Now here’s something to crow, or grouse, about.
The Convention of Episcopal Diocese of Washington D.C. has submitted a resolution to memorialize, that is request that, the General Convention, the legislative body of the Episcopal Church, to consider “Gendered Language for God” in its deliberations about possible revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. The General Convention will meet July 5-13, 2018, in Austin Texas.
Here is the wording of the resolution:
Resolution #3 – On the Gendered Language for God
Submitted by: The Rev. Sam Dessordi Peres Leite, St. Stephen and the Incarnation, Washington, DC; the Rev. Alex Dyer, St. Thomas’ Parish, Washington, DC; the Rev. Kate Heichler; the Rev. Kimberly Lucas, St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Washington, DC; The Rev. Beth OCallaghan, St. Nicholas Episcopal Church, Germantown, MD.
Resolved, the Convention of the Diocese of Washington submits to the 79th General Convention of the Episcopal Church the following resolution:
Resolved, the House of ____________ concurring, that the 79th General Convention direct the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, if revision of the Book of Common Prayer is authorized, to utilize expansive language for God from the rich sources of feminine, masculine, and non-binary imagery for God found in Scripture and tradition and, when possible, to avoid the use of gendered pronouns for God.
Those who know me and my passion about the injustice of exclusive theological language will not be surprised to know I am thrilled—over-the-top delighted at this development. I’ve been crowing and writing about this for years, and now my institutional Church is catching up:0) I'm proud, yet if this is taken seriously it will cause many to sorrow and many to rejoice.
This process will be agonizingly slow. Many fine and faithful people do not agree that our seemingly forever set-in-stone language, needs to change. Nevertheless, change is written into the Preface to the Book of Common Prayer. Check it out: https://www.bcponline.org/General/preface.html. Written in 1789, no less.
The present proposed change, I know, is contingent on whether prayer book revisions will be undertaken at this time at all, and I know people I care about will be horrified. I also know that we are Anglicans—nothing if not measured and moderate, providing alternative for the alternatives. AND spiritually, we all live in the love and life of God—no matter what.
That said, please forgive me that I can’t help but jump for joy, as if I were Eve and had just seen a chance to break out of the interminable perfectly permanent boredom of the Garden of Eden.
A recent Arlo and Janis comic strip showed a couple debating the wisdom of selling their house and moving to a smaller dwelling. She laments:I always thought this one would be permanent. He: Nothing is permanent. She: I know, but it’s so important to feel permanent.
If the above resolution passes muster and the convention authorizes revision, our Church will not feel so permanent. Know this: God’s Love IS permanent—no matter what.
A little background from the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) on gender-neutral language in the creation of a revised Book of Common Prayer. The 1979 book retained masculine pronouns for people in Rite I but added gender-neutral language in other liturgies and scripture references. God, however is denoted as masculine throughout.
What about God? Does God have gender? If humankind is made male and female in God’s image, as the Creation narrative in Genesis indicates, then what does that mean—really? If Jesus was indeed a remarkably divine man of Nazareth, does that mean that the Risen Christ also must carry the masculine gender? If so, how can we seek and serve Christ in all persons—in all flesh?
I am not alone in raising questions. Many theologians and liturgists from many denominations, including The Rev. Dr Clayton L. Morris, a liturgical officer for the Episcopal Church, have raised such questions.
And it’s not new. Christian men and women, have been praying and studying divinity and language for years. El Shaddai, for a small example, is a name for God used forty-eight times in the Bible. It’s traditionally translated “the Almighty”— God of the mountain. But shad is also a Hebrew word for breast. And the feminine ending -ai, is well, feminine. Also the root of the word used for divine compassion is rachuwm in Hebrew and splanchnisomai in Greek. They both mean "womb". These are biblical words. I didn’t learn this until seminary, but the Bible is pretty old, friends. Will we reclaim some of this in our contemporary language?
The SCLM over a year ago invited some clergy to participate in giving critical feedback to some of their proposed liturgical language changes. I felt honored to be invited and sent my responses.
The Episcopal Church’s official position on inclusive language has been rooted in a theological understanding that God transcends masculinity and femininity. “God is neither male nor female. Both women and men are equally loved and included by God and should be valued and shown respect in the church's language.”
I ask: IS GOD GODSELF NOT ALSO TO BE SHOWN THIS SAME RESPECT WITH REGARD TO BEING IDENTIFIED AS NEITHER MALE NOR FEMALE IN THE CHURCH’S LANGUAGE?
Now are we ready to legislate? I believe we are. My hope of course is that authorization will happen in time for me to see it, use it without fear, and celebrate the liberation of my God— this Godde in whose life and love I have lived since early childhood, this Divinity whose image has been stunted over the centuries.
Monday, February 5, 2018
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Weak and Strong—Whatever
I remember in seminary we frantic students, just trying to keep up with heavy readings and papers due all at once, used to engage in strenuously absurd debates about the “weak” and the “strong.” We, without proper exegesis, thought that Paul was teaching that weak people were inferior to strong people who could eat meat sacrificed to idols to their hearts’ content. Like us!
Our level of hysteria about this teaching of Paul to the Church in Corinth (I Corinthians 8:1-13) stood in direct correlation, if not cause and effect, to our own painful uncertainty about what we were doing studying God when we could hardly breathe from the strain of our, yes, weakness: believing that studying God might just bring us closer to God.
The lector who read this Pauline passage today in our parish church is a very competent reader, an intelligent man, and a master of grammar. He did pretty well, only stumbling once over Paul’s rhetoric and hopelessly run-on sentences. Poor Paul suffered from too many semi-colons, if nothing else. And we? Do we suffer from fearing we might be “weak”? Do we blame Paul for our imagined spiritual deficits?
I hope I have obfuscated enough to make myself sound like Paul, whose image is even blurry. It’s a cover-up for how truly weak I do feel, because I am not able to help one of my adult children the way I think a strong mother should. I can love; I can be present; I can listen without judgment; I can talk to compassionate souls; I can pray silently and mightily that all will be well but never say that out loud because I don’t know.
Is this what Paul meant by “weak”? Sort of, yes. Paul was writing about the state of one’s conscience with respect to certain cultural expectations or personal wounds we do not understand. I can not know or understand. I can cry.
Back to scripture. Historically, sacrificing animal flesh to the gods was customary atonal practice—bringing people closer to God. Paul acknowledged that for some people such a practice had spiritual value. Christ’s reconciling work however rendered this practice idolatrous. “Food does not bring us close to God.” Christ does.
BUT—here’s the kicker: The “weak” of conscience still believed, for whatever reasons, that such practices would bring them closer to God. Those who knew better, the “strong” of conscience, would sin against Christ if they failed to respect the conscience of the “weak.”
My late aunt, an aggressive convert to Roman Catholicism, believed it necessary to the salvation of her immortal soul to eat fish—never meat—on Fridays. Her rival sister, my mother, thought this was “stupid.” They argued. I agreed with my mother. [Well, as a child I agreed with her. Today I think I'd be better off fasting every day, for soul and body management at 79.]. Mostly, we avoided having my aunt for dinner on a Friday, but if we did have her, we did NOT serve meat out of respect for her beliefs, letting our own judgments go—at least for that night.
I’d love to tell you we were doing this for Christ’s sake, but I couldn’t swear to it. I hope I am in Christ with my vulnerability and helplessness, but I can’t swear to it. And so: Amen.
Our level of hysteria about this teaching of Paul to the Church in Corinth (I Corinthians 8:1-13) stood in direct correlation, if not cause and effect, to our own painful uncertainty about what we were doing studying God when we could hardly breathe from the strain of our, yes, weakness: believing that studying God might just bring us closer to God.
The lector who read this Pauline passage today in our parish church is a very competent reader, an intelligent man, and a master of grammar. He did pretty well, only stumbling once over Paul’s rhetoric and hopelessly run-on sentences. Poor Paul suffered from too many semi-colons, if nothing else. And we? Do we suffer from fearing we might be “weak”? Do we blame Paul for our imagined spiritual deficits?
Is this what Paul meant by “weak”? Sort of, yes. Paul was writing about the state of one’s conscience with respect to certain cultural expectations or personal wounds we do not understand. I can not know or understand. I can cry.
Back to scripture. Historically, sacrificing animal flesh to the gods was customary atonal practice—bringing people closer to God. Paul acknowledged that for some people such a practice had spiritual value. Christ’s reconciling work however rendered this practice idolatrous. “Food does not bring us close to God.” Christ does.
BUT—here’s the kicker: The “weak” of conscience still believed, for whatever reasons, that such practices would bring them closer to God. Those who knew better, the “strong” of conscience, would sin against Christ if they failed to respect the conscience of the “weak.”
My late aunt, an aggressive convert to Roman Catholicism, believed it necessary to the salvation of her immortal soul to eat fish—never meat—on Fridays. Her rival sister, my mother, thought this was “stupid.” They argued. I agreed with my mother. [Well, as a child I agreed with her. Today I think I'd be better off fasting every day, for soul and body management at 79.]. Mostly, we avoided having my aunt for dinner on a Friday, but if we did have her, we did NOT serve meat out of respect for her beliefs, letting our own judgments go—at least for that night.
I’d love to tell you we were doing this for Christ’s sake, but I couldn’t swear to it. I hope I am in Christ with my vulnerability and helplessness, but I can’t swear to it. And so: Amen.
Sunday, January 21, 2018
2018.01.20 Abecedarius—Fun With Words For Sanity's Sake
When I awake to the falling snow I don’t groan like many people do. Rather I snuggle down under my warm comforter, my mind telling me: “Relax, it’s a snow day.” Of course it’s not a traditional snow day, meaning there is no school or work or anything to do at all but sleep in and possibly overeat. In retirement I could do that most days anyway. Still, I’m psyched for having fun.
Few people would think it fun to play around with words, but for me it’s enlivening. and healing. So on my very own snow day, I created an abecedarius. An abecedarius is a little story in which the first letter of every word follows the alphabet.
Addled
bellicose
cats
dive
effortlessly
forward
gain
harrowing
immediacy
jumping
kindly
lilliputian
mice.
Nubile
opiated
prey
quiver.
Rats
sit
tantalizingly
upon
verandahs
while
xenophobiacs
yield
zip.
I wonder if Creator-God was in this kind of mood while experimenting with harrowing diversity and simultaneously trying to organize prey, predator, and sexes ahead of time so they’d all survive together on Noah’s ark— a Flood story of destruction, entitled:“How to Survive Disaster Without Killing Either Your Mate or Your Rescuer—or Both”?
Creative insanity helps me avoid being driven insane by today’s news headlines alone. They are like headlines in biblical times: Good News! Take notice: your government plan to raise taxes, split up families, deport your best friends, starve the hungry, legalize white supremacy—before it shuts down completely.
To call the biblical proclamation “Good News” is stunningly ironic. The gospel proclamation and prophetic preaching in both testaments was Good News from God. Good news from God, however, was the polar opposite of what governing powers announced as good news—both then and now.
Few people would think it fun to play around with words, but for me it’s enlivening. and healing. So on my very own snow day, I created an abecedarius. An abecedarius is a little story in which the first letter of every word follows the alphabet.
Addled
bellicose
cats
dive
effortlessly
forward
gain
harrowing
immediacy
jumping
kindly
lilliputian
mice.
Nubile
opiated
prey
quiver.
Rats
sit
tantalizingly
upon
verandahs
while
xenophobiacs
yield
zip.
I wonder if Creator-God was in this kind of mood while experimenting with harrowing diversity and simultaneously trying to organize prey, predator, and sexes ahead of time so they’d all survive together on Noah’s ark— a Flood story of destruction, entitled:“How to Survive Disaster Without Killing Either Your Mate or Your Rescuer—or Both”?
Creative insanity helps me avoid being driven insane by today’s news headlines alone. They are like headlines in biblical times: Good News! Take notice: your government plan to raise taxes, split up families, deport your best friends, starve the hungry, legalize white supremacy—before it shuts down completely.
To call the biblical proclamation “Good News” is stunningly ironic. The gospel proclamation and prophetic preaching in both testaments was Good News from God. Good news from God, however, was the polar opposite of what governing powers announced as good news—both then and now.
Monday, January 15, 2018
2018.01.14 Open-Hearted Girls
Countless prayers of faithful people
weighted in a cumbrous world
found an answer as an angel
met an open-hearted girl.
Not a master of a palace
where the airs of empire swirl,
nor a young and hardened warrior
but an open-hearted girl.
This lovely Michael Hudson text was written with Mary the mother of Jesus in mind, but I certainly know many open-hearted girls. Do you?
As I write this I'm thinking of one in particular, because it’s her 55th birthday. She is my oldest daughter, Beverley Ann Brakeman. She was born with much effort and also some “lucky” statistics: born on 1/13/63 at 1:13 a.m., weighing 8lbs13ozs. She was a big baby. She’s still a big presence, not in size but in vigor—and she has an open heart. (No significance to the Police van in the background:)
I remember how terrified I felt when I was birthing my first child. It hurt so much I thought I’d die. I’d prayed for a daughter, but in labor my only prayer was: “Let it be over!” In time (too much I thought) my daughter was born. One look at her squished-up face, her perfect wee head nearly swallowed by a mop of black hair, and hearing her voluminous howl, opened my own heart forever—and ever.
I also felt anxious. I was even scared her small arm would break when I put the little undershirt over her head. My OB said: “They’re not as fragile as they look. You’ll be fine.” I was of course in love with him, or in thrall of what he did—forgetting to give myself any credit for enduring a long drug-free labor. All I felt was embarrassment because I'd thrown up all over my poor husband, standing anxiously by. I recall lamenting my intestinal expectoration because it landed all over the great sweater I had knit for him all by myself. You think weird thoughts when you’re in pain.
And I worried. Could I do this? Could I be a good mother? To these natural questions there is only one answer: NO. I’m not cynical. I’m just realistic about the vulnerabilities of parenting, especially for mothers, many of whom, at least in my generation, were handed a list of requirements for this job—omnipresence, omnipotent lovingness, and possible omniscience—qualities traditionally attributed to God, ironically called “Father.” Even my mother told me: “Being a mother is the highest destiny for any woman.”
None of my stress was, or is, my fault, or Bev’s. It’s just how it was, and still continues to be, for many mothers and daughters. I listen to mothers struggling to balance their own needs, their vocations/careers with being a a mother. I recall once a woman priest in a group say: “Well, that’s it! I simply can not be a good mother and a good priest at the same time.”
Still, Bev grew up and so did I. We have grown up together. Our hearts have opened and closed and opened again to each other through the years. We stitch it up with understanding and forgiveness and move on—because we both are open-hearted, both mothers to two daughters, both passionate about social justice, both tell the truth in love.
Happy Birthday, my beloved daughter. You are a blessing and I love you.
weighted in a cumbrous world
found an answer as an angel
met an open-hearted girl.
Not a master of a palace
where the airs of empire swirl,
nor a young and hardened warrior
but an open-hearted girl.
This lovely Michael Hudson text was written with Mary the mother of Jesus in mind, but I certainly know many open-hearted girls. Do you?
As I write this I'm thinking of one in particular, because it’s her 55th birthday. She is my oldest daughter, Beverley Ann Brakeman. She was born with much effort and also some “lucky” statistics: born on 1/13/63 at 1:13 a.m., weighing 8lbs13ozs. She was a big baby. She’s still a big presence, not in size but in vigor—and she has an open heart. (No significance to the Police van in the background:)
I also felt anxious. I was even scared her small arm would break when I put the little undershirt over her head. My OB said: “They’re not as fragile as they look. You’ll be fine.” I was of course in love with him, or in thrall of what he did—forgetting to give myself any credit for enduring a long drug-free labor. All I felt was embarrassment because I'd thrown up all over my poor husband, standing anxiously by. I recall lamenting my intestinal expectoration because it landed all over the great sweater I had knit for him all by myself. You think weird thoughts when you’re in pain.
And I worried. Could I do this? Could I be a good mother? To these natural questions there is only one answer: NO. I’m not cynical. I’m just realistic about the vulnerabilities of parenting, especially for mothers, many of whom, at least in my generation, were handed a list of requirements for this job—omnipresence, omnipotent lovingness, and possible omniscience—qualities traditionally attributed to God, ironically called “Father.” Even my mother told me: “Being a mother is the highest destiny for any woman.”
None of my stress was, or is, my fault, or Bev’s. It’s just how it was, and still continues to be, for many mothers and daughters. I listen to mothers struggling to balance their own needs, their vocations/careers with being a a mother. I recall once a woman priest in a group say: “Well, that’s it! I simply can not be a good mother and a good priest at the same time.”
Still, Bev grew up and so did I. We have grown up together. Our hearts have opened and closed and opened again to each other through the years. We stitch it up with understanding and forgiveness and move on—because we both are open-hearted, both mothers to two daughters, both passionate about social justice, both tell the truth in love.
Happy Birthday, my beloved daughter. You are a blessing and I love you.
Sunday, January 7, 2018
2018.01.07 The "Royals" Arrive—Epiphany
We waited and waited through Advent. Then we waited with bated breathe for the actual baby to get born on Christmas Eve, or is that actually Christmas morning itself?
But . . . nothing of moment happens until the “royals” arrive, and they, as “royals” do, take a very long time traversing, crisscrossing, the desert sands on camels to evade the watchful eye of a jealous ruler named Herod. Rumors have alerted them and they are curious to see if there really is a new “king” who will bring peace and good will and replace the politics of the tyrant Herod. That’s the ancient story. That story is not old!
There is no better idea than replacing our current politics—the whole fraught mess of it.
May we rise above partisanship. It’s not working for either party. I don’t know what a politics of Love would look like exactly, and perhaps it’s not humanly possible except in small ways in big hearts.
The “royals” were not kings but wise men/Magi from the far east. In our house, in ancient story, and in many cultures, they don’t make it to the creche until Epiphany.
We don’t fully celebrate Christmas until three guys arrive—El Dia de los Tres Reyes, January 6th.
Our Magi have just arrived—a bit disheveled—one Asian, one black, one female, all without their crowns. They must have lost them on the way. If you look closely you can see the fallen crowns tucked in between the camels' one-too-many humps. I consider this an extremely good omen: no crowns, no kings, no emperors, no almighty display. Just a group of hopefuls following an out-sized star no less.
Welcome these crownless dethroned worshipers. They’re exhausted; they still bring gifts; they still brandish Hope—in the most royally defiant way.
But . . . nothing of moment happens until the “royals” arrive, and they, as “royals” do, take a very long time traversing, crisscrossing, the desert sands on camels to evade the watchful eye of a jealous ruler named Herod. Rumors have alerted them and they are curious to see if there really is a new “king” who will bring peace and good will and replace the politics of the tyrant Herod. That’s the ancient story. That story is not old!
There is no better idea than replacing our current politics—the whole fraught mess of it.
May we rise above partisanship. It’s not working for either party. I don’t know what a politics of Love would look like exactly, and perhaps it’s not humanly possible except in small ways in big hearts.
The “royals” were not kings but wise men/Magi from the far east. In our house, in ancient story, and in many cultures, they don’t make it to the creche until Epiphany.
We don’t fully celebrate Christmas until three guys arrive—El Dia de los Tres Reyes, January 6th.
Our Magi have just arrived—a bit disheveled—one Asian, one black, one female, all without their crowns. They must have lost them on the way. If you look closely you can see the fallen crowns tucked in between the camels' one-too-many humps. I consider this an extremely good omen: no crowns, no kings, no emperors, no almighty display. Just a group of hopefuls following an out-sized star no less.
Welcome these crownless dethroned worshipers. They’re exhausted; they still bring gifts; they still brandish Hope—in the most royally defiant way.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
2017.12.31 Threats With Promises
Threats in world many. Each carries promise. Indulge year-end blogger rant in headlines. Bless you.
1. Drugs: far more abundant with cheap choices and more omnipresently aggressive in their demands for attention. It’s hard to say no.
YET many do, and many heal from addictive disease through medication and therapy, and from love, faith and hope—three unconditional spiritual values. Yes, unconditional.
2. Venomous American political conversation: escalates to violence, government paralyzed, guns more available to more people than ever—and considered indispensable to some. To inject sanity and, godde forbid, love for all, into this environment risky as hell.
YET good people, political and priestly, keep praying and working for good gun control legislation and an end to violence in speech and action. They are the blood donors, the organs our culture needs.
3. Sex, as in practice thereof and orientation therein: acceptance, no, expectation, that sexual behavior, yes, intercourse, is the normative even for teens, common—and competitive. When did you have your first lay—or get laid? When did you lose your virginity first? When did you have your first smoke, beer, snort—gun? Kiss feared old-fashioned. It may have lost its supremacy as a sign of young, tenderly-cautious, physical attraction-towards-love.
YET older teens and twenties are engaging in less sex than past generations. No one knows why. Possibly choosing to explore getting-to-know-you love first? Psychological data: females depend on mutually supportive relationships for their well-being. So do men, GLBQIS. Dating around, sleeping around, hooking up, one-nighters can’t satisfy the deep longing for relationship; nor can erections and orgasms.
4. Marriage: uncertain and faraway goal for many. In olden days girls pushed and shoved into it by the fear, no terror, of getting pregnant. Currently, more choice. Birth control seen as protective, except for STDs, but the safety it provides can hinder long-term relationship security aka marriage.
YET emotional commitment, whatever one’s orientation, is, yes, still nourishes mind, heart, body, and soul—if nothing else to practice the sanctity of marriage should one choose it in the future.
5. Technology: broad range of options, bordering on omniscience (Google) and omnipresence (i-phones actually text you to let you know your parents are tracking your whereabouts—true), and omnipotence (Amazon Prime.) These attributes used to belong to God (by whatever name) aka divine Mystery. They still do. Technology unable to provide flesh-and-blood love, unconditional beneficence, or shared audible visible embodied rich laughter. Easy to hide behind emojis.
YET social media technology does give people a community of understanding, support, advice, accompaniment, and safety.
6. Religion: weak in the northeast; humanism, atheism, secularism viable options; religions fail at apologetics. What does this or that religion mean? Who or what really is God? Christ? Moses? Is there spirituality beyond morality and rules of conduct? Is it enough to be a good person?
Researcher at Harvard Divinity School, Angie Thurston, calls millennial generation “religiously homeless” in opinion piece by Zachary Davis:“Has Secularism Gone Too Far?” (Boston Globe, Ideas, 12/24/17) Response letters (12/31/17) unanimously—tellingly— defensive, angry.
YET secularism thought too rational, pessimistic. Davis identified a mismatch between the job religion is supposed to do and society’s floundering search for that job to be done. The job? Not the preaching of morality, but the steady inspiration of hope, not just in afterlife but now: “. . . a hope that goes beyond reason—to give us the strength to pursue a world beyond reasonable expectations.” Religion stretches the possible. Granddaughter asks, with an edge: “Grammy, why do you pray?” “I pray because I love. And because my love is not enough.”
7. Public education: public schools forbidden to teach religion as a cultural phenomenon, as the spawn of great works of philosophy and literature, even some biblical literature and moral principles. Something missing. Separation of church and state necessary good. Still, young seekers in public settings unable to study every blooming thing they wonder about. “Wisdom begins in wonder.” Socrates. But not in our public schools. Religion not even an elective. Religion condemned as proselytizing to fill its coffers. Good teaching never proselytizes.
YET . . . slowly religion and wonderments sneak in and silently infect and inform many curious hearts. The same granddaughter searches on line, not in school. Tries pantheism, atheism, agnostic theism, and many things. Trust God will find her and she will find the Love therein that she seeks.
8. Theology/God: how we think and speak about divinity, factor in sociological analysis. Religions consistently allow one image to dominate, a theological stereotype, a superpower deity who is almighty, transcendent, masculine, and interventionist. Image idolatrous. Limits divinity; limits human spirituality.
YET traditional theology has always proclaimed God as equally immanent. God lives and moves deep within flesh, strengthening, encouraging and empowering love us to love—no matter what. In this God I trust. In this God possible to love, live, move and have being. For this Christians, this is God Jesus died for—to die and so to live.
8. Spirituality: name for what all humanity deeply craves and often does not find in society or church.
YET Love discovered available in ditches and trenches, in pews and sewers, on streets and in mansions, in life and in death, and in one’s own lonely unlovely flesh. A woman, struggling for years to create/enhance her own self-esteem, suddenly hugs a friend and sobs:“I’ve just discovered that there is a little piece of God in all of us, and in me, too”
YET God is Mystery—beyond our words—and small enough to adore them.
9. Personal: beloved husband and wife born on same day three years apart. Wife has seniority. Today both alive and well, bloated with gratitude—also fret, spat and grieve changes and terrors that seem to take away church and country.
YET . . . they can still laugh and hug
YET . . . one day both will die and leave this beautiful place and all the people they love.
YET . . . there is something more Godde has in mind, they hope. Creation never stops.
1. Drugs: far more abundant with cheap choices and more omnipresently aggressive in their demands for attention. It’s hard to say no.
YET many do, and many heal from addictive disease through medication and therapy, and from love, faith and hope—three unconditional spiritual values. Yes, unconditional.
2. Venomous American political conversation: escalates to violence, government paralyzed, guns more available to more people than ever—and considered indispensable to some. To inject sanity and, godde forbid, love for all, into this environment risky as hell.
YET good people, political and priestly, keep praying and working for good gun control legislation and an end to violence in speech and action. They are the blood donors, the organs our culture needs.
3. Sex, as in practice thereof and orientation therein: acceptance, no, expectation, that sexual behavior, yes, intercourse, is the normative even for teens, common—and competitive. When did you have your first lay—or get laid? When did you lose your virginity first? When did you have your first smoke, beer, snort—gun? Kiss feared old-fashioned. It may have lost its supremacy as a sign of young, tenderly-cautious, physical attraction-towards-love.
YET older teens and twenties are engaging in less sex than past generations. No one knows why. Possibly choosing to explore getting-to-know-you love first? Psychological data: females depend on mutually supportive relationships for their well-being. So do men, GLBQIS. Dating around, sleeping around, hooking up, one-nighters can’t satisfy the deep longing for relationship; nor can erections and orgasms.
4. Marriage: uncertain and faraway goal for many. In olden days girls pushed and shoved into it by the fear, no terror, of getting pregnant. Currently, more choice. Birth control seen as protective, except for STDs, but the safety it provides can hinder long-term relationship security aka marriage.
YET emotional commitment, whatever one’s orientation, is, yes, still nourishes mind, heart, body, and soul—if nothing else to practice the sanctity of marriage should one choose it in the future.
5. Technology: broad range of options, bordering on omniscience (Google) and omnipresence (i-phones actually text you to let you know your parents are tracking your whereabouts—true), and omnipotence (Amazon Prime.) These attributes used to belong to God (by whatever name) aka divine Mystery. They still do. Technology unable to provide flesh-and-blood love, unconditional beneficence, or shared audible visible embodied rich laughter. Easy to hide behind emojis.
YET social media technology does give people a community of understanding, support, advice, accompaniment, and safety.
6. Religion: weak in the northeast; humanism, atheism, secularism viable options; religions fail at apologetics. What does this or that religion mean? Who or what really is God? Christ? Moses? Is there spirituality beyond morality and rules of conduct? Is it enough to be a good person?
Researcher at Harvard Divinity School, Angie Thurston, calls millennial generation “religiously homeless” in opinion piece by Zachary Davis:“Has Secularism Gone Too Far?” (Boston Globe, Ideas, 12/24/17) Response letters (12/31/17) unanimously—tellingly— defensive, angry.
YET secularism thought too rational, pessimistic. Davis identified a mismatch between the job religion is supposed to do and society’s floundering search for that job to be done. The job? Not the preaching of morality, but the steady inspiration of hope, not just in afterlife but now: “. . . a hope that goes beyond reason—to give us the strength to pursue a world beyond reasonable expectations.” Religion stretches the possible. Granddaughter asks, with an edge: “Grammy, why do you pray?” “I pray because I love. And because my love is not enough.”
7. Public education: public schools forbidden to teach religion as a cultural phenomenon, as the spawn of great works of philosophy and literature, even some biblical literature and moral principles. Something missing. Separation of church and state necessary good. Still, young seekers in public settings unable to study every blooming thing they wonder about. “Wisdom begins in wonder.” Socrates. But not in our public schools. Religion not even an elective. Religion condemned as proselytizing to fill its coffers. Good teaching never proselytizes.
YET . . . slowly religion and wonderments sneak in and silently infect and inform many curious hearts. The same granddaughter searches on line, not in school. Tries pantheism, atheism, agnostic theism, and many things. Trust God will find her and she will find the Love therein that she seeks.
8. Theology/God: how we think and speak about divinity, factor in sociological analysis. Religions consistently allow one image to dominate, a theological stereotype, a superpower deity who is almighty, transcendent, masculine, and interventionist. Image idolatrous. Limits divinity; limits human spirituality.
YET traditional theology has always proclaimed God as equally immanent. God lives and moves deep within flesh, strengthening, encouraging and empowering love us to love—no matter what. In this God I trust. In this God possible to love, live, move and have being. For this Christians, this is God Jesus died for—to die and so to live.
8. Spirituality: name for what all humanity deeply craves and often does not find in society or church.
YET Love discovered available in ditches and trenches, in pews and sewers, on streets and in mansions, in life and in death, and in one’s own lonely unlovely flesh. A woman, struggling for years to create/enhance her own self-esteem, suddenly hugs a friend and sobs:“I’ve just discovered that there is a little piece of God in all of us, and in me, too”
YET God is Mystery—beyond our words—and small enough to adore them.
9. Personal: beloved husband and wife born on same day three years apart. Wife has seniority. Today both alive and well, bloated with gratitude—also fret, spat and grieve changes and terrors that seem to take away church and country.
YET . . . they can still laugh and hug
YET . . . one day both will die and leave this beautiful place and all the people they love.
YET . . . there is something more Godde has in mind, they hope. Creation never stops.
Sunday, December 24, 2017
2017.12.24 The Under-Genius of All Things—At Christmas
There is no joy that is not mixed with muck and muddle and cynical commentary and genuine pique, even if you hide it, eject it, silence it, blame it on the weather. And yet . . .
This morning we listened, my dear spouse and I, to the annual Kings College, Cambridge England, service of Nine Lessons and Carols. It is nothing if not utterly traditional. I admit to feeling tired, once again, of gendered language for the Holy. And yet . . .
My emotions, my love of creativity, Creator God, and Beauty itself took over. Later I contented myself with a small addition to the wondrous words of the text of English poet Christina Rosetti (1830-1894) for the final stanza of the Christmas Carol: “In the bleak mid-winter.”
What can I gave him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part;
but since I am a woman, I would give my flesh;
yet what I can I give him:
give my heart.
To abandon one’s very correct political correctness for the sake of God’s holiday—and ours—is what I think the late poet Brian Doyle means by having the courage to discern the “under-genius” of it all at Christmas.
Muttered Prayer in Thanks for the Under-Genius of Christmas
Putting up ye old fir tree last night, and pondering why again we slay a perfectly healthy tree ten years of age, not even a teenager yet, and prop up the body, and drape it with frippery, and then finally feed the brittle former vibrancy into a chipper, paying a grim Boy Scout five bucks for the privilege; I watched mine bride and children quietly for a while, from behind the tree where I was struggling with that haunted cursed string of lights, and I saw the under-genius of it all: I saw beneath the tinsel and nog, the snarl of commerce and the ocean of misspent money; I saw the quiet pleasure of ritual, the actual no-kidding, no-fooling urge to pause and think about other people and their joy, the anticipation of days spent laughing and shouldering in the kitchen, with no agenda and no press of duty. I saw the flash of peace and love under all the shrill selling and tinny theater; and I was thrilled and moved. And then I remembered too that the ostensible reason for it all was the Love being bold and brave enough to assume a form that would bleed and break and despair and die; and I was again moved, and abashed; and I finished untangling the epic knot of lights, shivering yet again with happiness that we were given such a sweet terrible knot of a world to untangle, as best we can, with bumbling love. And so: amen.
Do you risk having eyes and ears and nose for the under-genius of it all?
As a child I was seized by my father’s absence from the tree project. Oh, he was present in body but he was preoccupied with his cocktail and didn’t join in. Perhaps he had suffered the epic tangle of lights. I don’t remember. I worried about him. I longed for him. I couldn’t understand why my mother and my sisters were jollily going along unheeding. There was something wrong with this picture, and I wept.
I could not yet see the under-genius of it all. If I had, I might have been able to join in and trim the tree without fear and inhibition. If I had, I might have called Daddy to come join us—just put one little bright ball on our tree. And he would have smiled, thanked me, and declined. If I had seen the under-genius of Christmas, I would have known that Daddy was there with us even if he couldn’t participate in the way I wanted. And that would’ve been enough. I also might have realized that my Daddy was not God— and maybe that there is a manger inside all of us.
When I stop and notice the under-genius of Christmas I can see that joy is not happiness or maple syrup. It is an inner feeling of hope, hope so huge and defiant it counters all reason. It's the under-genius, the under-joy. So I give my heart.
Merry Christmas.
This morning we listened, my dear spouse and I, to the annual Kings College, Cambridge England, service of Nine Lessons and Carols. It is nothing if not utterly traditional. I admit to feeling tired, once again, of gendered language for the Holy. And yet . . .
My emotions, my love of creativity, Creator God, and Beauty itself took over. Later I contented myself with a small addition to the wondrous words of the text of English poet Christina Rosetti (1830-1894) for the final stanza of the Christmas Carol: “In the bleak mid-winter.”
What can I gave him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part;
but since I am a woman, I would give my flesh;
yet what I can I give him:
give my heart.
To abandon one’s very correct political correctness for the sake of God’s holiday—and ours—is what I think the late poet Brian Doyle means by having the courage to discern the “under-genius” of it all at Christmas.
Muttered Prayer in Thanks for the Under-Genius of Christmas
Putting up ye old fir tree last night, and pondering why again we slay a perfectly healthy tree ten years of age, not even a teenager yet, and prop up the body, and drape it with frippery, and then finally feed the brittle former vibrancy into a chipper, paying a grim Boy Scout five bucks for the privilege; I watched mine bride and children quietly for a while, from behind the tree where I was struggling with that haunted cursed string of lights, and I saw the under-genius of it all: I saw beneath the tinsel and nog, the snarl of commerce and the ocean of misspent money; I saw the quiet pleasure of ritual, the actual no-kidding, no-fooling urge to pause and think about other people and their joy, the anticipation of days spent laughing and shouldering in the kitchen, with no agenda and no press of duty. I saw the flash of peace and love under all the shrill selling and tinny theater; and I was thrilled and moved. And then I remembered too that the ostensible reason for it all was the Love being bold and brave enough to assume a form that would bleed and break and despair and die; and I was again moved, and abashed; and I finished untangling the epic knot of lights, shivering yet again with happiness that we were given such a sweet terrible knot of a world to untangle, as best we can, with bumbling love. And so: amen.
Do you risk having eyes and ears and nose for the under-genius of it all?
As a child I was seized by my father’s absence from the tree project. Oh, he was present in body but he was preoccupied with his cocktail and didn’t join in. Perhaps he had suffered the epic tangle of lights. I don’t remember. I worried about him. I longed for him. I couldn’t understand why my mother and my sisters were jollily going along unheeding. There was something wrong with this picture, and I wept.
I could not yet see the under-genius of it all. If I had, I might have been able to join in and trim the tree without fear and inhibition. If I had, I might have called Daddy to come join us—just put one little bright ball on our tree. And he would have smiled, thanked me, and declined. If I had seen the under-genius of Christmas, I would have known that Daddy was there with us even if he couldn’t participate in the way I wanted. And that would’ve been enough. I also might have realized that my Daddy was not God— and maybe that there is a manger inside all of us.
When I stop and notice the under-genius of Christmas I can see that joy is not happiness or maple syrup. It is an inner feeling of hope, hope so huge and defiant it counters all reason. It's the under-genius, the under-joy. So I give my heart.
Merry Christmas.
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