Prayers for Those in the Path of Patricia

Merciful God, who has calmed the waters of chaos and led people through the walls of threatening waters in ages past, be close to those now who are hunkered down against Hurricane Patricia. Calm those who are in fear. Protect them from the might of her winds. Grant wisdom and courage to those who serve as first responders in these times of crisis. And deliver all to the shores of safety. In your Holy Name we pray.  Amen.

Speaking With the Wolves

Hello! It's me again. Sorry to be so absent, but sometimes life overtakes me, and the first thing that I seem to surrender and put up as an offering to busyness is this blog. But this morning, as I was doing the office for St. James of Jerusalem, I found myself giggling. I know that's not consider reverent, but the readings, particular from the Gospel of Matthew, fit so well for the "Headline of the Day" yesterday where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat on the hot seat before a Congressional panel for eleven hours. Matthew says:

 ‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.--Matthew 10: 16-20

Seems from the Next-Day-Commentary, Secretary Clinton was able to slice and dice her Republican opposition on the panel, and in so doing, she 

got a boost to her ambition to become our next President by keeping her cool and appearing, well, in control and presidential. Add to that, there were moments during the testimony when she just sat back and watched the fireworks happening before her as Democrats blasted Republicans for making everyone sit there through a hearing that was going nowhere fast. 

Wise as a serpent. Innocent as a dove amidst the wolves who are still howling at the moon. So much of what I was reading from my friends who were posting to social media about this hearing sounded like the other incredible non-story that wouldn't die: Deflategate, the supposed scandal about an under-inflated football being used in the American Football League's Championship game between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts. For months at the end of the season, NFL fans listened to pundits carry on and on about how Patriots QB Tom Brady was a cheater who destroyed his cellphone to hide evidence that he "more than likely knew" that two low level equipment employees had under inflated the game ball. And while Brady's ultimate testimony before a federal appeals judge did not enjoy wall-to-wall CNN coverage, the outcome of the hearing told it all: the judge lifted the league's suspension of Brady because there wasn't enough credible evidence to show that he'd done anything wrong, nor was he allowed to properly defend himself during the investigation, an investigation where the lead detective told him he didn't need to keep his phone, so he got rid of it for an upgrade. To me, Benghazi and Deflategate are cut from the same base instinct cloth: a pathological need on the part of others to drag someone down and make someone the goat for a failure of a system. Are there politics, both in the Republican vs. Democrat and sports rivalry sense, at play? Of course! But stripping all the many schemes and overarching desires away...it really comes down to a need to blame and shame. And it has backfired in both cases.

Terrorist attacks have killed hundreds, even thousands beyond the four very tragic deaths in Benghazi. Football teams are always looking for an advantage over their opponents and one team will win and one team will lose; afterall, it's a game. The team that loses reassess, and learns what it needs to do better to win. Maybe that's what the Congressional committee should be doing about terrorism, too.

Stop the Gun Madness

Another week. Another mass shooting of innocents in America. 

This time, it was on the campus of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. The college didn’t allow guns on campus, but that didn’t matter to the shooter, who allegedly asked his victims what their religious affiliation was and if they said, “Christian,” he shot them in the head. Why he did this will likely always be a mystery, since the gunman took his own life amidst a hail of bullets from law enforcement. 

And thus begins another round in the United States of hand-wringing and praying for the victims, shaking our heads at how someone could do this, getting angry at the availability of guns only to have the gun advocates get angry that it isn’t the fault of the guns; it’s the fault of the mentally ill. And now the new added wrinkle from fundamentalist Christians that believers in Christ are suffering persecution. 

While Christians may have been the targets here, it seems that most of these acts of violence are just acts of violence with no particular group that is the target. And that is adding to the fear and frustration in the country. President Obama, in a 12+ minute address to the news media, captured much of my own level of anger at these seemingly endless repeats of horrible crimes. Despite what the National Rifle Association might say, guns are the problem. Specifically, the easy availability of guns, and the lack of stringent safeguards on who gets to actually purchase a firearm, is the problem. 

I am of the extreme minority opinion that no one should own a gun, and I wish the government would confiscate them and melt them down and turn them into beautiful works of metallic art. That won’t happen, so I go to the next best thing and that is to tighten and toughen the laws on gun sales and prohibit the manufacture of exploding bullets and other paraphernalia that serves no practical purpose for hunting or sports shooting or whatever recreational activities people say they do when they want to buy a gun. If we would make it as onerous and difficult to get a gun as we make it in some places for a woman to have an abortion, we might actually cut down on the violence. 

Cut down. Not eliminate. 

To eliminate the shootings we have to address the problems that are causing people to pick up a gun and shoot other people. A lot of the people who do these crimes are reported to be “mentally ill.” Well, I know a lot of mentally ill people who don’t just go shooting other people. And those who have a propensity to commit such a crime must, in some cases, actually shoot someone before law enforcement will arrest them and they’re sent to jail where they may finally get the mental health care they need. Face it: anyone who shoots another person is per se mentally ill. What exact illness they have will vary. The gun fanatics are correct; mental illness is a problem and we must do more to address that in this country. Still mental illness with a gun in hand or in the teeth, is far more dangerous than the unarmed person with a mental disorder. 

But even mental illness isn’t the only factor driving this bus. There is a sense of isolation and an inability to get along or garner attention that seems to be the spark that lights the fire of rage that empties bullets into innocent people. It’s as if we have lost the ability to relate to one another as human beings sharing this planet. Even as our technology helps to shrink the global village into the palm of our hands in the form of a smartphone, the gulf between people is widening and erecting more silos around us than ever. 

The other day at the 12:10 Eucharist, I was struck listening to the readings, which were pretty depressing. The one that caught my attention was from Baruch: 

And you shall say: The Lord our God is in the right, but there is open shame on us today, on the people of Judah, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and on our kings, our rulers, our priests, our prophets, and our ancestors, because we have sinned before the Lord. We have disobeyed him, and have not heeded the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the statutes of the Lord that he set before us. 

(Baruch 1:15-17) 

I heard these words and contemplated what the essential question is placed before us constantly: will we choose life or will we choose death? How many more times must we bemoan and lament the deaths of innocents because we have lost the willingness to change and accepted their deaths as collateral damage in the effort to keep gun manufacturers and the NRA fat and happy in the name of the Second Amendment? Do we really prefer mass death over eternal life? I know I do not. 

While the issues are deeper than just guns, the fact remains that we have suffered far too many mass killings to justify simply praying for victims. If we truly care about those victims, we will strive to change our laws so we won’t be continuing this cycle any longer.

The Pope and All The Noise

There's been a lot of noise lately and I'm not talking about the road construction that happened outside my massage practice Tuesday which provided the extra vibratory experience for most of the day.

I'm talking about the constant hand-wringing over marriage equality as dioceses in the Episcopal Church wrestle with "What'll we do? What'll we do?" And that's compounded by the on-going drama in Rowan County where the Clerk of Court, Kim Davis, continues to make headlines in her effort to stop gay and lesbian people from getting married. 

The clashing and clanging gets even louder when you factor in the announcement from the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby that he wants all 37 primates of the Anglican Communion to fly to England in January so they can prayerfully consider what the future holds for the very fractured Communion. The ABC even extended a "guest" invite to the leader of the Anglican Church of North America, Foley Beach.  Bishop Beach has said he wants to know what the other bishops aligned with the Global South want to do. And, from their early responses to this invite, it seems they aren't inclined to go to England because they don't want to be in the same room with The Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada. And so while the Archbishop seems to believe we have a communion where we are a couple that is "sleeping in separate bedrooms," from where I sit, it would seem that the couple is not only split; one has taken up residence elsewhere entirely. I don't think this is a situation where Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again. 

The invite to ACNA struck a nerve with me because of the history of how they came into being. They have been instruments of discord and fear about gay and lesbian people and our participation in the life of the Body of Christ. In Africa, their Global South partners have backed anti-LGBTQ legislation including the calls for putting gay people to death. To say that I'm not exactly comfortable with their presence in any meeting is a huge understatement. And yet, if I am to be faithful to my trust in God, I must also be willing to believe that God knows my misgivings and God knows that the only shield and strength against fear and hate is Love. And so the call to me is to ground myself in Love and put on that armor of Light that Paul talks of to face those who fear me.

And having done all that, I can say that when I heard the news of this meeting, and the almost predictable response from the GAFCONites, my response to all of it is, "Meh!"

Same thing with the fretting and dialoguing and teaching and discerning and talk, talk, talk about marriage for same-sex couples in the church. As I used to say many times while serving as the President of our local PFLAG chapter, "The more we act as if there is something to keep secret, or hidden, or in the closet about being gay, the more it becomes a 'thing' and the more it feeds into the belief that there is something 'wrong' with being an LGBTQ person." I apply the same thing to the angst about marriage. The more everyone acts as if having a same-sex wedding is a "thing," and not the usual celebratory and happy occasion that's supposed to be associated with a church wedding, then we create our own Hell of "what's going to happen? Who's going to leave? What will the neighbors think?"

What does any of this have to do with the pope? My observations of Pope Francis as he visits the United States for the first time is that he doesn't let the noise interfere in the mission of Christ. Amidst all the rancor and garbage and muck of politics and immigration and keeping a person such as himself "safe," I watched a video of him beckoning his security detail to allow a five year-old child to approach him with her note as he rode along a parade route. The girl from L.A. is a child of Mexican immigrants who fear deportation. He embraced her and took her note. He arrived at the White House in what appeared to be a Fiat compact car; not a limo. There was much ado made about Pope Francis having to meet a crowd of 11,000 people at the White House which would include about a half-dozen gay people and one of the Nuns on the Bus activists. This may have caused the Vatican and some others grave concern, but the Pope seemed to get through the event without any problem. See, in my observation, Pope Francis does this amazing thing: he lives in the moment, following and modeling the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. When one is doing that, there is no place for fear of the "other." There is only the presence of being in Love.

It's as if he, too, is experiencing all that which would distract from Christ as "Meh." Because it is.

Let us pray the words from Psalm 146 from the Book of Common Prayer:

1	Hallelujah! Praise the LORD, O my soul! *     I will praise the LORD as long as I live;     I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
2	Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, *     for there is no help in them.
3	When they breathe their last, they return to earth, *     and in that day their thoughts perish.
4	Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! *     whose hope is in the LORD their God;
5	Who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; *     who keeps his promise for ever;
6	Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, *     and food to those who hunger.
7	The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind; *     the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
8	The LORD loves the righteous; the LORD cares for the stranger; *     he sustains the orphan and widow,     but frustrates the way of the wicked.
9	The LORD shall reign for ever, *     your God, O Zion, throughout all generations.     Hallelujah!

Fourteen Years Later Can We Learn This Lesson

Here's a thought for this anniversary of the September 11th attack. I remember the stories and the images of dazed and frightened people and the foreign-born and Muslim cabbies who took some of them away from that horrific scene. I think about the many people I know who were personally affected, and those who lost family members. With that, I offer this sentiment:

Support 
We recognize how much we need each other and how much we stand to benefit from the support and encouragement that others offer us. It is essential, then, that we offer this support and encouragement to one another and to all whom we meet.
-Br. David Vryhof Society of Saint John the Evangelist

I feel that is the thing we squandered fourteen years ago. At a time when our nation was shocked, confused, and trembling from the repeated images of planes hitting the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and one plane that had been diverted from its original strategic target to crash in a Pennsylvania field, we were in a place that I had hoped would allow us to be introspective. Perhaps we'd be willing to be vulnerable enough to allow our allies to express condolences and solidarity in our hurt. Maybe we'd even take a moment to consider why such anger could be kindled against us?

My heart sunk when I saw how quickly we turned this moment of devastating loss and destruction into a drumbeat for war. We didn't want to think; we wanted to react. And it seems that's all we've been doing for the past fourteen years since that terrible day.

And so my mind is again drawn back to my memories of the pictures of ash-covered New Yorkers trudging across the bridges to get home. They were not all American-born citizens but on that day, as it has happened with many tragedies since, everybody was an American. Religions didn't matter; it was about survival and survival meant, in some cases, relying on the support of a stranger.

It meant being vulnerable. And we were on that day. We all were.

The Letter of James to Today's World

In double-checking the lay ministry schedule for St. Thomas, I discovered that I am on to be the one reading the lessons in church tomorrow morning. I'm glad I checked that, and gladder still that I discovered that I am to read from the Letter of James these lines:

Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?  But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?  Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors--James 2: 5-9 

There's a whole lot more to this reading than just this passage, but these lines really made me sit up and take notice as they echoed in my 21st Century ears after a week of ridiculousness that the courts have had to settle--again--because people in power simply refuse to do the right thing. Foot notes about this passage indicate that "the rich" could be a visitor into the synagogue of the Greek or Roman variety into this Jewish-Christian setting. No matter who or what constitutes "the rich," the passage speaks to the message of Jesus that all people, no matter what they look like, how much money they have, or how they dress, or what their language is, or who they sleep with at night, are your neighbors, and they are to be treated with the same love that Jesus had displayed. It is interesting that this passage coincides with Mark's story of the Syrophoenician woman whom Jesus initially refers to as being like "a dog." Needless to say, Jesus figures out very quickly that even those who are not children of Israel can have the same abundance of faith that he preaches.

The more I thought about this part of the letter, the more I thought about something I had read in a Salon.com article earlier this week which basically takes white progressives to task for how they handle their exasperation about poor whites refusing to align with things such as the Black Lives Matter movement. The issue raised in the article is that social progressives dismiss poor whites who vote Republican as ignorant idiots voting against their own best interests. What they haven't done is show poor whites that by aligning with other poor people, even poor people who are black or Latino/a, they will lift up the scale for everyone. When "poverty" gets conflated with "minority," it helps to feed into whatever racist narratives are currently being fed to impoverished whites who live in fear for their own security and see the status quo as at least something where they can stay marginally ahead of all the "others." If those of us who truly do want to see a shift in America where we realize Dr. King's vision of  all people being able to say, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God, Almighty, we're free at last!" then we shouldn't dishonor the poor, no matter who they are, because the poor, and the very financially-squeezed middle class, are suffering the same economic oppression, and they don't like it. 

"Is it not the rich who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?" Yes! When the Donald Trumps and the Rick Scotts and the PACs of our political world use their money to sell a message that it's the fault of "the other" that the American worker feels alienated and desperate, they are playing on human fear and causing us to turn on one another when now, more than ever, is a time for us to pull together. Maybe it takes being in that place of looking at my checkbook that is dangerously close to zero that I one day realized that there is not a whole lot that separated me from the person begging on the street corner. But whatever it is, I feel more of an affinity for those hanging on by their fingertips than I feel for the ones who can't decide if they should drive the Lexus or the Beemer today.

That said, I also know that the challenge from James, which he takes from Jesus, is to still treat the person who is rich not as someone who should be cast down from their seat of power, but as one who is trapped in that power, sometimes without even knowing that their wealth and their fondness for their wealth has imprisoned them. People who are, what I will call the "ungenerous wealthy," the ones who are content with keeping their money to themselves and doling it out sparingly have unwittingly come to worship the worthless idol of the Almighty Dollar. They've bought the lie that somehow their pots of gold will sustain them and keep them until the end of their days. But haven't we seen enough "economic downturns" to show that even having gobs of money won't keep you safe? 

Perhaps the one-percent, who truly have more money then they know what to do with, might be the ones most immune from any economic earthquakes on the stock market. But even then, they aren't going to be able to take their treasure with them to the grave. How sad and depressing for them! They've hoarded and saved and put away all that money and yet it won't prevent their inevitable death. That they don't seem to see this reality and understand how they do have it within their power to alleviate their suffering, and that of others, if they will loosen their grip on their purse strings is unfortunate. They could do so much good by paying a greater portion to the government to support the infrastructure of our nation. How terrible it must be to feel the need instead to prop up a class war between the lower classes, and then throw in some race-baiting, to deflect from how wealth inequality is hurting all of us. If any one of them took a moment of self-examination and reflection, one could only hope that they'd see how their idol worship has led them to make choices that are detrimental to the country they love.

Emphasis on one hopes they would see this.

I hope we will all, one day, be able to see each other more as children of God rather than a potential foe in the struggle for survival.  

Kentucky Fried Crisis

Photo by the Associated Press

Think back over your childhood. Were there not times when your parents told you to do something that you didn’t like and didn’t want to do? It could be anything from taking out the trash, picking up your room, or maybe they told you that you had to play with a baby brother or sister, or go to a social event and interact with kids you didn’t really like. That last one is an especially difficult thing to do if you’re an introverted child. But nonetheless, your parents or parent, made you do something. You did it, and you survived.

There’s a situation that has been brewing in some places where those with the authority and the office that empowers them to distribute marriage licenses have decided that they don’t want to do it if it means giving a license to same-sex couples. They oppose the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell on June 26^th which found the state laws banning lesbian and gay people from marrying their beloved were unconstitutional. The most notable case of this protest is Kim Davis, Clerk of Court in Rowan County, KY, who has now told a gay male couple on four separate occasions since that date that she will not give them a marriage license. Never mind that a federal judge, and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the 6^th Circuit, has ordered her to issue David Emrold and his partner, as well as all lesbian and gay couples, a license. Even the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to intercede on her behalf. None of that matters to Ms. Davis because this is—for her—a matter of “God’s authority.” In a statement released through the Liberty Counsel, the right-wing Christian legal advocacy group, Ms. Davis stated:

“To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience,” Davis said. “It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision.”

There are those who see Ms. Davis, an Apostolic Christian, as taking a noble stand and one where she is seeking the freedom of a conscientious objector. However, as this crisis unfolds in Kentucky, I, too, am drawn to the words of Jesus:

Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?’ But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.’ And they brought one. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were utterly amazed at him.—Mark 12:13-17

In this case, we aren’t talking about a coin, but a piece of paper bearing the watermark of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Ms. Davis may object to having her signature on said paper, but that paper is the Roman…I’m sorry Rowan…County document that grants the civil rights and privileges of marriage. It is a legal document and a secular form. God doesn’t dwell in that document; God dwells in the love manifested between the people being married.  

In fact, one could say that “God’s authority” has spoken in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling from June. Some of us hold a belief that the “life-giving and liberating love of Jesus” that Presiding Bishop-elect Michael Curry talks of came rolling down like a waterfall of justice on that June day.

No one is objecting to Ms. Davis, or anyone else, holding a particular religious viewpoint. But we live in a nation that has not only granted the people free exercise of religion; our Constitution specifically prohibits the government from establishing ONE religious belief. We are a nation of laws which are there to maintain order. Ms. Davis, under the laws of our country, must follow through and provide marriage licenses to those who are legally able to get married. If she cannot do this, then she needs to resign or be removed from office. She can consider it “the cost of discipleship.”