Off to see the parents, sibs and cousins for a week. Hope you have a sparkling 4th of July. Here's a good Independence Day pic from our Philly get away back in May.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Gone Fishin'
Off to see the parents, sibs and cousins for a week. Hope you have a sparkling 4th of July. Here's a good Independence Day pic from our Philly get away back in May.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Dear Mr. President
I sent this letter to the White House today.
June 25, 2009
The Honorable Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama,
I write as a supporter and as a friend in Christ with an invitation that I make with deep reservations.
I readily confess that back in January, as news of the church vetting process circulated in the metro area, I told friends I was extremely glad that we would never be considered, and that I would hate to try to cope with all of the security and media attention that is a part of your every day.
Nevertheless, your recent statements suggesting that your religious commitments lead you to oppose marriage equality for gays and lesbians prompt me to invite you to join us for worship at Clarendon Presbyterian some Sunday morning.
If you and your family were to join us, you would hear these words of invitation: “welcome to Clarendon Presbyterian Church. We are a congregation that tries, in our common life, to live out the love and the justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we welcome everyone – and we mean everyone – to this house of prayer for all God’s children.”
If you and your family were to join us, you would find yourself sitting in the midst of a small collection of people ranging widely in age, coming from all over the place, gay and straight, families and singles, mostly of European descent but some Latinos, Asians and Pacific islanders.
You would hear the lively word of the living God preached with passion and compassion, and you would see, in your mind’s eye, Jesus extending his healing touch to those left behind and marginalized by the dominant religious and secular culture.
But, as we Christians believe that truth is incarnate and understood best in relationship, what you would see and hear is far less important than who you would meet. We both know that you are highly unlikely to set foot in the place (or even to read this letter), so let me introduce your staff to Mike and Clark, who have been members here for more than 10 years. They sing in the choir. Mike is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Clark served our country in the Army. Clark grew up in my native Alabama, and Mike grew up in Tennessee. They met in the most old-fashioned way, more than 15 years ago, at a church function. Their parents regularly worship with us when they come up to visit. They are in the midst of a home improvement project, as settled, committed, loving and boringly domestic as any straight married couple, and yet they are denied, because of their sexuality, more than 200 legal benefits that accrue without question to those of us who are married.
You might also meet Heather and Lisa, a young couple whom I was fortunate enough to make, in Lisa’s words, “unlawfully wedded wives” in a beautiful worship service this spring. They travel about 25 miles to worship with us because there are simply not that many houses of worship where they feel welcome.
On the day of their wedding, right after Heather’s and Lisa’s fathers had walked them down the aisle, I said to the gathered community, “Jesus said ‘render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s.’ To God belong our hearts, our love, our promises, our faithfulness. Caesar does not recognize what we do here, but God does and God blesses it richly.”
After the service, one of Lisa’s brothers told me that his daughter – about the same age as Malia – asked her dad if the wedding was going to be on the news. I laughed and said, “thank God, no – we don’t need that today.” But he stopped me and said, “it should be, then people would see how ordinary this really is.”
I have the same reservations in inviting your to worship with us. We certainly do not need the hassles that would bring. But, Mr. President, for the sake of your own wholeness, you need to come and see.
As Dr. King so often said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Now is the time to bend it just a little further, and here at Clarendon, we are about the work of bending it. Come and see.
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Dr. David Ensign, Ph.D.
Pastor
June 25, 2009
The Honorable Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama,
I write as a supporter and as a friend in Christ with an invitation that I make with deep reservations.
I readily confess that back in January, as news of the church vetting process circulated in the metro area, I told friends I was extremely glad that we would never be considered, and that I would hate to try to cope with all of the security and media attention that is a part of your every day.
Nevertheless, your recent statements suggesting that your religious commitments lead you to oppose marriage equality for gays and lesbians prompt me to invite you to join us for worship at Clarendon Presbyterian some Sunday morning.
If you and your family were to join us, you would hear these words of invitation: “welcome to Clarendon Presbyterian Church. We are a congregation that tries, in our common life, to live out the love and the justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we welcome everyone – and we mean everyone – to this house of prayer for all God’s children.”
If you and your family were to join us, you would find yourself sitting in the midst of a small collection of people ranging widely in age, coming from all over the place, gay and straight, families and singles, mostly of European descent but some Latinos, Asians and Pacific islanders.
You would hear the lively word of the living God preached with passion and compassion, and you would see, in your mind’s eye, Jesus extending his healing touch to those left behind and marginalized by the dominant religious and secular culture.
But, as we Christians believe that truth is incarnate and understood best in relationship, what you would see and hear is far less important than who you would meet. We both know that you are highly unlikely to set foot in the place (or even to read this letter), so let me introduce your staff to Mike and Clark, who have been members here for more than 10 years. They sing in the choir. Mike is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Clark served our country in the Army. Clark grew up in my native Alabama, and Mike grew up in Tennessee. They met in the most old-fashioned way, more than 15 years ago, at a church function. Their parents regularly worship with us when they come up to visit. They are in the midst of a home improvement project, as settled, committed, loving and boringly domestic as any straight married couple, and yet they are denied, because of their sexuality, more than 200 legal benefits that accrue without question to those of us who are married.
You might also meet Heather and Lisa, a young couple whom I was fortunate enough to make, in Lisa’s words, “unlawfully wedded wives” in a beautiful worship service this spring. They travel about 25 miles to worship with us because there are simply not that many houses of worship where they feel welcome.
On the day of their wedding, right after Heather’s and Lisa’s fathers had walked them down the aisle, I said to the gathered community, “Jesus said ‘render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s.’ To God belong our hearts, our love, our promises, our faithfulness. Caesar does not recognize what we do here, but God does and God blesses it richly.”
After the service, one of Lisa’s brothers told me that his daughter – about the same age as Malia – asked her dad if the wedding was going to be on the news. I laughed and said, “thank God, no – we don’t need that today.” But he stopped me and said, “it should be, then people would see how ordinary this really is.”
I have the same reservations in inviting your to worship with us. We certainly do not need the hassles that would bring. But, Mr. President, for the sake of your own wholeness, you need to come and see.
As Dr. King so often said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Now is the time to bend it just a little further, and here at Clarendon, we are about the work of bending it. Come and see.
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Dr. David Ensign, Ph.D.
Pastor
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Angels and Demons?
Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh, cry or scream. And then, there's this: a church exorcising the homosexual demons.
It never occurred to me that demons might have sexual preference ....
When will people learn to love the amazing variations of creation, and stop condemning difference?
It never occurred to me that demons might have sexual preference ....
When will people learn to love the amazing variations of creation, and stop condemning difference?
Friday, June 19, 2009
A Light Read to Begin the Summer
Just finished Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato. O'Brien is among the best writers to emerge from the American experience in Vietnam, and this was his masterpiece. Strange and dreamy, it struck me as the Vietnam answer to Saving Private Ryan. Although both stories focus down on the platoon level, everything perceived as good and right about Private Ryan's war is stripped away in Private Cacciato's.
O'Brien captures the war's futility in just a few sentences toward the end of the novel:
As always, it will take the great writers of the American experience in Iraq to bring us to deeper and fuller understanding. Unfortunately, by that point we will doubtless be already engaged in another misbegotten misadventure. Sigh.
I think I'll go back to a good, light murder mystery for these early summer days.
O'Brien captures the war's futility in just a few sentences toward the end of the novel:
The end was coming. He could feel. Already he anticipated the textures of things familiar: decency, cleanliness, high literacy and low mortality, the pursuit of learning in heated schools, science, art, industry bearing fruit through smokestacks. Wasn't this the purpose? The goal? Some vision of virtue? Weren't these the valued things? Wasn't freedom worth pursuing? If civilization had meaning, weren't these the reasons? Hadn't wars been fought for these very promises? Even in Vietnam -- wasn't the intent to restrain forces of incivility? The intent. Wasn't it to impede tyranny, aggression, repression? To promote some vision of goodness? Oh, something had gone terribly wrong. But the aims, the purposes, the ends -- weren't these fully virtuous and proper? Wasn't self-determination a proper aim of civilized man? Wasn't political freedom a part of justice? Wasn't military aggression, unrestrained, a threat to civilization and order? Oh, yes -- something had gone wrong. Facts, circumstances, understandings. But had the error been wrong intention, wrong purpose?Those are the questions that arise in reflection upon American military misadventures since the "great war" of the "greatest generation." But, as events that apparently no American experts foresaw unfold in the streets of Iran, one wonders if we haven't used entirely ineffective means to pursue the intentions and purposes that we always claim guide our actions in places such as Vietnam ... or Iraq.
As always, it will take the great writers of the American experience in Iraq to bring us to deeper and fuller understanding. Unfortunately, by that point we will doubtless be already engaged in another misbegotten misadventure. Sigh.
I think I'll go back to a good, light murder mystery for these early summer days.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Standing on History ...
Always good to find yourself standing with Lincoln ... or, at least, standing where he stood.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Freedom Summer
Images of freedom. At the top, Michael Kinnemon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches (and dean at Lexington Theological Seminary when I was a student there many years ago -- and a fine hoops player, too), speaking at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture witness in front of the White House last week calling for a full investigation of the instances of torture during the terror war. In the middle, a desk in Freedom Hall in Philadelphia on which the Declaration of Independence was signed a few years back (and which we visited a few weeks ago).
Bottom: the foundations of my family life and marriage shutter once again as my daughter leads the More Light Presbyterians contingent in the DC Metro Pride Parade along with the Rev. Rusty Lynn.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Tortured Faith
The photo barrage will continue soon, but first this brief interruption for some text blogging.
I was back in front of the White House today for another witness, joining friends from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to call on the Obama Administration to create a truth commission to investigate the use of torture by American forces in various aspects of the terror war.
There are all kinds of good reasons to participate in NRCAT's call, but for me one reason stands out: people who go to church are more likely to support the use of torture than those who do not.
The church has utterly failed on this crucial moral and theological issue. We have failed to teach clearly that torture violates the teachings that flow forth from the creation story. If all of us are created in the image of God, then torture of any creature debases the Creator.
Now the Obama Administration, saying it wants to look forward and not back, wants to compound the failing of the church -- or, at least, to take advantage of it by avoiding a politically costly investigation.
Truth commissions in other countries -- countries who have faced far more difficult and divisive challenges than do we -- have led to authentic reconciliation and allowed countries to move forward honestly. If we do not move forward honestly we will have failed to learn our own history.
It is only a matter of time until we repeat it.
I was back in front of the White House today for another witness, joining friends from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to call on the Obama Administration to create a truth commission to investigate the use of torture by American forces in various aspects of the terror war.
There are all kinds of good reasons to participate in NRCAT's call, but for me one reason stands out: people who go to church are more likely to support the use of torture than those who do not.
The church has utterly failed on this crucial moral and theological issue. We have failed to teach clearly that torture violates the teachings that flow forth from the creation story. If all of us are created in the image of God, then torture of any creature debases the Creator.
Now the Obama Administration, saying it wants to look forward and not back, wants to compound the failing of the church -- or, at least, to take advantage of it by avoiding a politically costly investigation.
Truth commissions in other countries -- countries who have faced far more difficult and divisive challenges than do we -- have led to authentic reconciliation and allowed countries to move forward honestly. If we do not move forward honestly we will have failed to learn our own history.
It is only a matter of time until we repeat it.
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