My Confession

Tags

Autobiography, Catholic Church, Episcopal Church, Inspirational, life in the meadow, spiritual journey

 “To every day

        turn, turn, turn

There is a season

         turn, turn, turn

And a time to every purpose under heaven.”

A number of images, a number of verses, both in scripture and in song come to mind.

This is a difficult, perhaps one of the most difficult, posts I’ve ever written, but one that was destined to be written, and I’ve known that for some time.

This summer has been a hard one, but not in any way that should bring cries of “not fair” or “my sympathies” or anything so dramatic. It’s just been hard. Weather and bad lanes, cars breaking down in more ways than one, finances stretched more than one would like, all this and then some. Not nearly as awful as people who are truly suffering from financial ruin, or awful illness, or just plain lousy never-ending bad luck. Just the kind that makes a person say, “I’m glad that week, month, season, or year is OVER!”

What it has meant to me is that I’ve been hermited in the meadow for long stretches. And that played havoc with my church attendance. At first there was great sadness, anger, and furious shaking of fists at “fate.” Then there was reflection and a digging away at the surface “reasons” for these emotions, and yes, picking off of old not-yet-healed scabs.

Painful, but increasingly necessary as I uncovered things I had not dreamt of. Things I had buried deep, and thought were dead and gone. But as we all know, that seldom happens.

I realized that my church had become very important to me, mostly for the social aspects. I had found a home of like-minded individuals, like-minded theologically but also politically. I could speak my piece and find nodding heads.

What heady stuff is that? Heady indeed I can tell you. From clergy on down, I found such a collection of genuinely nice, intelligent, educated, spirit-driven, mission-motivated people as could ever be found in one place.

For those of  you who don’t know the story, I shant go into it in-depth, but in general the story goes:

I was a life-long Catholic wannabe. I finally figured out I could become one, and did so at age 43. I nearly entered the convent. I didn’t, and met and fell in love with a gorgeously warm and loving man. I married him.

He, had been married before and divorced. Holy Mother Church frowns upon that. Much much later, I realized that. No one ever turned me away as a mortal sinner (which they would claim I am), but I felt the rejection. Ironic wouldn’t you say?

I contrived to be a “spiritual” person without a  church until someone pointed me in the direction of the Episcopal Church. I went, I saw, I adopted “Catholic lite.” I was happy, as I said.

Until, as I also said, I had to work through my sorrow at not being there. My “works” were my new identity, I was someone who was “in the know” a “go to” person somewhat. People knew who I was. I basked in my own sense of importance. Was I important? Not so very, but I felt it, and that was what mattered.

Digging down through the layers, I uncovered a still deep-searing pain at my Catholic loss. The Episcopal church liturgically met my needs precisely because it was “most” Catholic.

I looked back over the two years and saw that I had tried to be “tsk tsk” about Catholic short-comings and failings. I had always freely criticized Her when an active participant and I had continued, though most thought it was out of anger and hurt, though mostly it was not. But of course such criticism falls on deaf ears when you are a “former” Catholic.

The germ of longing seemed to grow, even as I fought it. I truly did fight it. I have no desire to be a thorn among the roses. I don’t relish being in the minority. I don’t desire to feel like a back-bencher. But that is what I would be, will be. I’ve written a bit about this on another blog called rather appropriately I think, Walking in the Shadows.

I found myself, even almost against my will, digging out the old Missal, the old Christian Prayer book with the Daily Office. A quick stop at the USCCB, located me as to week and Mass readings. I have been praying a rosary every day for weeks now. It is all too familiar, and, frankly it became deeply comforting to me.

Last Sunday, I returned to the Mass. It was as it always was. Comfort food for the soul I guess. Mine at least.

I am not sure where I will land. Whether I enter into a specific parish or not remains to be seen, but I sense I may not, being more content to be a traveler, seeking the better homilist this week, the more awe-inspiring interior the next. I truly don’t know.

The Contrarian remains confused at all this, a great sounding board, but not offering advice. He is puzzled why I would leave a user-friendly place to wander alone in the wilderness so to speak. I cannot answer, except to say that I am so thoroughly Catholic that I must. As odd as it may seem to one not a “cradle” Catholic, I am defined by it, and I suspect I always will be.

Nothing much has changed. I still rail at its inadequacies, its horrific failings, its out-of-touch dogmas. But I can do so as a “Catholic” now and not a Protestant.

I owe so much to the Episcopal church. To all the fine people there, I owe such a debt of gratitude. They are, en mass the finest group I have ever known. I can say quite literally that I never met anyone there I disliked.

They taught me that Protestants are often more right in dogma than Catholics on a few things.

They taught me that one can disagree without being disagreeable and that serious and important differences don’t have interfere in a coming together at the table.

They taught me the inherent goodness of all faiths. Where I had believed it on the surface before, I now KNOW it to be true.

They taught me that the truest message of Christ is service to others, and not personal salvation. In fact, the first leads to the second without effort.

They taught me that I will work for and support women’s ordination in the Roman church with unswerving dedication, for I was blessed with such role models in the Episcopal church. (That’s generally true online as well, as I know a few women priests here.)

I know that many, perhaps most will not understand. I don’t expect that. What I have come to see is that each of us is a unique spiritual gift and we all are nourished in different ways. What is of deepest importance to me, is of no consequence to you perhaps. That, I am convinced, is the way things are meant to be. Our relationship to God is uniquely our own.

A weight lifts from me. I look forward to the adventure. Parker, God bless him, bit his tongue, when I said I was finally going to write this. I smiled and said, “I know what you want to say. Perhaps I should keep silent, for in six months, I may change my mind again? Is that about it.”

He smiled. “uhuh, just about.”

And I may, but I doubt it. They say that about Catholics you know. That once you are one, you are always one. It’s just a matter of whether you are home or away. I think that might be true. It is for me I think.

I can only follow as best I can. So far? I don’t know. Perhaps this was the journey I was intended to make, returning to Catholicism with a more mature sense of what it and I am. Time will tell.

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.”

What is the Message? (Part I)

Tags

bible, biblical exegesis, Episcopal Church, faith, God, Jesus, religion, Roman Catholic Church, theology

I was asked a question the other day, and though I answered it, it seemed there was more to say, and what better place than here.

Paraphrasing, the person said, “the Episcopal Church seems like it reflects  60’s cultural liberalism,” and “what you declare as conservative, I see as mere orthodoxy.”

Now I think the question is really broader than that. Polling suggests that most main stream Protestant denominations as well as Roman Catholicism have strong “liberal” wings, if not outright majorities, at least on some issues. Are we just hippies turned religionists?

Of course, I can only speak for myself. I am truly a child of the 60’s, and I learned about racism, sexism (gay and women), and ideas of justice and fairness during that era. I learned that what my government told me and taught me was not always true, and that American entitlement philosophy often led to “anything goes” as long as it furthers American interests both at home and abroad.

No doubt I do bring that sense of justice and fairness and equality to the table when I approach faith. No doubt others of my generation do as well. Except that some of my generation didn’t see it that way at all, and it has confounded me ever since that they don’t. But they don’t. So I figure they are as equally dispersed within the religions as us “liberals” are. I think on balance it’s a wash.

But the Episcopal church on balance is liberal, I cannot deny that, nor would I wish to. In fact, it is in the vanguard so to speak, and perhaps this explains some of it’s troubles of late with various parts of congregations splitting off in anger and dismay as the Church proper seems to be moving toward even more inclusiveness.

I’m way to new to the Church to discuss these issues with any authority, but I can speak generally I think. I give my thoughts alone.

This comes at a propitious moment in time I think, as I’m reading a book that is making my heart soar a bit, Robin Meyers, “Saving Jesus From the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus.”  And then our Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schiori gave a speech at the General Convention last week and said this:

The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention. Ubuntu. That word doesn’t have any “I”s in it. The I only emerges as we connect – and that is really what the word means: I am because we are, and I can only become a whole person in relationship with others. There is no “I” without “you,” and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the one who created us. Some of you will hear a resonance with Martin Buber’s I and Thou and recognize a harmony. You will not be wrong.

All this seems to fit it seems to me into a theme. I guess the question is why are you Episcopalians and others so bent on upsetting the apple cart here? Surely we are about that business it seems to me, but for only good purposes I think.

First let me explain how I come to where I am. As many of you know, I was formerly a Roman Catholic. I came to that faith eagerly, fulfilling a life long dream. I was taught the faith by what I would define as a very orthodox nun of some 50 years experience. I was not taught the bible was “the word of God.” I was not taught it was infallible. I was taught that it was “inspired.”

I took that to mean that God graced the various writers with the ideas he wished to get across and left it to them to develop the stories, commensurate with their time and location. Thus Genesis was not “real” in the sense that God created the planet Earth in six days, but that he stood as Creator of all that is. Similarly, Eve didn’t talk to a serpent, rather humans have forgotten who their creator is, in their  grand ability to think and “create” themselves. Our sin is in thinking we do this all by ourselves.

I tried very hard to accept all the teachings of the Church, on homosexuality, divorce, abortion, and so on. I believed as a matter of pure faith in the resurrection, and salvation, and the efficacy of confession through the priest and so on. I was taught that birth control was within the personal conscience of the persons involved, determined by their best belief as to what they could personally sustain within their marriage and family.

Then I went back to college into graduate school at a Catholic college. There my teachers were theologians and biblical scholars, one priest and two nuns, all with doctorates in these fields. I learned to read critically and I learned that there was a good deal of the bible that was suspect in terms of being both original, and true. Much had been reorganized and added to, subtracted from, and so forth for the purpose of convincing others of what the writer truly personally believed, and what the early church had come to believe. Much of it back filled and made Jesus say things that justified the situation the early followers found themselves in.

Again, this wasn’t out of a desire to deceive so much as a desire to further the legitimate cause of convincing others of what they truly believed to be true.  Jesus, it seems never meant to start any church, he lived and died a committed Jew, wishing to reform his community. The church, later added those words, to combat various “heresies” and to give legitimacy to their  place as THE church, from which they could claim direct linkage to Peter and the other apostles.

That’s a sampling of what I learned. To learned to see the Bible as a document, that served many purposes, political, and economic. It helped support nationalism, tolerance, intolerance as times required. It was overlaid again and again with later additions to account for changes in circumstances. But it still retains truth, and  historical “facts” about a Galilean man who had an extraordinary impact on people that has never ceased. I think that most “liberals” within the church have also come to see a similar reality. It doesn’t at all make us non-believers in God or Jesus, but it certainly changes the approach. Tomorrow we can look at that.

Short Takes on the Day, 04/13/09

Tags

Buddhism, Episcopal Church, gay rights, Iowa, Levi Johnson, Mel Gibson, Obama, pirates, Sarah Palin, Somalia, spirituality

Now that Easter is officially over (not really, but Easter Day has come and passed), it behooves us to return to some serious news again. There is just so much to talk about.

The dangerous drama that has been taking place off the coast of Somalia is now over and the captain of the American trawler was recovered unharmed from Somalian pirates.

While the wingnuts of the right and their punditry sycophants were howling that our President was not doing a thing and was caving into terrorists, of course saner heads prevailed in our leadership.

First of all the perpetrators were not terrorists but common thugs. Secondly our President was fully in command. Thirdly we have to thank the excellence of the Navy Seals who were able to remove the threat and save the captain free from any harm.  It’s regrettable that lives were lost of course, but this was handled it would appear with the utmost professionalism by both the Navy and the Administration. Kudos to both, and let the wingnutteries return to grousing about the pizza party.

***

The sniping continues from Sarah Moosey Hunter Palin, and as usual, she keeps sticking that high heel into her big mouth. Levi, once the soon to be wonderful son-in-law, is now the dude who was but a mistake on her daughter’s part.

Ever since Levi appeared on Tyra Banks, the snowballs have been flying, mostly one way. Where Levi claimed he lived with the Palin’s for a few months, Mama Palin says, “over my dead body.”

What’s worse, she says Bristol is about the business of extolling the virtues of abstinence as the proper way of a all young women not yet married. Problem is, Bristol is already on record as saying that while a lovely idea in theory, it “doesn’t work.”

I guess Sarah the Enforcer has had a word or two with her daughter. Course, Bristol continues to make up her own mind on these things we are assured. Sure, sure, sure, as long as it doesn’t interfere with mom’s courting of the religious right that is.

***

The Episcopal Cafe reports that the Obama’s attended Easter Sunday services at St. John’s Episcopal church in DC. This is not to say that the Obama’s have chosen this as their church, and actually it might be a wonderful thing if the Obama’s chose no church, but attended many different ones over the next four years. It might send a much needed message that there is value in all faith traditions, even those (gasp) not Christian.

The entire family received communion. The Episcopal church welcomes all baptized to the table of God.

***

Just one of those weirdnesses you never expect. When we learned here in the Peyton household of the anti-Jewish tendencies of one Mel Gibson, we swore off his movies, much as we had OJ’s. Course Gibson’s transgressions were not in the same league as murder, but after his bloody and ultra-orthodox rendition of Christ’s crucifixion, it added up to be enough for us.

Right wing Roman Catholics have long touted Mr. Gibson for his very very orthodox views.

Well hold on to your hats, it seems that Mrs. Gibson has filed for divorce. This is a huge no-no for those of the Roman persuasion and we can but guess how Mr. Gibson is reacting.

We find that they have in fact been separated for more than two years, his drunken adventures being some part of the catalyst it seems. Also there are rumors of “adultery” floating around.

Now we take the position, that Mr. Gibson is no better nor worse than any human and subject to all the frailties of the species. Yet, when you toot your orthodoxy as loud as has the above mentioned, it often comes back to bite you in the arse.

***

I planned on getting away from religious stuff for a bit, and truthfully, this isn’t religious, but spiritual. If you don’t have time to read much here today, make this your one stop. I tend to believe in serendipity, and I find it active here. Yesterday, in our sermon, Barbara told us not to get bogged down in the issue of “did the resurrection really happen.” Rather, she advised, live the resurrection, practice it daily. That is the value of it, and the lesson. Every athlete or musician knows the value of practice–you get better and better at it.

Dean Sluyter is a Buddhist, chaplain, and teacher. His words are magical in their simplicity and sense.

Live the Resurrection, live God, and stop worrying about believing. If it’s real, if you experience it, that is enough. Alleluia!

***

The nuttery league, known as the National Organization for Marriage, tells us that marriage is under attack. The Contrarian has stood ready for several days now, shotgun cocked and ready should those crazy gays invade our meadow and try to attack ours. So far so good. A round of applause for the Rethugs who continue to tie their wagon to this dying star.

***

Just wanted you to know that during the last week, nothing has changed and the following people are still crazy:

Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Bobby Jindal, James Inhofe, Lou Dobs, Michele Matlin, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, Michael Steele, Rep. Steven King (R. IA), Karl Rove, George W. Bush, John Bolton, Sarah Palin.  I’m sure the list is longer, but that’s all that come to mind right now. Boy the GOP is full of nuts isn’t it? What’s the likelihood statistically speaking that this many airheads could inhabit such a tiny little party?

***

Well, I’m off to cook up some farm fresh eggs, some sausage and fresh hashbrowns for dinner. Hope you find an interesting link or two.