t want to make more of this than there is. The disagreements, as I said, run deep. Yet, we are able to still look upon each other as persons with sincere feelings and beliefs. We are not judging each other as evil or intentionally mean spirited. We see the humanity, the face of Jesus more clearly in the faces of those whom we have difficulty understanding.

I have concluded that the openness of our worship practices, the willingness not to be stultifying in our routines, stretches us in ways that pay off when we are called to work out the real issues that divide our faith tradition. It may not make the critical difference, but it helps.

It is another of the many reasons that I find myself so happy in Christ Church. Last Sunday, we were asked to group together in small numbers and discuss briefly why we are here, in this place, in this church. Joyously, I laughed as I turned and realized that my conversation would be with a couple of “visitors” from Minnesota. I was so happy to share my joy with them, and I could see from their faces that my words had an impact.

They are not contemplating driving from Minnesota every weekend of course, but I suspect they will take something home to their parish. Joy spreads, and the reasons for it become known. New ways of seeing and relating are explored. Opportunities become available. We must and should take advantage of each one in furthering the mission of Jesus.

Jesus was about compassion, forgiveness, and in including those who have so often been denied and turned away. We are a welcoming church. We welcome you, should you ever find yourself with nothing to do on a Sunday morning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

What is the Message? (Part II)

Tags

Anglican, bible, Episcopal Church, God, Jesus, religion, Robin Meyers, theology

Robin Meyer’s in his book “Saving Jesus from the Church,” makes an important and seminal point. Our churches today, at least too many of them are creedal in nature, and are self-centered. It’s all about what you must believe and nothing about what you should do. It’s believe this, and get this in return.

I’ll be reviewing the book later this week I, and don’t want to delve too deeply into his argument, but in a sense I think they reflect what Presiding Bishop Schiori was getting at in her remarks at the convention has week. We too often spend all our efforts as church in defining what a person must believe in order to be saved. We in essence talk almost exclusively on what it means to worship Christ, instead of what it means to follow Jesus.

This is what falls so clangingly on the ears of the fallen away or never there people of our country and world. The see the hypocrisy over what we claim about Christ and that we fail to do little to live out his teachings. We ask folks to swallow a set of dogmas and creeds, that ask us to suspend belief and if we do so, we are somehow saved for a life of eternal bliss. Yet we don’t act in any way worthy of that end.

We insist that all inconsistencies and out right falsehoods in the bible are somehow reconciled when they are not. Archaeological evidence doesn’t support the claims, nor does biblical exegesis. We tell them they don’t understand, but in fact they do. They come down essentially where all the scholars do, or most of them. We lose the beautiful message of Genesis in an attempt to prove that Adam and Eve were real and that somehow we are born sinful. We concoct strange doctrines of “limbo,” since abandoned, to “cover” babies who die before being baptized. We look foolish, we sound foolish, and rational thinking persons turn away in disgust at our voodoo explanations.

It’s all about my salvation, and my sin, and my confessions, and my proper worship. And faith is not about me. It’s about, as Bishop Schiori rightly says, US. We remove the layers of “church” speak from the bible and we are left with the wonder of an itinerant preacher who was so mesmerizing in what he said that his followers forever felt they were changed and that he never left them. He taught us to love and be respectful of each other, to help one another, to feed, clothe, nurse, and comfort each other. He taught us right relationship with God, and not the Pharisaic alternative of ritual, and tradition done for tradition’s sake.

But we, in our busyness to organize and spread the Word, and be the leader, shut out all the voices that didn’t sound like ours and we instituted the ritual and the tradition all over again, just changing it to “ours” rather than “theirs.” We, in direct opposition to what the Jewish rabbi taught us, made it all us and them again. Join our club, or risk damnation. Believe what we believe.

Someone actually said yesterday on a forum that the Episcopal Church had gotten “too caught up in social justice.” How does one get too caught up? When is there too much social justice? This sort of orthodoxy is insane to me. It’s incantations and recitations and somehow God is pleased? Seriously, people argue that because some words were changed in ordination liturgy, Episcopalians have “lost” apostolic succession. This of course from the church that wants to claim it exclusively to itself. How convenient one must ask. But surely, you don’t think God cares a whit do you? About the words used? Might the heart be his concern?

Meanwhile, millions of people consider themselves spiritual and feel something bigger than themselves but have no vehicle that gathers that energy and love. For they can’t return to the purveyors of a lie. The lie being that words and such make us Christian, make us Godly people. They can smell a rat. 

That is the field we need to tend. All those who desire for meaning in their lives, who want to make a difference, who want to feel connected with humanity and the world. We, the institutional church, can serve as that meeting place, if and only if we return to the center of things. God. And God is in the message delivered by that sublime carpenter. Love God, and love neighbor. In fact, by loving neighbor we love God. Turn no one away. Stop worrying about what they believe, and welcome their help and service. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Heal the sick. Visit the incarcerated. Live Jesus.

I am an Episcopalian because I believe that my Church gets that. It is teaching me how to live that out. I am grateful. I am blessed. I am being transformed. As John Dominic Crossan has said, “Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”

Reasonable and Holy

Tags

Anglican, bible, Book Reviews, Episcopal, gay rights, God, Jesus, Reasonable and Holy, same-sex marriage, Tobias S. Haller

As I mentioned the other day, we just conducted a short forum discussion at our church on the issue of same-sex marriage. In light of the recent Iowa Supreme Court decision opening the way for same-sex civil marriage, our diocese is suddenly having to grapple with how we will handle it.

We had already been blessings such unions, but  now we must determine whether we as a Church will move forward into the actual marriage arena.

So this book could not come at a better time. I am deeply thankful to Church Publishing in allowing me this opportunity to review this singularly invaluable book on the subject.

Many of you are fans of Tobias Stanislas Haller already from his wonderful and engaging website, “In a Godward Direction.” It will be no surprise that he has written an extraordinary book in Reasonable and Holy.

Frankly I must admit that I was somewhat surprised as I read it. I have read a reasonable amount in this area, and was prepared to revisit the usual issues of what is authentic Paul, and so on, and the various arguments that certain portions of scripture, namely 1Timothy should be ignored. That is not what I found.

Tobias Haller is a good deal smarter than that. He wisely notes that there is plenty of evidence of redaction and so on, but that in the end, we must deal with the text as received by the Church. In this I think he is right. The entire discussion gets side tracked when we first have to convince that perhaps not all of scripture is “valid” in some way.

This of course, is not to say, that he doesn’t examine the text quite thoroughly and make a fine case that much of what we “think”  it says, is inaccurate. He does this by “unpacking” the text as it seems to relate to same-sex relationships. By the use of rabbinic writings, and those of Richard Hooker, as well as countless theologians and biblical experts, Haller unpeels the onion of meaning attached to the various words of scripture that we have come to believe mean homosexual behavior.

Tobias does this in excruciating detail. I don’t mean that to mean boring in any sense, but he essentially leaves no argument unanswered. From the most serious and large to the most silly and small, he responds in a gentle, reasonable, thoughtful manner. At no time is he dismissive of those he argues against. He looks for common ground.

Without doing violence to the text themselves, he makes a good case that marriage is about more than procreation and that this is supported by Genesis itself, particularly in the second creation story of Genesis 2. He shows how God means for humans to  love and support one another and that these are as valid a goal of marriage as procreation.

Haller points out, that we don’t have to ignore or reverse Church teaching, so much as we must and can grow past it, much as we have done with other issues down through the ages. We have adapted scripture to a changing world, and  we can recognize that there is an overriding concern expressed in the bible and by Jesus that we love and uphold good rather than remain tied to traditions that no longer serve that purpose.

There are several examples of what are rather clear directives in the law, yet even though they were held to apply in the early Christian communities, we have long since discarded them. For instance, the ban against eating the blood of animals was upheld in the Jerusalem Council in Acts, yet we have abandoned that practice largely, though the Eastern Orthodox still adhere to it.

Similarly, there is a clear ban on usury, the use of interest, yet our economy today is totally dependent on the concept and we now define that prohibition to mean only “unreasonable” interest.

Haller is by no means the first to claim that the so-called prohibitions against homosexual behavior are deeply tied to cultic idolatry, prostitution, and rape. It has been the considered opinion of many that this is the case, and that the case of loving, monogamous same-sex relationships were not even thought of in that time and place. Thus we do no real violence to scripture in declaring that gay and lesbian relationships that are mutually loving and supportive should be excluded from scriptural restriction.

The book itself is less than 200 pages, but it is literally bursting with excellent exegetical scholarship. It is most clear that Tobias Haller is an excellent mind, and has thoroughly, carefully, and with great insight examined the biblical field as it relates to this subject.

I suspect that it will go down as one of the “classics” in the field, and will be used by countless colleges and universities as a primary text for discussion. I know that it has served me well in deeply enlightening me on the nuances of argument to be made. I have always felt slightly unsatisfied by the arguments so far, and Tobias has given me a real sense of feeling grounded in truth here.

It can serve as well for a text in our various churches when and if we choose to address the issue. And I submit, that we must address it. We are faced with a deep unfairness here. Our lesbian and gay sisters and brothers are enormous assets to our ecclesial life, and we squander their gifts and talents at our peril. It is what Jesus would do I submit. This book helps us get where we need to be, and does so with gentle tenderness.

Let me close with Tobias’s own words:

But the body that matters most at this point is the body of Christ, the church, of which and in which we are individual members–and in that edifice we build with what we have and what we are. Do our actions build it up, or tear it down? Do we edify as building blocks and living stones, or serve as stumbling blocks and stones of scandal about which the builders are bewildered, as indeed Jesus said of himself? As organs in the body, do we contribute to its overall well-being, or spend our energy in attempts at ecclesiastical self-mutilation in removing portions deemed cancerous or malignant, but which may be vital to the health of the whole? Do we overly concern ourselves with outward appearances and forms, or seek the content and the values that lie within? Do we concern ourselves with what goes into the church, or what comes out of it? Do we love much, or little?

Tobias Haller shows us the way to a new maturity and lovingness in our faith. Let us pray that we are wise enough and loving enough to respond.

Spiritual Growing

Tags

Anglican, bible, Catholicism, fundalmentalism, God, Jesus, religion, spirituality

"Mountain Path" by Oliver Follmi

As I person aware that I am on a spiritual journey, I recognize the fits and starts, the slow downs and the dead stops. This is the way of the walk I am sure. Where we were yesterday, though perhaps not apparent to us, is not where we are today.

A few days ago, the Contrarian and I were watching “Monk”. It is a show the Contrarian gets a kick out of, although the plots are transparent and unrealistic. Still the idiosyncratic obsessive compulsive issues that Adrian Monk exhibits make for amusement. I, of course, adore pointing out that my dear husband has a few OC issues of his own. He retorts that I am ” dedicated to rituals.”

I agree in some sense that that is true, but pointed out that I don’t have to do things necessarily in “order” to satisfy my compulsions. I’m more akin to the person who has taken delayed gratification to a level of near perfection.

As I stated my morning routine, I pointed out that I like to get that treadmill business done first, and then the housework. After that in no particular order I cook, do my devotional work, and read my art history. The Contrarian immediately grew quizzical at my use of the term “devotional work.” Sounds to me that’s a should kind of thing rather than a want kind of thing. Work has a negative connotation a bit don’t you think?

Yes, I guess it does, but not always surely. Many people are totally in love with their “work” whether it be cancer research or being a baker. But agreed, most think of work as that thing that has to be done to produce money to live.

Devotions, I tried to explain, is a thing done as an offering to God. It is a commitment one makes, and does one’s best to keep. That means that some days you don’t feel like it at all, and other days you do. Some days you get great peace from the practice, and other days, you shrug your shoulders and get on with the next item on the agenda.

It is much like the journey itself, uneven, fractured on occasion, filled with sharp turns and gentle curves. It has surprises, and the same old thing, and you never exactly know which will pop up.

I’m convinced that’s all us. I think God is constant. We just some times take deep breaths of God and sometimes we breath shallowly.  I was happy to read Jan’s blog the other day and get a reference to a book on prayer. My prayer life is something I struggle with a good deal. I find it most deeply penetrating for me in church, and less so most every where else. I understand the “dry” periods, but seldom have the peak ones.  Anyway, she had a list of books, one of which she had read and found helpful. I zoomed over to Amazon and placed an order.

I then on impulse ordered another by Dominic Crossan about Paul. This came from some work I was doing preparing to teach a class on Paul and women in church.

The class is at my church. We have been studying Paul on marriage, homosexuality, women and governing authority. The book we have been using is by Victor Paul Furnish and is called “The Moral Teachings of Paul.” It iwill be included with the other particulars in a few days on my book page.

It has been a delight to be in this group. Most of us are from about mid 40’s upward. I suspect one or two are in their late 70’s or early 80’s. But to a one, not a one would dream of being called a fundamentalist. They are curious, liberal, open minded people.  Mention that some of Paul’s letters probably weren’t authored by him, and not an eye is blinked.  You could see the happiness in each face as we concluded from our study and reading that Paul’s so-called admonitions against homosexuals were not worth the paper they were printed on. The same for his so-called rebukes to women to “remain silent in church.”

Not a single of of these folks was troubled in any way with claims that we can’t read scripture literally, and more important that we don’t necessarily have accurate copies. We don’t always know who wrote those we do have, and we have to give due consideration to the world that these writers were living in. Just as an aside, but as a point, the word homosexual was unknown in Jesus’ time. It was not a term used until about the 18th century. Jesus of course never spoke to the issue at all. And Paul’s remarks were made under some notions about the subject that have nothing to do with most homosexuals today.

My point in all this, is that I am in some sense on a spiritual upswing. I am actively seeking to read more and think more, pray more, and act more. In a couple of weeks were are having a Saturday day of silence at our church. There will be some, I believe, guided meditations. This is only one part of the Lenten program prepared for this year. I am so looking forward to it.

I have learned over the years that one must seize the day as they say. When these periods come upon us, we must grab and run as fast as we can or are called. There are plenty enough of the times when even the daily practices are a chore. I suppose, in some ways, we follow the liturgical seasons. We gear up during Advent and hit high gear by Lent and Easter. We withdraw and become dormant during the summer. Summer church attendance tends to support that idea.

Whatever it is, however it happens, I am spending more time with God than usual. I laugh saying that, since one should theoretically spend all one’s time with God, consciously too. That is surely what the mystics and monks and other cloistered religious tell us.

I had to laugh the other day. Sneaking around a forum, reading, I read a post that just tickled me so much. A man, studying to join the Catholic church was angry as get out at his priest for not being “orthodox.” The priest made some remarks about Harriet Tubman. He said that the Episcopalians were in process of sanctifying her, and that “we should to.” “Oh no,” said the man, “that will never do. Why would we do anything an Episcopalian did, and for goodness sake that women wasn’t a Catholic.”

Another man lamented that after years of being an atheist, he wanted to return to his church, but if the bible wasn’t true in every respect, how could he? If one word is not true of course, how could anything be believed?

I said nothing to the first, just wasting my breath. As to the second, I tried to explain how faith is not based on a book but on a divine man. I said a lot of things, but I don’t know if I reached the poor guy or not. He knew enough real information that he could not fall for any simplistic fundamentalist harangue, but he genuinely seemed to feel that it was an all or nothing proposition. If Jesus wasn’t born in Bethlehem as Matthew claimed, well Christianity was worthless.

I’m in a place where such stuff as this causes a shake of the head, prehaps a remark or two gently made about the point of faith, and then I bless them silently and move on. God has to work the miracle here. I can be but a witness to my faith, quietly and carefully polite.

When you think about it, we are all engaged in the journey along a long spectrum of consciousness and an even longer one as regards the usefulness of the paths we are choosing. We’re akin to the ants, each scurrying this way and that, following, leading, crossing paths. I wonder if ants tell others that that way is unprofitable–no food there. I try to tell people sometimes, but darn, they seldom listen. Perhaps that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

I wish God would let me know. But then, that would only be the first of a thousand thousand questions. I figure he knows that, and resists the impulse to start that conversation!