To: God. Help!

As we remember Hurricanes Katrina and Rita...let's hope the people of the Gulf Coast areas are better able to escape to safety from Gustav. And keep all of us who live in the southern U.S. in your thoughts and prayers from now until November 30th...the official end of hurricane season.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

OK, So Who's Your Daddy?

I'm not going to go into great lengthy analysis of the latest round of communication from the Archbishop of Canterbury because it reads like more pandering to the mob in Africa. And I don't understand why the ABC can't leave well enough alone the good things that seemed to be happening at Lambeth. Others in the blogosphere who pay attention to all things Anglican may have a different take on the bishops meeting. Certainly, some of them were a lot closer to the ground than I was. But from the bits and pieces I was gathering via the Internet, the indaba discussions seemed to be key and critical for there to be a dialogue about tougher issues for the attendees. Millennium Development Goals, of course, were important. Fighting global poverty, better education, curing HIV/AIDS....those are all causes that any bishop anywhere in the world ought to be able to rally around. Human sexuality isn't comfortable because then we have to think about the fact that some people might be (gasp) having sex.

But, as I said, I am not going to get into this because it occurs to me that to waste time, energy, and space on the ABC and his angst is pointless. And getting all wound up over the machinations of humans does one thing and one thing only: it makes us sink like Peter because we've taken our eyes off of God as we walk out onto the water!

And so, realigning my focus, what I look at is the power (again) in the words of Paul's letter to Romans 12:

For as in one body we have many members, and not all members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

To me, this is like the ultimate: "We're all in this together, and we all have something to contribute to the make up of the whole". And, another way I took this passage: we must be ourselves, and in being true to who we are, we contribute to the completion of the whole. When I meditate on those two thoughts, what comes to me is the importance of those of us who seek God and a deeper knowledge of God to recognize that there are other seekers of God who share that bond with us...even if they have no other commonalities with us. Each one of us is being invited into a place to bring all of who we are to bear because the whole of who we are may be the very necessary component to complete the wholeness of the community to which we belong.

Simple translation, from my lay lesbian perspective: gay people of faith have gifts...both because we have certain skill sets acquired from learning...but we are people who, many of us, have endured a great deal of pain and rejection and thus bring to the mix a sensibility and sensitivity that the majority may simply not be aware of because they haven't walked in our shoes. In a similar fashion, gay people can gain a lot from their straight brothers and sisters...starting with an appreciation that not all straight people of faith view us as pariahs. And each of us, gay and straight, have the common experience of being human and can be there for one another as part of the human family. That's what I believe it means to "love one another as Christ (God) loved us".

OK, let's say you're still fuming about the ABC and his insatiable appetite for an Anglican Covenant to define "Anglicanism" and risk excluding some members of the body, and his insistence on moratoria.

Last time I checked, the Archbishop of Canterbury was still a mortal. He hath eyes, and he doth bleed when you cut him. And the more we care about his pastoral letters, such as they are, the more power we vest in him as if he had any sway over us to begin with. The power, the focus, the important "thing" here is the love of God. And that is the more important pastoral letter that we should be following in our own lives.

In the words of St. Porky Pig, "Th-th-that's all, folks!"

Anybody Got An Ark?

Tropical Storm Fay paid a lengthy visit to Tallahassee this weekend, and apparently enjoyed Lake Ella so much that she thought she'd help its banks overflow into the cottage businesses that surround it! Below are some pictures I took standing in the dry portion of the Black Dog Cafe's parking lot. Believe it, or not, there are normally sidewalks, picnic tables, benches....


Above: Head Over Heels Dance Wear is now dripping underwater...

Dead End is right! Few of the streets around this mid-town spot are passable.

Umm....what happened to the sidewalk? Oh, yeah: it's by the fence posts with the floating trash can!
And some people just want their privacy. Nobody's gonna fight her for a seat on this bench behind the Black Dog!

For the record: my house and neighborhood got through this storm in one piece. Many others did not. There were at least 2,000 city utility customers without power, and there are several streets that remain closed. Send us your best energy....and maybe some towels, too!

Why Evolution is Biblical*

It's ark time in North Florida as Tropical Storm Fay is currently dumping a ton of rain on Tallahassee. The ground outside the front door of our house is a sopping wet mess, and I can hear the sirens of fire trucks and police cars off in the distance. And I'm sure the cat has curled up in the corner figuring there is nothing better to do than to sleep and hope this storm ends soon.
I'd join in her that, but I am wide awake, and energized, and will more likely do some "not so light" reading for my Education for Ministry class. Nothin' like reading about the Priestly creation story in Genesis with its "waters of chaos" while there's rainy wind gusts of 30 miles per hour blowing against the windows!
And speaking of that particular creation story...let me launch headlong into that heated topic of evolution.
For reasons I don't really understand, as a species, human beings really want things to be black or white, right or wrong. To entertain the idea that there could be a middle path seems to cause a great deal of discomfort. I know. I was up close and personal with the 2000 presidential election in Florida. People don't handle messy very well at all.
The same seems to be true with evolution vs. creationism. Understand, I don't think one should read the creation stories in Genesis as being absolute literal truth of how things happened. I believe these stories are told, and were told by the people of that time, to make sense of the world and why things were the way they were. But I also see in the P story of creation at the start of Genesis a description of evolution.
If you read it, you'll see a progression that seems to track how the world evolved to the state of us having human beings. Ah, but wait: in the P story, the writer never says that God created the apes which then evolved into human beings. That's true.
In the First Chapter of Genesis, God creates living creatures, and birds, and sea monsters and orders them to go forth and multiply on the fifth day. Then he creates cattle, creeping things and wild animals...and once he's done that, now it's time to create humans in "our own image". Do the animals "evolve" into people? No, not in the writings here, but I am not focusing on that. What I think is more important is to see how this progression of creation takes place. And it happens in an order that would seem to follow the course of events as understood by science. All things came into being over a period of time (and God's idea of evening and morning are probably eons as opposed to hours) with humans being the last to arrive on the scene.
Sounds like a description of evolution to me!
Yet it seems those who are firmly in the scientific camp and those convinced creationism is the only right answer can't, or won't, entertain the possibility that they both are right at least in the P story of creation. The sides dig in, and lob hand grenades at each other. Because we humans seem to want winners and losers, black and white, right and wrong. Sigh.
By the way, I do think we evolved from the "wild animals". I can't look at the skeleton of any number of animal species and not see how closely we resemble them in structure. But even in my belief in evolution, I don't think these are just random mutations or experiments gone awry, but likely part of a plan that we can not comprehend, but isn't it fun to try. Recognizing the evolution of the various species doesn't take anything away from a power greater than ourselves that made it all possible.
Speaking of which, I have some "not so light" reading to do.
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Sometimes the Universe is just a little too cosmic for me! I wrote this post this afternoon, and the New York Times ran this article on its website tonight. A Florida-based story no less. Ha!

North Carolina Notes

Hello friends in the blogosphere! I am back from my travels to the North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Durham, NC, and I am quite tired. It's a long drive between here and there, but the trip was well worth it! I had a great opportunity to re-connect with my former chaplain and religion instructor from prep school in Hendersonville. And the drive from Western Carolina over to Durham was full of mountainous beauty. Ah, bliss!

My movie, "The Weimar House", had the same sort of reception it did when it played in Tallahassee: there were those who loved it, and those who seemed to not find the humor in its "fiery" ending. I don't know what to say except, "To each their own." Although I have a suspicion as to why this film...which mocks the mockery that is the gay marriage debate...didn't get the kind of laughter at the end that I would have expected. And to understand the reticence to laugh, all I had to do was look outside the Carolina Theatre on Saturday.

The festival, now in its 13th year, drew five protesters. One had his huge wooden cross. Another couple appeared to be in their teens. And there was the one African-American man in his "Jesus Saves" T-shirt who continuously screamed at people walking to the theater:

"Repent! Repent means to turn from your wickedness to Jesus! Your wickedness of man lying with man and woman lying with woman!"

For more than four hours, anyone trying to go to the theatre from the street entrance off West Morgan had no choice but to come under the verbal assault of this man trying to communicate a message of Christ....as he interprets that message. Even an elderly lady making her way to the McDonald's up the street came in for his proselytizing message. And she snapped back at him, "I'm going to McDonald's, God dammit!"

The sad part of this display is that as much as this man claimed to be speaking of the love of Christ, he had an odd way of displaying that love himself. I wondered how he thought he could make headway with people when he started from a place of telling them they were going to burn in Hell...and, oh, by the way, Jesus loves you? It reminded me of the passage that is in Mark's gospel in which Jesus explains that it's not what goes into the person that defiles, but what comes out. And, as much as this screaming man may believe himself full of the Holy Spirit, his words of harsh judgement on the strangers in his midst betrayed his arrogance at thinking that he has a place to decide who is in and out of the kingdom of Heaven.

OK, so how did this dampen the humor of my movie? Well, "The Weimar House" is a mock horror film, in which the horror is the presence of a married lesbian couple in the neighborhood. The "christians" of the neighborhood decide they must protect the sanctity of their own marriages by driving out the lesbians. They assemble as a horde that marches on the lesbian's house, the Weimar House, and the clash between the two sides ends with hatred going up in flames in the face of love. Trouble is, when you have a real life representation of the 'christian horde' standing outside a theater, the absurdity of people chanting, "Onward Christian soldiers!" and threatening to burn the lesbians with their tikki torches suddenly becomes a little too real.

Folks from the festival saw me taking notes on this ranting man (who isn't just opposed to homosexuals and lesbians; he also doesn't like Buddhists, Jews, Catholics, lukewarm Christians, Masons, Shriners...). They're now looking forward to what I do with this material for the next Mickee Faust/dwp film short. And I'd like to write something, but what? All I can think of is Mr. T's famous line: "I pity the fool!"

For me, the antidote to this man's screaming tirade came on Sunday morning during a simple, wonderful service at St. Philip's Episcopal Church on E. Main Street in Durham. The words of Paul in Romans 11 hit home:

"I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all."

This message, accompanied by the gospel story of the Canaanite Woman in Matthew which is similar to the Syrophoenecian Woman story recounted in one of my other entries, is a reminder that the one you may not think is worthy of God's redeeming love may very well be a most worthy recipient of that love. It is not our place to judge. And it certainly is not the place of a man screaming, "Repent and Return" on a sidewalk in North Carolina to tell any person from the LGBT community that they are the dogs of "christian" society.

Yes, screaming man: repent and return to your own faith...and don't judge mine.

Weirdly wonderful dream

My partner informs me that I have weird dreams. I don't know why she thinks that. Doesn't everyone dream that the Florida Senate President had redone the legislative chamber to make the room "Bigger and Brighter"?

OK...that dream was a little weird. But no stranger than some of the others I have, or written about here on this blog. The dream I had recently definitely scored high on the strange-o-meter. But some of the ideas as to why I might have had this particular dream were really wonderful.

In this dream, which occurred a few days ago just before I was waking up, I saw one of the final scenes from my favorite film, "The Wizard of Oz". It's the moment where Dorothy learns from Glinda the Good Witch that she's always had the power to go home. If you remember, her traveling buddies are standing around her, and now she must say good-bye to each of them. She starts with the Tin Man, who tells her he knows he has a heart "because it's breaking." Dorothy tells the Cowardly Lion she'll miss the way he used to call for help before he found his courage to which he says, "I never would've found it if it hadn't been for you." And finally the Scarecrow, who's got his brain, and Dorothy hug each other with little more than, "I'm going to miss you most of all." Having said her good-byes, Dorothy taps her heels together three times and repeats the famous mantra, "There's no place like home."

So, I woke up with this scene having played in its entirety with all the full-color images and dialogue in tact, and was again reminded of the phrase from this past Sunday's gospel:

"Get out of the boat!"

What's that all about?? Why did I experience this moment of movie memories and then one more round of "Get out of the boat"?

I talked it over with people. My friend Diana offered that each of the characters represent elements of God, and elements that are within me that I am discovering. My partner thought these were also the pathways to God (through the heart, through the mind). But in my own thinking I was also interested in the connection back to Peter getting out of the boat and walking toward Jesus (God) which he is capable of doing as he keeps his eyes forward and on Jesus....and then sinks the minute he feels the wind blow and lets fear overcome him.

The thoughts I have on this dream go in lots of directions. One thought is that each of these characters had to go through a lot to discover those powers they always had within them. And now that they've got them, they are ready to "get out of the boat"....the boat being the "old and familiar" way that they had been before they embarked on their yellow brick road journey.

But dreams aren't about the characters, they are about the dreamer...in this case: me. And so another one of my reflections is on the elements each were seeking: heart, courage, brain, and home. Going back to what Diana noted, these are parts of me that have all become more engaged in the past nine months as I float along on this boat ride. Similarly, Isabelle's observation about how one seeks God reminded me of those times when I have had fleeting glances at the "who" of God...mostly through dreams. And then there is the prayer we say in the Episcopal Church following the eucharist:

"Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members your Son our Savior, Jesus Christ. And you have fed us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of his body and blood. Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart through Christ our Lord. Amen."

You figure this is the "going home" prayer, the very time when we must "get out of the boat."

Hmmmmmm.....

Moving Right Along

I think I am done with talking about Lambeth, Archbishops, Bishops, Episcopolitics, etc.

In other words, I'm going to try to avoid the bright shiny objects and return to more introspection and reflection.

And so....here goes:

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."
Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God." --Matt 14: 22-33

I will get to the "why I marked that line in blue" in just a moment. First, let me say that when I read this (which I ended up reading it twice because I had already seen it once earlier in the past week) I was choking up with tears again in reflecting on how in those moments when I think I'm about to sink and drown, I have been made safe through the loving hand of God. So this particular Bible story "feels real" to me.

So, why the blue highlight amidst the red text? Well, while I was thinking about the above situation, yesterday's sermon by Rev. Denson Franklin (father of Mtr. Lee Shafer of St. John's) zeroed in on that line. That Peter, when beckoned to come, got out of the boat and started walking. Jesus didn't walk to him; Peter was walking toward Jesus. And then, the wind blows, and he gets scared and that's when he starts to sink. The repeated message in the sermon became "Get out of the boat." And, just in case I had missed it, Mtr. Lee said it one more time to me before I left the church.

Get out of the boat. How interesting, and appropriate, and......

Scary.

Scary because I have felt (and described here and here in this blog) that my journey at this time feels like I am in a boat...a strange and foreign place for me to be because I don't swim and so sea-faring isn't one of my hobbies. Nonetheless, that's been the inner sensation. I have certainly at times wanted to exit the boat and go ashore and hang out anywhere but on the water. And each time, I have felt this tug that tells me to "Sit down and stop trying to leave the boat!" I have also tried to commandeer the wheel of the boat and take command of the direction. Again, I have been told to "Sit down, be still, pay attention, and stop trying to put your hands on the wheel." All of this has left me amazed, awed, confused...and sometimes downright frustrated. If this is my boat ride, then I want to set the course!

But what happens when the day comes that I am invited to leave the boat and come out onto the water? Not by a priest, but by God? Where will my focus be? Will I be able to do it? Will I flinch at the first breeze that blows by (because there's always going to be wind)? Will I have the ears to hear the call to "come"?

I wonder.