Salt

Vermont

Went up to Vermont for a few days to see one of my former Greek teachers. A brilliant and disciplined scholar, we discussed a bit about the Episcopal Church. He'd met many Episcopalians in his journeys as a Classics scholar. He is a humanist, and religious only in the broad classical way. He loves mythology, and considers Jesus as being one powerful, worthwhile sort of myth.

I asked him about homosexuality in scripture. "I don't know how the church can defend homosexuality. If it believes that scripture has certain rules, it's pretty clear homosexuality wasn't a part of the church. It just looks like scripture isn't important to Episcopalians."

"Really, I mean, do you think it could be permissible? [that gay people shouldn't become priests]"

"No. but that's because there aren't any priests in the New Testament anyway. There's no ordination rite. If the church can invent the priesthood, when it's clearly based, not upon the teachings of Jesus, but upon the Old testament, then perhaps it can invent other things.

Christians shouldn't have priests to begin with" he said, matter of factly. "Paul wasn't a priest. Nor were any of the apostles. The New Testament didn't hold priests in particularly high regard."

[sigh]

Voting Machines

Krugman raises important objections about voting machines. This would be very dangerous - our democracy open to fraud. Read. And worry.

an Unorthodox Prayer

From My Old Site, a rehash. enjoy.

Prayer for You (from a friend of a friend)

I'm happy to announce that this is a perfect moment.

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer for all of you. I've been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of you -- even those of you who don't believe in the power of prayer.

And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods ... the God beyond all Gods ... the Girlfriend of God ... the Teacher of God ... the Goddess who invented God.

Dear Goddess, You who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads this benediction.

I pray that you will give them what they don't even know they want -- not just the boons they think they need but everything they've always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.

Dear Goddess, You wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:

Many of the divine chameleons out there don't even know that their souls will live forever. So please use your blinding magic to help them see that they are all wildly creative geniuses too big for their own personalities.

Guide them to realize that they are all completely different from what they think they are and more exciting than they can possibly imagine.

Make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic and totally tasteless for them to be in love with anyone or anything that's no good for them.

O Goddess, You who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:

I beg you to cast a huge-assed love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed the wise and sexy virtuosos out there.

Remove, banish, annihilate and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to them, no matter how long they've suffered from it, and even if they've become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship. And please conjure an aura of protection around them so that they will receive an early warning if they are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague or voodoo into their lives in the future.

Dear Goddess, sweet Goddess, You sly universal beautiful woman.... Arouse the Wild Woman within them -- even if they're men. And please give them bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, more interesting problems.

Dear Goddess, I pray that you will inspire all the compassionate rascals communing with this prayer to love their enemies just in case their friends turn out to be jerks.

Provoke them to throw away or give away all the things they own that encourage them to believe that they are better than anyone else.

Most of all, Goddess, brainwash them with your freedom so that they never love their own pain more than anyone else's pain.

Dear Goddess, You psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains:

The curiously divine human beings reading this prayer deserve everything they are yearning for and much, much more.

So please bless them with lucid dreams while they are wide awake and vacuum cleaners for their magic carpets and a knack for avoiding other people's hells and please bless them with a secret admirer who is
not a psychotic stalker.

Dear Goddess, You fiercely tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies:

I pray that you provide everyone out there with a license to bend and even break all unholy rules, laws and traditions that keep them apart from the things they love.

Show them how to purge the wishy-washy wishes that distract them from their daring, dramatic, divine desires.

And teach them that they can have any good thing they want if they'll only ask for it in an unselfish way.

And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these mysterious moments you have begun to change everyone out there in the exact way they've needed to change in order to express their soul's code.

Amen. Awomen. And glory halle-friggin-lujah.

When Debating the Issue

In my mind, I admit, the issue has been settled. I have seen the holy in the relationships of men and women, with people of the same sex. What is the holy? In my view, is where God is present; or where we are able to see God present. In such relationships it is possible to see eternal things working, if one is attentive.

That I say "holy" means that I think such love satisfies some of the conditions laid out in scripture. It brings abundance; it offers self-control.

The opponents begin with saying that homosexuality is intrinsically unclean: they do not distinguish between sorts of affection. They cannot admit that such love, as holy, is even possible. In my view, they limit God's power. When so accused, they say, God limited himself: the bible limits God. Otherwise, they argue, confusion abounds. Perhaps for them it would be confusing. But not for us reappraisers. We are as certain as they are that the God of scriptures is so powerful. God has done even more interesting things in scripture.

The orthodox say that it is really about scriptural authority - and it may be so. But then the battle cannot be won on this ground except through politics - the discerment of who has the authority to interpret. For I claim to have authority, and so do the orthodox. We brandish swords, but refuse to listen to one another. We think we can use scripture, but in the end, we each claim an authority we truly do not have - God's. Spong can claim that scripture gives him authority; he can claim that the church does.

Usually the orthodox then argue that homosexuality is like drunkenness; it is like adultery; it is like immorality; it is impulsive; it is explotative. But none of these voices are the voices of people who are gay.

Scripture says all things are possible with God. The "orthodox" say it cannot be so. I ask them, on whose authority can they limit God's power? I submit to you, that if the bible is used to so circumscribe the possibility of God witnessing a pure love between two people, then it has fallen into the hands of the Pharisees.

Biblical Authority

How might the bible be authoritative?

"I believe in the bible" someone tells me. They are telling me "I'm on your side."

"Why do you believe in the bible?" I ask. I'm thinking, what is belief? and How is this possible?

"Because God wrote it?" Oh.

"How do you know that?" I wonder. Because other people have said so? Because people in the bible have said that the Torah, or the prophets are the Word of God?

When we ask "why do we know God wrote the bible" we could easily enter circular logic. The bible said so. Why did the bible say God wrote the bible? Because the bible is true. Why is it true? God said so. How do we know? It's in the bible.

Some might say "I have faith." Because faith is self-justifying, we go from one set of circular logic to another. It's better, but not enough.

Going deeper - "I have faith because my faith has proven to be reliable, a reliable witness to orienting my life." At this point we can begin asking questions about faith patterns. "I believe the bible because it is [I have experienced it] as a reliable witness to [my own] faith."

But we're back at experience again.

Personal experience is what justifies.

Sarge

Jane has asked me to take care of a cat with thyroid problems. It's been in a box for about 9 months. Apparently it needs a special diet.

I'm not a cat person. I'm allergic. Much of the furniture isn't mine so I'm a bit nervous about him scratching things.

The cat was talking to me earlier while it searched the pantry. I don't think it found what it was looking for but it didn't seem too upset. He said that he didn't need the object, and that this house was pretty nice. I don't think he was really that impressed.

He opened my door while I was napping. He was checking my room out. I sprinkled some water on him so he left. I don't know if he's an Episcopalian.

Jane calls him "Sarge."

My heathen Girlfriend

... has been asking me to baptize her. I've refused.

"I'm a good person" she says, which is true. I stopped dating bad people a long time ago. Rather, bad people don't like to date priests.

She's accidentally learned a lot about the Episcopal church.

So we went to the most prominent Anglo-Catholic church in Babylon - the one with 100' celings painted by the same person who painted the train station. As the servers intered, one solo cantor chanted a hymn to Mary. It was beautiful.

The rector, a friend of mine, asked me how things were going. I mentioned that my girlfriend wanted to be baptized. "November 1st, right here. We have another adult being baptized. And we'll have two bishops."

"I think that would be great," I said.

Jane's eyes widened. She laughed. "Really?" The rector affirmed it would be quite a show. But Jane wasn't so sure.

"Does it have to be in public, like, in front of everybody?" When she gets uncomfortable her eyes become really huge and she laughs. It's not a nervous laugh, but a good belly laugh, like "my I've never heard of such a silly thing" laugh.

"Has to be in public" I said. "With incense"

"They'll ring the bells?" she asked me, later.

"They might send your name to the NYTimes."

"No they won't, will they?"

"You could at least invite your friends" I said.

She laughed, unsure about this challenge. "I don't think it needs to be in public, right? I mean, what if I start laughing uncontrollably?"

"It's natural to giggle in the midst of the holy." There is such a thing as holy giggles.

Sensible people in Iran

In Iran, a theocracy, some reason with drug abuse.

Real Christian Warfare

An article about Christianity Economics and culture by Bill Moyers. I heard him once give a wonderful... sermon at the Luce foundation dinner about ethics in public life.

Many of those who have rejected Christianity consider the religion as different than what Jesus preached. Jesus comes across as realistic, fair, and attentive to the vicissitudes of human conscience. The church, on the other hand, prefers the legalism. The reason is that Jesus dissembles power; the church tries to manipulate it.

Not that I'm against authority. Not at all. The challenge of the priest is to represent a transparent authority; but also a mystical authority. The priest's authority is the most dangerous because it is both the most voluntary, but the most obscure. The way s/he lives it out is to facilitate the growth of human hearts in other persons. A mysterious task. An honest task. A worthy task.

And it requires small miracles. An essay by Freeman Dyson, the physicist.

Sudanese Lost Boys

Prayers for the Sudan.

From AllAfrica "The Sudan is Africa's largest country of 2.5 million square miles, with one of the continent's greatest rivers and a population of 35 million people.

The people of Darfur are Black Africans like those of the south of neighbouring Chad across the border from them. The Darfur people are Muslims, like the Janjaweed, but differ ethnically.

The Sudanese population is 60% Muslim, 15% Christian, and 25% belonging to older and traditional religions. There are 19 major ethnic groups and 597 ethnic sub-groupings."

The Presiding Bishop calls attention to the atrocities. Here are some links to the Sudanese Church.

The Sudanese "lost boys" have been a part of several Episcopal congregations.