Praying for the Church

Today's invitation begins with a reading from one of the Pauline letters in which Paul describes the church at its best. We are asked to pray for the church.
This is an invitation I can embrace whole-heartedly. Indeed, sometimes I take the church directory and read through it as a prayer for the congregation at Clarendon. Other times I simply give thanks for this community and for being blessed enough to work with them as friends and colleagues in ministry.
This evening I spent an hour with five fascinating folks who will be joining the church next month. (A sixth new member, another fascinating guy, was off sailing around Antigua. Why did he not need a chaplain for that trip?!?)
Clarendon is certainly not perfect; no church is. But it is full of grace and joy and faith and passion. My prayer is one of profound gratitude.

Tony Campolo on Christian Peace Witness for Iraq 2009

I missed a blog date yesterday. Ironically, the invitation was to read Psalm 51, with its beautiful and prayerful desire to have God "create in me a clean heart." So, I suppose this would be confession and pardon time.
On the other hand, I did not post anything yesterday because when I got off a conference call at 10:00 p.m. I forgot. Truly, I was feeling spirit-filled from the phone time spent with colleagues working on the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq's April 29-30 DC public witness. It was prayerful time.
Indeed, it opened with this prayer from a New Zealand prayer book:
Eternal spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and forever. Amen.
So, I suppose my prayerful reflection on Psalm 51 leads me to seek God's blessings on our efforts to create a clean heart in the midst of the nations that we might learn to beat swords into plowshares and study war no more.

goo goo goo joob goo goo goo joob goo googoooooooooooojoob

Today's invitation includes reading John 14:16-26. I added a verse before that and several at the end to complete a pericope.
It is one of the more beautiful and enigmatic passages in the New Testament, and it includes what I've always called the goo goo goo joob theology of John: "I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you" ... and I am the walrus. Or was it, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together"?
Despite the silliness, I do love the extended meditation on love in which this passage falls. Just a few verses earlier (13:54) Jesus says, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have love you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
The setting for that commandment in John is the last supper, and from that comes the tradition of Maundy (or, mandate) Thursday.
I could not begin to follow the suggestion to set aside an hour in which to ask the guidance of the spirit on every single decision. The suggestion raises a host of questions for me that lead to theological detours and cul de sacs down which I'm not interested in traveling right now.
But, Jesus' words in John do remind me that the entire point of the Jesus movement is to give every hour to love. If we are guided by love -- if we ask ourselves in every decision "what would advance the cause of love" -- then I believe we are living at one with the spirit of love, just as Jesus did. Then, well, we are all together ... goo goo goo joob.

Free to Love

Well, obviously, I missed yesterday. I knew that I'd never make 40 straight days!
Yesterday we were invited to read from 1 John, and to ask in prayer if there is someone to whom we should be extending love. The problem was, I was in such a completely foul mood that I did not even want to risk such an open prayer.
Being in a more or less public role, I am occasionally on the receiving end of shots that are really aimed elsewhere but ricochet around till I get in the way. It happens; and I always get angry in response, and then turn inward and beat myself up for the part of the shot that struck home with any kind of accuracy, no matter how slight.
So, there I was, mad and not at all in the mood to sit with John, much less with God.
Perhaps that is the time when one ought most to seek the presence of God and unload on truly broad shoulders. Jesus, after all, offered to carry our burdens.
Perhaps, the anger is, itself, a form of prayer. The psalmist gave voice to some deep-seated anger and, when I find myself stuck in a long-term funk, dark place or unpassing anger, I turn to the psalms.
But yesterday was a passing storm, that I finally let go of this afternoon on a long run.
The invitation today was to free prayer, and the run was the perfect time for that. I turned my I-pod onto a shuffle of up-tempo songs and lost myself in sweat and song and let go of the anger. I gave it away along the way. That is prayer.
Now I am ready for a Sabbath day.

What's In a Name?

Today's invitation is to do something that preachers are always told to avoid. Well, kind of. A standard piece of homiletic advice is, "don't preach the lists." In other words, avoid using the texts that are long lists of names. Reading them out loud in worship is said to be deadly dull.

Well, reading them quietly is not much better. But here is the list, from Matthew, that we're invited to read:
An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, 15and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.

We are invited to consider the real human beings with their own messy lives represented in that list, and consider the same with a contemporary list -- for example, a phone book.
But frankly, I don't find much difficulty or challenge or depth in praying the lists that way. Sure, I can hold in the light dozens of people I do not know, but I don't feel drawn into any relationship with them, any accountability toward them, any responsibility for them.
The list in Matthew, on the other hand, is intended to evoke certain memories. Check again who is in it, and who is not. Mostly it's men, but the women named or alluded to are interesting because each was extremely marginalized in her social context. There is a particularity to their circumstances that would seem to make it impossible to expect anything great to come from them. Indeed, in would be hard to imagine that anything at all would come from their lives. They would have been among the cast off and cast aside.
Why would God choose such as these?
Hm ... why should I care for such as these?
All of which brings me to my evening's activity: attending a gumbo dinner at Sojourners that raised some money for a Sojo work trip to New Orleans this Holy Week. After dinner, we watched act 1 of Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke.
The documentary includes numerous interviews with survivors of Katrina. Most of them are folks you've never heard of, just like the genealogy of Jesus. But when they were forgotten and left behind by their government, God reached out to them through the hands of thousands of volunteers. (Which does not excuse the public sector or get it off the hook in any way for the continuing disaster in many lives along the Gulf Coast.)
So, this evening, as I read the list from Matthew, I thought of the folks we helped in Mississippi in the immediate aftermath of the storm and the hundreds of thousands of others just like them. And my prayer is that I have the faithfulness to, at the very least, enable others to give hands and feet to the prayer so that lives can continue to be touched.

Take a Hike

Today's invitation begins with parts of the creation stories from Genesis, and, even as I write that I know that I am going to take a meandering detour, so be forewarned.
I read a story in the Post this morning about a "creation studies" class from Liberty University visiting the Smithsonian natural history museum.
The professor is quoted saying "There's nothing balanced here. It's completely, 100 percent evolution-based. We come every year, because I don't hold anything back from the students."
Ironic that story should appear on the day we're invited to read from the creation stories. The plurality of creation stories in scripture ought, in and of itself, tell us something about the intention of the stories, and, at the very least, ought to raise questions about the utility of employing prescientific texts in response to a fundamentally scientific question.
So, if it's not a science text, what questions does Genesis address?
Theological ones. Questions about God. About who God is and what God cares about.
God looks at creation and calls it good in the first creation story. In the second, God walks through the garden in the evening breeze and simply enjoys the creative handiwork.
This is a God of infinite creativity and joy who invites us into joy and creativity, too.
The prayer invitation today is to take a prayer walk, through your neighborhood, your yard, your workplace, or wherever. Of course, by the time I got to this it's past 9:30 and no walk is going to happen.
But I did get in a brief run this afternoon, and mostly prayed to be done!
Then I took a short bike ride with Hannah, who is just beginning to get comfortable on her bike. We rode together down to the Shirlington neighborhood -- less than a mile. I was not specifically paying attention to creation and praying for those I passed along the way, as per the instructions.
But I was open to the thrust of grace in the early spring air, and filled with joy, love and a certain yearning as I watched my daughter peddle away down the bike path in front of me.
I think that was enough prayer for the day.

Reaching ... Touching ... Healing ... Whom

Today's invitation begins with reading Mark 5:24-34.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”’He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’
The prayer of the day asks us to consider the places in our own lives that are bleeding, and continues with the question, "Have you judged someone for something they did to you? Your judgment can anchor their sin into your soul with a spiritual fishhook."
I've no problem recognizing many of my own broken places, and accepting the soul-freeing wisdom of forgiveness. But I believe the metaphors are mixed up and the story's real power missed if we turn it into seeking wholeness for our own run-of-the-mill places of brokenness -- loneliness, illness, discouragement, jealousy. Certainly those can be real and soul-killing. But the issue at stake in the strange little story from Mark is, well, the issue. That is to say, the woman's ritual uncleanness due to menstrual bleeding makes her untouchable and, when she touches Jesus she makes him unclean as well.
The reaching and touching in faith obliterates the social stigma at stake in the story. So the question for my meditation this evening is not what everyday brokenness do I carry with me that I need to let go of, but rather, what socially constructed marks of exclusion am I accepting unquestioningly that unjustly condemn others and leave my soul at stake? What socially constructed systems of domination am I participating in that crush my own soul and those of so many others? What powers and principalities are ruling my own heart?
So, while I certainly pray for healing of my own brokenness on multiple layers, as I read this story from Mark, I am most mindful of my need for courage to extend a healing hand to others, and to allow myself to be touched even when I'd prefer not to be.

Love Letter from God

The invitation for today is to read Romans 8:35-39, to sit with it for a while and listen as if to a love letter.
Like many pastors, I quote from this passage often: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus."
I quote it, and I find comfort in it, but I certainly don't lay any claim to understanding just what it means.
But today, having just opened an e-mail from a good friend and colleague who confesses just now to feeling panic rising within her self on a project we are both deeply involved in, I am thinking that neither hopes nor fears, nor deadlines nor permits, nor liturgies nor police, nor expectations nor disappointments, nor failures nor budgets -- nothing will separate us from the love of God.
It simply will be all right in the end. We are loved. When we live out of that love, that trust, then we are powerful far beyond what we dare to imagine.

On the Seventh Day ...

I rested, and so should you. Heck, if it was good enough for God ...

In the Garden

The invitation for today, Saturday, is to free-form prayer, to be with God in whatever way feels free and joyous. It was a beautiful day today, and I spent most of it outside. We spent several hours in the garden, preparing soil, clearing the ends of last year's growth, pulling early weeds and spotting the first sprouts of mums. As Wendell Berry says, good work done kindly and well is prayer. I prayed in the dirt all day. A very fine way to step into spring.

Why Christian?

A word, from the context of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, from Ken Sehested, the founding director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship:
"Finally, a belated word of thanks to the CPWI group. I remember overhearing, from a distance, some of the controversy which surrounded the group's forming some years ago — basically, pretty caustic criticism for organizing a 'Christian' group. At the time I meant to write a strong endorsement for this strategy--against the cosmopolitanites and idealists who believe they can hang in mid-air, free of history and angles of vision, finding a location that transcends all social locations. This is the dark side of liberalism: the desire to reduce and distill everything to supposed 'universal' principles. This, too, is part of the domination system which must be resisted. This is not at all to deny the urgent need to do interfaith work, and to become sufficiently 'bilingual' to engage with people of no explicit faith commitment. But we must keep in mind the long history of dominant groups who want to say, 'we're all just alike.'"
I am reminded, when I hear vague references to a higher power, that it does matter greatly just what higher power we are talking about. After all, from where I sit here in Arlington, the Pentagon is a higher power, the White House is a higher power, the Congress is a higher power. Each of those higher powers does have the capacity to reduce us all to the same, to obliterate our histories and make of us creatures in their own particular images.
To follow Jesus is, first and foremost, to resist that power to reduce others to our own image, including the image of followers of Jesus. The cross is most abused when it is captive to the empire and becomes a sign of triumph rather than an invitation to compassion -- to suffering with.
Hm, so I wrote the above this morning. This afternoon I come to the Lenten exercise where today we are asked to read Luke 9:18-27, in which Jesus asks Peter, "who do you say that I am?"
The heading for today's exercise is, "What difference does it make that I'm a Christian?"
Clearly this afternoon is speaking to this morning. It does make a difference what higher power one calls upon, one sits with, one listens for. If God is made known in Jesus then what do we know of God? The passage from Luke is instructive. Just before Jesus asks the great Christological question he feeds 5,000 hungry souls and stomachs. Just after he asks it, he reminds his followers that the nature of discipleship is defined by the cross. Then, he continues his ministry of healing.
God feeds us. God desires our wholeness. God heals.
What difference does it make to put Jesus at the center of my devotion? It points me clearly toward that God. It draws me into relationship with that God.
None of which is an argument for exclusivity, but rather a recognition that I am a finite human being, situated in a particular culture and moment in history. I cannot follow every path, but I can follow the one before me with as much faithfulness as I am willing to risk.
Pictured? Oh, that's a window from my church. I call that one "peace Jesus."

Praying With ...

A two-fer today, as I try to catch up. Does unbinding my heart this rapidly pose risks?
Anyway, the invitation for today is praying for children. As father of three, this is nothing new under the sun. I feel like I spend half my life as parent following Rabbi Heschel's advice that we "pray with our feet." I'm always chasing children.
Coincidentally, this evening was parent-teacher conference night for our elementary school one. This morning was the presbytery's social justice committee meeting. The connection?
We focused this morning on the economic crisis and the host of theological questions that the church should be posing in its midst. The first question, it seems to me, for the North American church must be: what is the richest country in the history of the world called to do at this moment. While sitting in the meeting, I ambled over to Global Rich List to see where I fall on the list of the world's richest people. My present salary (which is less than ten percent higher than the minimum for a pastor in National Capital Presbytery) puts me in the richest .88 percent of the global population. Number 53,205,017 to be precise.
We live in what passes for the working class section of Arlington and our youngest child goes to the school in the county that serves the highest percentage of free lunches and has the lowest scores on standardized tests. Yet it has the richest learning environment of any school that our three children have been in (in four states and several incredibly affluent school systems).
If we are to be honest in assessing the financial crisis we must first be honest in assessing our own wealth. If we are to be honest in praying for the children of the world, we must first be honest in confessing how much more we could be doing for them if we worried less about the state of our 401Ks and recognize the ridiculous abundance that we have at our disposal.
So, I see the great Rabbi's walking prayer and raise him one. We need to be praying with our checkbooks, too.
The image? I found that when I image-searched "praying with our checkbooks." So my final prayer of the day: thank you God for the world wide web!

Thanksgiving

Yesterday's invitation was to gratitude, so I give thanks for a moment this afternoon to reflect. I am thankful for the folks who came out last night to talk about what it means to become part of a congregation and to take a step in that direction with respect to our little community.
Of course, that meeting was what got in the way of this spiritual "discipline" last night. Tonight, a parent-teacher conference will get in the way.
Real life tends to get in the way of spiritual practice, at least to the extent that we admit a distinction into our understanding.
We are talking this Lent at Clarendon about embodied faith, and we began the conversation reflecting that Jesus' Judaism did not include the mind/body, spirit/body dualism of the Greeks, and that, to the extent that Western Christianity adopted that dualism that denigrates the body in favor of the spirit it departs from its authentic roots.
So, the challenge of a spiritual practice of gratitude may lie simply in understanding how one could follow Paul's charge to "give thanks in all circumstances." In the midst of every moment -- the staff meeting you sat through today, the traffic on the way home, the hurried dinner plans, the homework, the bedtime, the sunrise wake up tomorrow -- in every moment give thanks.
I'm pretty sure I'm not up for that! On the other hand, Henri Nouwen once observed that gratitude is the fundamental attitude common to all authentic religious expression. So, if you want to get religion -- and, of course, who doesn't! -- give thanks.
Picture: gratitude in a bottle -- I'll drink to that!

Altars, Stones and Sacrifices

Today's invitation is to read from Genesis the call of Abram to journey toward a land of promise, and, once on the outskirts of that land to build an altar. Reading it I thought of the various altars that we all build to the various gods that we worship. The god of money, lately toppled from its heaven, we worship now in desperation at the debris of the altar of the market. The god of family we worship at the hearths we build. The god of knowledge is worshiped at the high temple of the university. The god of freedom we worship often in the garage altars that honor our cars. The god of power is honored at the massive five-sided altar just up the road from here.
One of the central symbolic acts of the Reformation was to do away with the altar -- the place of sacrifice -- and replace it with the table -- the place of welcome and gathering in the community, the place of revelation in the breaking of bread as opposed to in the breaking of bodies upon the stone of sacrifice. The reformers wanted to draw attention to Jesus and away from the notion of offering sacrifices to please God. Of course, there was a great deal more to their theological and political and architectural thinking than that one sentence pretends to capture.
Still, something in me resists altar-building. On the other hand, I love to collect stones from places that seem sacred to me. I carry the smallest of those around in my guitar case, and will from time to time use them in worship settings. The larger stones tend to find a place in my garden. I suppose I could think of that as an altar, but I prefer the simplicity and the symbolism of the garden. After all, that's where Jesus went to pray and if it's good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me.
So, I did the reading and offered the prayer of this day, but I'll leave the altar building to others. Me, I'll wait a bit longer for the coming of spring and then I'll go into my garden to pray amidst the stones.
Oh, the picture is a Mayan altar for sacrifices.

In the Details

Our Lenten journey this year is gathering round Martha Grace Reese's Unbinding Your Heart. The first day of the 40 days of spiritual practice and prayer invites you to read Psalm 139 -- O, Lord you have searched me and known me. The psalmists feels God's presence everywhere, from dawn to dusk, from highest heaven to the pits of Sheol.
One imagines that Mies van der Rohe understood God this way. "God is in the details," the architect famously said.
Such a God does not, it would seem to me, much care how we practice our spirituality. Being all present, it would seem to be a question of our presence to God much more so than God's presence to us.
So, the question for 40 days of intentional drawing of one's self into relation with God is, what opens you to that presence.
It was with such lofty thoughts that I stepped across the room to pick up a Bible to read Psalm 139 ... and stepped squarely into a pile of dog vomit. Seems that the chocolate birthday cake that the dog got into this afternoon did not sit well!
So I'm left to contemplate the details in which one finds God. Even in the pit of Sheol?
I have been there, and, indeed, felt the presence of the spirit of shalom. So a little mess to clean up ... or several ... is nothing. In fact, perhaps this was just another reminder from the canines that dog is in the details, too.
The spiritual life is not for the faint of heart.
Indeed, as our preaching together at Clarendon during Lent is stressing, Christianity is, or ought to be, an embodied faith. It is grounded in the earthiness of early Judaism. The gospel stories -- especially the synoptics -- are full of stories that include eating, healing, touching, listening and seeing. The texts we read together yesterday -- Luke's account of feeding the five thousand and the Numbers story of manna in the wilderness -- are all about food and the ridiculous abundance of God's economy.
While just now I am wishing that my dog's had not experienced ridiculous abundance this afternoon, even in these messy details I can detect ... well, perhaps divine laughter.

Rereading

Got a call from a young friend this week looking for a bit of guidance for responding to a church person who went on a public rant about gays in the church. I pointed him in all the usual directions (More Light Presbyterians, Covenant Network, Walter Wink, and so forth), and then I sent him this article by a preacher who has changed his mind on these issues. In the article linked above, the writer details how a rereading of scripture in an emerging context of shifting attitudes about faithful gay and lesbian persons led him the rethink and, ultimately, revise his position.
As I read his reflections, I was reminded once again that religion, to be faithful, must always look two directions at once: backward and forward. The word, itself, hints at this. The Latin roots of religion are tangled up in two distinct meanings and trajectories. Lige, from which we get our word ligament, means to tie our bind, and thus suggests a meaning of religion pointing backward -- binding us back to a tradition or story that we have inherited. Lege, from which we get legible, means to read again or reread, and thus suggests a meaning of religion point forward to new readings of tradition or text.
Jesus seemed to grasp this intuitively. In the Sermon on the Mount he tells his listeners, "you have heard it said ..., but I say ..." and thus rereads his own tradition.
For example, when he says, "you have heard it said, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' but I say 'if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one also.'"
While I love Walter Wink's reading of this as a profoundly subversive and tactical text, I think it is first, clearly, a rereading. We tend to miss the power of the rereading of those words because we don't think too highly of the notion of trading one eye for another. But when that ancient Israeli law was codified in scripture it represented a great advance in the cause of justice from a social setting in which an injury inflicted by a member of one tribe on a member of another -- even accidental -- could result in wholesale slaughter.
Jesus had a new mind for a new time. He understood that changed social circumstances and attitudes created space for rereading the tradition and its foundational texts in ways that would advance peace and underscore the power of nonviolence. As the picture here (taken last month in DC) suggests, the threat of violence remains quite real in the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons.
As the church struggles to hear the Spirit's voice through its traditions and texts in a radically new social context, I keep thinking, "if rereading was good enough for Jesus, then it might be good for us, too."

In the Light

Tomorrow is a significant day in the life of the broader church as 15 Presbyteries hold votes on the General Assembly's proposed amendment to the Book of Order to change G-6.060106b to open the door to a more just and inclusive denomination. Of the Presbyteries that vote tomorrow, 10 voted "no" on a similar proposal in 2001 (the last time the Presbyteries acted on ordination). As of this afternoon, with the affirmative vote of Tres Rios Presbytery (Midland, Texas), 11 Presbyteries that voted no in 2001 have vote yes this time around. To approve the change, more than 40 Presbyteries need to change their vote from no to yes. While it is a long and steep climb, thus far Presbyteries in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, central Alabama, and west Texas have changed. The spirit is moving in the church. Please hold the Presbyteries below in the light of love, grace, welcome and reconciliation tomorrow.
East Iowa
Eastern Oregon
Giddings-Lovejoy
Greater Atlanta
Homestead
John Knox
Lake Erie
Mid-Kentucky
New Hope
North Alabama
Ohio Valley
Sacramento
The James
Tropical Florida
Utah

Open Space with the Quakers

I've been at Stony Point Center for the past several days with a group of 50 or so folks called together to talk about beginning an intentional, dispersed, Christian community focused on nonviolence and justice interrelated with the community at Stony Point.
Lots of powerful moving of the spirit in our midst and some interesting things being born, and I'm sure to be reflecting on this for weeks and months to come.
But right now I'm still pondering the process we used: a mix of open-space technology and Quaker discernment.
It was a fascinating experience -- sometimes tortuous, never linear, occasionally ponderous. It was interesting to see the process get bogged down in the same ways and places that Presbyterian parliamentary procedures tend to: community wordsmithing, for example. But closing the discussion was done with so much more gentleness that "calling for the question" -- no less finality, just more grace.
As we Presbyterians seek more spirit-led ways to make decisions, we can learn from our Quaker friends and from the people who create open space as well.

Blowing in the Wind on Marriage Equality Day

Seventeen of us, from at least four congregations, gathered in the very blustery plaza of the Arlington County Courthouse yesterday. We shared an interfaith liturgy of prayers and readings, and then proceeded to the sixth floor offices of the county clerk, Paul Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson met us and welcomed us to the office. Meanwhile, Claire and Rebecca, who are members of the Rock Spring United Church of Christ, filled out the on-line form to apply for a license. As they filled in all of the requisite family data, Mr. Ferguson explained the state of the law in Virginia.
When the form was completed, the person staffing the window requested proper ID, and gave Claire and Rebecca a copy of the application to check for accuracy. When they confirmed the information, the staff person apologized and said, "I cannot grant you a license."
Mr. Ferguson looked straight at Claire and Rebecca and said, "I am truly sorry."
Looking at the rest of us, he said, "thank you for being here." He told us that our presence was important because it allowed him to report to the state that same-gender couples are requesting licenses.
Then each of us laid a flower on the window in honor of various couples who cannot be married here. As I laid my flower on the window I honored Ron and James. If I had a bouquet, it would be to honor each of the people in my congregation for their continued faithful witness that God's love knows no bounds and that what God blesses should receive the equal protection of the law.
There was much more that was moving and powerful, as well as simple and interesting during our hour witness, but those details will have to wait.

Too much, too soon, too bad

I found myself writing this note on camp to a friend from another Presbytery this afternoon.
The Meadowkirk situation is ugly. It's been brewing for several years, and it's all about the money. I think that there's plenty of blame to go around on all sides, and it probably doesn't do anybody much good to sort that out at this point. In a strange way, the economic downturn may save the camp because it cannot be sold right now, and too much of the Presbytery's money is tied up in it to take the losses. I do think that pieces of it will be sold as soon as there's a market for the lots. That won't destroy the integrity of the camp, but it's unfortunate.
With the 20-20 of hindsight, it's clear that we built too much too fast and did it with too much borrowed money leveraging too many Presbytery assets on use projections that were far too rosy. I remain hopeful about the viability of the ministry, but I think it will be a good day for everyone when it is more disconnected from Presbytery.
The question is: can it survive long enough to make that happen? I really don't think anyone knows. I do not think it will survive on the old model of hosting church retreats, small groups and then the various kinds of summer programs for youth.
I'd like to see it work to become a smaller scale Montreat for the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, but that would require building a capacity for programs, marketing and hospitality that simply don't exist right now. I can also imagine it hosting all kinds of gatherings that are resourced out of the DC office -- focusing on the spiritual foundations of policy work rather than simply going to the Hill as usual. But any alternative vision takes birthing and there's not much good will around here for that process.
That's my two cents -- not that it's worth even that much in today's economy.
I suppose the only "word to the wise" from all of this is don't spend money that you don't have. Of course, none of us in DC operate that way!

Faith and Values

A few random "Monday morning thoughts" delayed till Tuesday!
Sunday morning at Clarendon we talked about finding our voice. We had a brief "popcorn" conversation during worship in which folks named the values that shape and undergird what we say.
It was both easy to anticipate and, at the same time, illuminating in what was on the list: love, welcome, faith, hope, peace, acceptance, justice, compassion, forgiveness; and in what was not named. I wonder how long we would have talked before we got to values such as righteousness and truth and how we would have spoken of them.
It's not that those are unimportant, but rather that their meanings are contested and thus the subject of deeper exploration instead of being on the top of the list of easy to name and agree upon values.
I wonder, also, how the list would have read if we had be talking about practices of faith, as distinct from values that frame our understanding.

Brace yourselves

"The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man."
So said George Bernard Shaw, making me wonder would you rather be a rich man with a tooth ache than a poor man with good teeth? Chew on that for a while ... there seems to be rather a decay of good humor here as we wait for a bridge to a better blog.
Not much to sink your teeth into here today, although somehow the combination of a trip to the dentist and a snow day reminded me of my favorite wee tale about my paternal grandmother who lost her dentures sledding down a huge hill near her home in Chattanooga when my father was a little boy. She never found the teeth, and never lived down the tale.

thought for the day

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
A thought for a day one which four of the five of us had eye doctor appointments. Tomorrow we go to the dentist. Wonder what thoughts that will inspire?

Inaugural Post

I walked in the streets in DC again this weekend. I’ve done that many times before, but for the first time I walked in them to celebrate for something rather than agitate against something. I spoke with several others in the streets or on the Metro who were sharing the same realization. It’s an interesting sensation, and one I’d like to have again someday.
The whole family went down yesterday to join the millions in the throng for President Obama’s (that was fun to write; I think I’ll do it again: President Obama’s) inauguration. We couldn’t see much, but we could certainly feel the excitement and joy as we celebrated the peaceful transfer of power that marks a great democracy moving more fully into its promise of “all people.”
Oddly enough, I got interviewed again. I’m not sure why this happens, but I’ve been a “person-on-the-street” interview at least four times in D.C. with media outlets ranging from al Jazeera (I kid you not) to the CBS Evening News. Yesterday it was Ebony.
The reporter asked us what the inauguration meant to us and how it made us feel. My nine-year-old daughter, remembering afternoons spent walking the canvas routes with me, said, “excited and proud that I helped to get the first African-American president elected.”
Never having learned the actor’s adage to avoid dogs and children because they will upstage you every time, I dived in, too.
President Obama’s inauguration prompted me to think back to my Southern childhood. I was born in Alabama in 1959, and probably had my diapers changed in Whites Only restrooms – certainly not change you can believe in!
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it does bend toward justice. It has been bent dramatically, by the faithful work of thousands of committed hands, in my lifetime.
The journey toward a more perfect union is endless, but we have travelled – marched, walked, freedom rode – a great distance, and yesterday was a time to celebrate not only the election of a leader with phenomenal gifts and potential, but also that national journey.
Nothing else could explain why 2 million people would brave the cold, the wind, and the inconvenience of being on the Mall. I still don’t know exactly what the president said because the words echoing off the Washington Monument were often muddled and sometimes drowned out by the flags whipping in the wind. But there is no place in the world that I would rather have been.

Prayer for the Obama Years

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace. AMEN.
-- Bishop Gene Robinson

If This Is a Dream, Don't Wake Me

No, that's not a terrorist! It's my middle child, Martin, bundled against the chill this afternoon at the pre-inaugural concert on the Mall -- waiting for that quintessential American, Bono, to perform! Hey, if the Irish can claim "O'bama" then we can claim U2.
We've got a house full for the inauguration and King Day festivities in DC this weekend. As I watched the concert this afternoon (from our "front row" place at the base of the Washington Monument ... no more than, oh, about a mile from the stage at the base of the Lincoln Memorial), I thought of Dr. King's speech in Lincoln's shadow, and his dream of a day when white men and black men, Protestants and Catholics, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveholders would be able to join hands. Our house is hosting this week Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, black and white, gay and straight, North American and Latino, young and not so young, men and women. We don't look quite as diverse as the crowd on the Mall this afternoon, but it's a fine mix of America that has found its way to our living room this week to celebrate King Day and the inauguration of President Obama. I think Dr. King would be smiling.

Uh, No, Actually, It Wasn't,

Yesterday afternoon I flipped on the TV to see if there were any details about the plane that landed in the Hudson.
Blog-post interruption: Every time I fly, when the flight attendant says, "in the unlikely event of a water landing ..." I think to myself, "water landing? Wouldn't that be a crash?" Now I know better.
I don't actually know what station I was watching, but as soon as I turned to a news station there were the remarkable pictures of the plane floating in the river. The talking head said, "your first thought when you hear the news is: was it terrorism?"
Uh, no, actually it wasn't.
Planes crash. Machines break. Birds fly into engines. All of these things are much more common and overwhelmingly more likely than terrorism. Only because we have been conditioned, almost commanded, to live in fear for the past seven years could a thoughtless talking head, reflecting an all-too-unreflective culture, say such a thing.
On the scale of things we need to fear as individuals, terrorism falls somewhere way down the line from slipping in the tub and cracking your head open. Yet our individual lives are disrupted in dozens of small and not so small ways in deference to those who want us to fear terrorism.
On the scale of things we need to fear as a society, terrorism still does not top the list. A lot more of us have died prematurely due to our broken health care system than due to terrorism.
Oh, to be sure, unless you've been living in a cave for the past decade you know that there are people living in caves out there who want to do us harm. They are real, and they are dangerous.
But sitting at the laptop and eating bonbons is far more of a threat to my health and safety than the terrorists.
Yes, it's the bonbons. They are out to get us.

No Ordinary Failure

From Jacob Weisberg, in Newsweek, comes the quote of the day on the Bush legacy: "Once the country is rid of Bush, perhaps we can start developing a more nuanced understanding of how his presidency went astray. His was no ordinary failure, and he leaves not just an unholy mess but also some genuine mysteries."
No ordinary failure -- sounds like a book title, but I don't anticipate it as anyone's autobiography.
The past eight years have reminded me many times of why the apocryphal Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times," is considered a curse. These have been extraordinary times, and perhaps no one leading through these years would have been even an ordinary success.
That is as charitable a thought as I can muster just now.

More Time

So my good friend Ditty, a regular reader (but not commenter), told me that yesterday's reference to Heraclitus reminded her of a poem that she memorized back in her school days at St. Anne's down near Charlottesville. The headmistress led the girls to many a poem, apparently, including this one from William Johnson Cory:
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed;
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are they pleasant voices, they nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

Ditty recited this from memory tracing back, I'm guessing, more than 70 years.
I can only hope that if I am lucky enough to live to the age Ditty is now that I do so as full of grace and good memories, and that I stay as attuned as she remains to the current of time flowing.

Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World

Perhaps because I have entered my 50th year, I have lately been acutely aware of the constant interplay of change and stability.
Out for a run this afternoon, my regular route took me along Four Mile Run near my south Arlington home. Heraclitus famously said that you cannot step in the same stream twice, but it seems to me that for almost six years now I’ve been running alongside this same creek. Sure, I know the rest of the quote and the others like it, about other waters flowing in, and that everything flows and nothing stands still, and that the only constant in the universe is change, but I’ll be damned if Four Mile Run changes in any way worth noting.
Along about the time I was pondering the ancient Greeks, I passed a young mother with her toddler son. He must have been about two and a half, and he was dragging a branch that must have been about two and a half times longer than he was. My oldest, who turns 18 next month, used to do the exact same thing. You want to engage the swift flow of change, then try parenting! Of course, as I was having a sweet memory of my son, it occurred to me that he really hasn’t changed at all. He’s just dragging bigger branches now.
I was running to the tunes of Johnny Clegg, a white South African musician who cofounded the first racially mixed band in Apartheid-era South Africa. I was listening to the title track of Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World:
You have to wash with the crocodile in the river
You have to swim with the sharks in the sea
You have to live with the crooked politician
Trust those things that you can never see
…
It's a cruel crazy beautiful world
Every time you wake up I hope it's under a blue sky
I’ve never been to South Africa, so I can only wonder if that blue sky feels the same now in a post-Apartheid world. Is it constant? Does it change? Is the blue sky of sweet, home Alabama – to name another song from a world with its own Apartheid history – the same at the beginning of the Obama era as it was at the time of my birth there in the days of Jim Crow?
It is, indeed, a cruel, crazy, beautiful world.
And we cling to whatever we can get a strong purchase on in the midst of profound uncertainty.
Now, of course, is the time for the preacherly move: point toward God as the unchanging one, the unmoved mover. But I don’t think that is the God revealed in the life of Jesus, because the gospel paints a portrait of Jesus moved often, to tears, to healing, to speak and to act for justice. If Jesus is the one, for Christians, who points us decisively to God then he points to a God so bound up in human history as to suffer with us in the midst of the cruel craziness of it all.
Which suggests trusting in what you cannot see in the same deep way that we trust those whom we love and by whom we are loved. They are, of course, moved and shaped by our shared histories, but the love itself points toward the same constant suggested in that most simple of Christian theological statements: God is love (1 John 4:7). Beloved, as the author of that letter would have addressed you, that enough theology for today.

Merry Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukah. Cheerful Kwanzaa. For our pagan friends, solstice salutations. It’s bit late for Eid ul-Fitr greetings, but what the heck. For those of you accustomed to our usual late holiday card: an early happy King Day to you, and to all our friends who are Democrats or liberal-leaning Independents a very, very, very happy early Inauguration Day to you!
This year we are either a) going green, b) going cheap, or c) getting realistic. This e-greeting will kill no trees, use no stamps and not require of any of the Lederle-Ensign household the Herculean effort required to boldly go where no one of us has gone before: the post office. To underscore the upside of e-missives even more, this letter has hyper-links for your optional edification or just to see lots of pictures from our lives over the past year or so!
It’s just been that kind of year … or two, as last year’s letter got written but never made it out of my laptop … which was stolen (in March).
The stereotypical annual family holiday letter gets panned, unfairly in my opinion (which should come as no surprise!), for incessant bragging on the successes of the previous year. Well, in our own special twist, our highlights include one high-school dropout and one parent arrested among a slew of more mundane events.
OK. Bud did not actually drop out of high school. His parents pulled him out after seeing one too many progress reports – and we use the term “progress” advisedly – that showed a great gap between promise and performance. As we’ve explained to the Arlington Public Schools, “we gave you one of the smartest kids in the country, according to various standardized tests, and you couldn’t engage him.”
So, believing that it does take villages to raise their own idiots, er, I mean children, we turned to friends, family and the community college system to create what has become a wonderfully rich 18-month experiment in self-directed learning. The path has included studying early childhood development in a hands-on way both through a child care center and as a two- or three-day per week full-time child care provider for the three-year-old son of close friends in Rockville, MD. (The latter experience produced my personal favorite line from the past year when Bud called me at church one afternoon and said, simply, “potty training sucks.”) Bud has also taken numerous classes at Northern Virginia Community College, and has found the college scene much more compelling than high school. It will all culminate, we trust, in Bud receiving his high-school diploma from the Clonlara School in the spring, right on time with his friends at Wakefield. This time next year, we hope to be telling you of his adventures in college.
Martin entered Wakefield as a freshman this fall, and though the first few months have been a bit rocky – the education of boys is not all beer and skittles – he is such a different child from his older brother that we trust the school will do a good job of narrowing the gap between promise and performance this time. We shall see. In the meantime, Martin is swimming like a fast fish and growing like a slender weed. He also fiddles with the orchestra, and fiddles around too much on Facebook. He spent another happy session at Hanover in August and is preparing this month for winter camp right after Christmas. He remains quiet (too quiet) at school and quick-witted at home. (This afternoon’s example: a concept for a new TV show about a cranky veterinarian who only takes the strangest cases: Dog House. It’s still never lupus.) Martin is a gentle, thoughtful, playful, creative, very hairy young man, who has already donated one ponytail to Locks of Love and could produce another one with a few more shaggy months.
Hannah is also a hairy little one, with long, flowing locks she waves with all the sass a nine-year-old girl can muster. She is a strong-willed, independent fourth grader, who loves to read and play with Josie, her best friend of the past five years. Life is going to take a drastic turn for Hannah in 2009, because Josie’s dad is a state department officer heading to Tunisia for two years beginning at the end of the school year. Already we are exploring a trip, because the Atlantic is not wide enough to keep these two girls apart for two whole years.
If we get to go, you can feel happy that your tax dollars are supporting our journey, as Cheryl has been a full-time employee of your federal government since early this year. She continues to love her work in the office of strategic initiatives (sounds way too much like the CIA) at the Library of Congress. Her primary responsibility is educational outreach – helping make the digital resources of the world’s largest library available to kids in classrooms across the country. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it! Well, you’ll be happy to hear that Cheryl remains her humble self, reading, baking the best pizza anywhere, chasing children, putting up with David and knitting like a surgeon on speed … or something.
David, meanwhile, really did get arrested – with 40-some others at the March 9 Christian Peace Witness for Iraq and Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership. We’ll be back at it next month, celebrating the legacy of Dr. King and the hope inspired by the incoming administration. At this point, there are no plans to get arrested again. Speaking of the new administration, if you’re looking for a free place to stay for the inauguration, drop us a line. We’ve still got floor space! Beyond continued work for peace, the ongoing ministry at Clarendon continues to be full of life and energy and love, and we’re looking forward to being part of this vibrant little community of faith for as long as God calls us together.
Metro DC has come to feel like home to us, and we love sharing the sights of this great city with friends. As a result, we get to host lots of folks from the famous to friends and family. Hannah’s room doubles as guest room, and last year she gave up her bedroom to John Bell, Rick Ufford-Chase, Noah Budin and host of other wonderful folks who don’t have web presences to link. As you might guess, we’ve hosted a lot of wonderful conversations, and most of the problems of the world have been solved on our front porch. Alas, the world has little noted the wisdom we have to offer. Ah, well, we’ll welcome you whether or not you’ve got a website or any particular wisdom. So come and see us in ’09 – unless we’re in Tunisia!
Grace and peace,
Bud, Martin, Hannah, Cheryl & David

Facebook Politics, this time

Seems Facebook has become the site-du-jour for various bits of interesting chatter. This conversation occurred on my friend and colleague, Tim Simpson's page.
Headline: Prop. 8 Sponsors Seek to Nullify 18K Gay Marriages
Source: www.firstcoastnews.com
What kind of person wakes up in the morning and says "I think I'm going to try and invalidate thousands of people's marriages today"? There are reptiles who aren't that cold-blooded. Should we be surprised that the one who has been chosen to argue this Prop H8 case before the CA Supreme Court is Kenneth Starr?
3 Comments
Commenter 1: those marriages should be nullified because they are wrong in God's eyes.
David Ensign: Even if they were wrong in God's eyes -- which many of us do not believe -- what business is it of the state to deny legal rights, responsibilities and privileges based solely on the individuals being part of a broad class to any couple who desire to enter into a binding legal contract pledging their lives and property to one another (and thereby ... Read Morebeing granted tax privileges, partner benefits rights, child-custody rights, and roughly 200 additional rights/responsibilities/benefits that accrue to straight married couples)? Where ever religious communities stand on the issue, this suit seeks to nullify legal status. God's eyes will not be involved -- although I would argue strongly that God's love already is.
Timothy Simpson: That kind of reasoning might work for the Taliban in Afghanistan or the ayatollahs in Iran, but in American jurisprudence, saying that God doesn't like something is a theological, not a legal argument which has its place in a church but not in a courtroom. There are people in America who think that God doesn't like blacks being married to whites but we don't pay attention to such reasoning. If we deny gays the same rights as straights, we have to have different reasons than this. And in this case, to go back AFTER THE FACT and tell people who have adopted or conceived children, who have bought homes, started businesses and done everything else legally and contractually that married couples do everywhere that their marriages are null and void is simply unconscionable. How could Christians do that to the children of such families? Could you imagine the government breaking up your own children's family like that? I certainly can't and can't imagine that this is what God wants.
Facebook is the place to be!

Now That's a Handsome Kid!

Our middle one, Martin, getting ready for his orchestra concert this week. And, to keep with the theme of this old blog, what could be a more faithful gesture than loving one's children ... even when they agitate you?

Obama's New Preacher Problem

First it was Jeremiah Wright, now it's Rick Warren. When it comes to preachers, well Obama might better stick with picking Secretaries of State. I wonder where the family will go to church in DC? One thing I do know: I don't want them at my church! Nothing against him or his family -- after all, I canvassed for him, phone banked for him, and voted for him. But I cannot quite imagine the hassle of security and media that would accompany the First Family at worship. Whew! And then, as Revs. Wright and Warren know first hand, one side or another is going to take a whack at you simply for standing next to the president.
I wish Warren luck in his role at the inauguration ... but I'd rather see Jim Wallis.

Facebook Philosophy

A friend of mine (a real one, as distinct from the virtual, facebooky kind) posted on his Facebook page the same Newsweek article I referenced here yesterday. His posting began an exchange that suggests that philosophy is not dead, just distracted on Facebook like the rest of us.
(Oh, and that's my own current Facebook picture.)
First response: Why use arbitrary BS to combat arbitrary BS? Its kinda like when creationists try to use pseudo-logical arguments to discredit logic. Reason to undo reason. The Bible should be having no place whatsoever in lawmaking. It shouldn't even be considered. Not in *any* rational discussion, let alone one pertaining to the legal rights of the individual. Ah, but then I'm just one of those crazy second class atheistic citizens.
Second response: Actually, my personal belief is that lawmaking necessarily involves making value choices, and to the extent that values choices are informed by religious and/or spiritual belief, that's fine. But when debating in the public square, one must attempt to translate value choices in universal terms. Of course, that could just be bullshit I'm spewing.
Third response: The problem for me is, I don't believe any value or moral "judgment" which is based on supernaturally given premises can have any standing or relevance in real life. I don't see how anything can be informed by the unknowable-by-definition. I'm not saying there aren't pieces of fair wisdom in the Bible, or any other religious text/philosophy... but so long as they are ultimately predicated upon supernatural (thus arbitrary) premises... then there is no universality to present. Unless you restructure said piece of wisdom in terms of reason based in reality - two things which *are* in fact universal to the human experience. Though whether or not those things are used or appreciated or respected remains another issue altogether.
Comic relief: My favorite approach/opinion piece as far as the Bible/homosexuality is the Jack Black video on funnyordie.com :)
Fourth response: ah, but then don't we have to ask what is meant by "reason," "rationality," and "universal"? On what basis do we make an appeal to such concepts which are themselves constructed in and by the domain of a certain western discourse? If that discourse cannot, itself, be authorized by an appeal to anything outside of itself (and thus, also, quite arbitrary), what then becomes of notions such as the "universal rights of man"? Indeed, what becomes of the concept of "man"? On what basis do we posit something like "rights" of this "man" that must universally be respected? Is not "might makes right" just as rationally justifiable as endowing individuals certain inalienable rights that must be universally respected without recourse to power and violence? ... just feeling a bit deconstructive this evening ... must be the wine.
Fifth response: well, ok. Reason is a process of integrating percepts by way of forming abstractions or concepts via a path forged by logic- which is a process of non-contradictory identification. Rationality is the recognition, acceptance of, and commitment to reason as one's only viable source of knowledge. Its a way of life. This knowledge, derived from our immediate experience of reality(perception) (the reality being the universal tidbit here...the thing that is common to all us folks inhabiting it)...from percepts to concepts and back, is what must necessarily form the basis of our judgments..which are the precursors to our actions...IF it is our goal to survive, let alone thrive in this reality. A reality which is *not* arbitrary... but has very specific and predictable patterns of cause and effect. The concept of arbitrariness is defined as a claim or approach which has no underlying logic, no evidence of any sort, no connection to reality.
So reason, as defined as a process of logic/non-contradictory identification and definition by *essential* characteristics, is the antithesis of arbitrariness. I think observation is the key here. Which only pertains to the natural, and not the supernatural, which is of course..."beyond" the natural. As it turns out, humans beings are not beyond the natural. We are very much held subject to her laws. Faith is the antithesis of observation.That which is "beyond" perception is also ultimately necessarily beyond conception (which does not of course mean you cannot conceive of things which aren't real...but those things are still rooted in conglomerates of percepts and concepts which *are* rooted in reality). Pick a scripture or god, they are not grounded in reality - so they are arbitrary and so have no place in the world of the rational person. Step off a 500 ft cliff and, all other things being equal, any person will effectively achieve the same result.
A god cannot have essential characteristics by which it can be known or defined. A god is, effectively, unknowable by definition. A human being does have essential defining characteristics. Also, some human characteristics are arbitrary because they are not essential to the definition of what it is to be a human being. Being black for example. Or gay. Or Blonde. Or 6'3". Or being religious. Volitional consciousness is, it turns out, an essential characteristic. We make choices, judgements - and more complex than which lever to press to get another pellet. What helps make the volition adaptive and productive? Reason. Reason is another essential characteristic. That ability to integrate those percepts into higher order relationships...concepts...its how we learn from our mistakes, handle novel situations, playfully manipulate popular terms of discussion in an effort to undermine the very idea of rational discourse, by ironically mocking rational discourse.
I'm not sure how a discourse can make an appeal with anything let alone itself, because a discourse is not an entity which makes appeals. A person is. What is a persons recourse to the western discourse of reason and rationality? Each their own senses and minds...and the results of the interactions of those minds via their actions with this reality. Unequivocal results which are quite unconcerned with whether you believe in them or not. I realize I'm going on an on here on what was probably a lighthearted devils advocation... but really... do we really want to tear down and reject the one great gift that god gave us to make us special?
Sixth response: I honestly feel out of my league in this conversation between the philosopher and the pastor-philosopher, but hopefully once I've had time to process everything up here I might respond. Hopefully David will respond with more, as I'm thinking this may be the beginning of what I will call the Cosgrove Forum on Religion and Politics. Take that, Pew Charitable Truss!!
Comic relief, two: That should be Pew Charitable Trust, of course. I wonder if anything can be read into that typo.
Seventh response: Ha. My first thought was actually that you were talkin gangsta. Anywho, upon reread I see I, towards the end of entry 7, subsection 3 paragraph 2 -- when I said that scripture or gods are not rooted in reality - thats not correct. Of course, everything a person can conceive of is ultimately constructed with elements of reality, the question being really whether the abstractions are plausible... whether you can actually trace your new abstraction back to observable percepts. My observation is that gods are generally either unobservable/unknowable by definition - because they are necessarily beyond our nature, and so, our knowing.....OR they are ALL observable...god is everything (in which case I'd ask why not just let everything *be*?). I'm agnostic, myself.
Some folks like to toss about the idea of miracles. I always find it interesting that people are so inspired by evidence, even in matters of what is supposed to be faith. Perhaps its that western civilization peer pressure..
Eight response: Well said ... but at 3:00 a.m.? That's Heidegger-reading time!
Or, better, sleep time ... which option seemed more reasonable or rational to me, and, as Husserl (or was it Mr. Spock) said, "it is rational to seek to be rational." Or, even, "reason has its reasons."
On the other hand, or, maybe, on the hand of the other, following this time Derrida, one might offer as a definition, or a meaning of "reason" or of that which is "reasonable" simply the reasoned and considered wager -- or bet, or leap of faith even -- of a "transaction between these two apparently irreconcilable exigencies of reason, between calculation (that which can be perceived and measured) and the incalculable."
At its worst, "faith" becomes religious and attempts to present itself as reasonable. But, as a devil's advocate (and as one who tries to follow Jesus), I would also point toward a faith without religion, what Derrida, again, once called "another way of keeping within reason, however mad it might appear."

Marriage Equality in Newsweek

In case you missed it, Newsweek's Lisa Miller offers a thoughtful, religiously based case for same-sex marriage.
Coincidentally, I ran across it the day after the December meeting of the board of People of Faith for Equality Virginia, where we planned a marriage action for February 13 -- the day before Valentine's Day.
If you're interested in the February event, give me a ring.

Almost Famous

OK, not really, but I did come close to another Andy Warhol moment this afternoon when a CBS Evening News reporter snagged me coming out of the newly opened Capitol visitors center.
Today was opening day for the center and I happened to be on the Hill to have lunch with my wife. As we were walking back toward her office, we saw camera crews and remembered that the center was open today after six years of work and some $600 million. Cheryl told me that today was a "soft open," one done without a huge amount of publicity so that there would not be huge crowds and it would give staff and security a chance to work out any kinks.
I decided that the afternoon's work could wait an extra 45 minutes and headed on in.
I had no particular expectations, but a great deal of curiosity. We've been reading about cost overruns and construction delays and redesigns ever since we moved to the DC area almost six years ago. We've watched the dig beyond the construction barriers as we've hosted out-of-town guests, visited my wife's office at the Library of Congress, and participated in numerous demonstrations for peace that were centered on the Capitol.
With a withering architectural critique, this morning's Post tempered whatever expectations I may have harbored.
Still, I figured that anything that moved the security line from a makeshift tent on the sidewalk next to Independence Avenue to a permanent location under a roof and safe from DC's fickle weather was a good move.
Indeed, the new arrangement makes it feel far easier to get into the building. You can walk straight up to the entrance, go through security and that's it.
Once in, I was free to roam through exhibits on the history of the Capitol, the founding documents of the republic and several fascinating relics of Capitol history including the table which held Lincoln's second inaugural address, the catafalque that has held the caskets of those who have lain in state in the Rotunda, and a ceremonial cup that was awarded to Rep. Preston Brooks by fellow South Carolinians after Brooks caned Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner following Sumner's impassioned anti-slavery speech in the spring of 1857.
I walked through the exhibits and then straight up the stairs into the Rotunda. I don't know if you can go beyond that point without being in a tour group, but I wasn't interested in going further today.
I recall coming to the Capitol in the early 80s, when you could walk straight up the west steps that overlook the Mall and waltz right in. Such freedom in public space is almost as quaint a relic of past times as the Lincoln table, but the new visitors center at least provides an illusion of such liberty.
Of course, the CBS reporter was not interested in that. The story she came to tell concerned the excessive costs. In fact, she asked me what I thought about that. I said that compared to spending half a billion dollars on sports stadiums, this seemed in line. She asked how I felt about my taxes being spent on this and I said, that amortized over the next 50 to 100 years that people will enjoy this, it doesn't strike me as unreasonable, and that I'd rather have my tax dollars support this than two endless, purposeless war.
That wasn't the story she intended to tell, so I wound up on the cutting room floor (although you can catch a glimpse of me walking up to the entrance in my dashing black leather jacket in the teaser before the story began!).
Perhaps I should have said, "compared to a trillion dollar bailout of a failed financial system and a $25 billion bailout of the auto industry, $600 million spent on making citizen access to the Capitol a bit easier and more pleasant seems like a pretty sound investment."

Pursuing Happiness on Black Friday

I can't say that I wanted to work today, but I can say that I am thankful to have work to do. If, as Wendel Berry put it, "good work done kindly and well" is prayer, then to have work to do is a prerequisite to being able to pray without ceasing, as Paul exhorted.
Black Friday, that grand spasm of American consumerism on the Friday after Thanksgiving, strikes me as a particularly good day to be able to work -- unless you are a retail worker, in which case it must be sheer hell. (Even dangerous, as indicated by the tragic news that a Wal-Mart worker was trampled to death today by early-bird shoppers.)
My work today consisted of finishing a few things for Sunday, getting out a couple of e-mail messages, and putting the final touches on a newsletter for next month -- a perfectly relaxed agenda that took less than half a day.
I spent part of that time in the local coffee shop, doing my small part to stimulate the economy and taking a few quiet moments to reflect on the day's great and central contradiction. Black Friday comes the day after the only authentic American religious holiday and kicks off the season of continued debasement of a singular Christian holiday.
I think Henri Nouwen was spot on when he commented that gratitude is the fundamental response to the world that is common to every authentic religious expression. Thanksgiving invites Americans, thus, to authentic religious expression that can be articulated in the language of any of the world's great religious traditions.
Black Friday, on the other hand, gets to the heart of America's triumphant tradition: consumerism.
It is a day that reminds us that we all have the right to pursue happiness. Like every day dedicated to shopping, Black Friday comes without the reminder that we have only the right to pursue happiness, not the right to catch it.
Many of us will spend the next 364 days in the pursuit of a consuming passion -- the belief that we can buy that happiness the pursuit of which is promised us.
Then on the last Thursday of next November, another year older, we can gather with friends and family, and give thanks for all that makes us genuinely happy -- almost none of it having been bought and paid for during the previous year's consumer orgy.

Happy Thanksgiving

We've got family coming to town tomorrow, and odds are good that there will be no more postings here till after the holidays. So count your blessings, give thanks and enjoy the holiday. The weather in the nation's capital is supposed to be quite lovely. I hope it is nice wherever you are, too.