Witness to a Dream

If these were silent, the stones themselves would cry out loud ...
Witness for peace at Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Sunday,
Jan. 20 , 5:00 p.m.
Witness for peace on the weekend that celebrates America’s foremost peacemaker. King reminded us: there comes a time to break silence. Now is such a time!
Join a liturgy of peacemaking including the laying of stones at the gates to the White House representing the Iraq War dead. Their voices have been silenced; the stones themselves will bear witness.
There comes a time to break silence
“Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. ... Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.”
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. “A Time to Break Silence”

Convened in continuation of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq by DC Metro area clergy and laity. For more information see: http://www.christianpeacewitness.org/

Moving Mountains

The DC director of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light asked me to testify before the Virginia Corporation Commission concerning the licensing of the proposed Dominion Power coal-burning plant in Wise County, Va. GWIPL has been quite helpful to my congregation, so I was happy to return the favor by speaking against a proposal that runs counter to my denomination's stated positions on environmental justice, global warming and mountaintop removal. So here's what I offered the commission today in Richmond:
Thank you for providing this opportunity for public comment. I spent 10 years working in state government, and understand well the challenges of your work and appreciate its vital importance. The founding father of my own particular branch on the Christian family tree, John Calvin, said that public service is a sacred calling and it’s in that vein that I understand and honor the work that you do.
Honoring that work may be all that I have to offer you today. As a pastor, I cannot offer much by way of economic impact analysis – certainly nothing that you have not already heard and don’t already know better than I.
I cannot offer much by way of environmental impact analysis – certainly nothing that you have not already heard and don’t already know better than I.
I cannot offer much by way of political analysis either.
In fact, I cannot even offer you much that would be new to you in the way of moral analysis because you do not need me to teach you values.
The role of religious leaders in conversations such as today’s is nothing more than urging you to live up to those values that you already hold: to calculate economic impact in terms of the effect of your decisions on the most vulnerable, least powerful members of the community; to judge environmental impact in terms of the fundamental value of creation itself and humankind’s common charge to care for creation; to analyze political impacts not in terms of right or left but in terms of right or wrong.
You have no doubt already heard a staggering amount of factual analysis on this plant in all of those terms. So let me simply close with a brief story.
About a dozen years ago I spent a year offering some occasional assistance to a small congregation in the coal country of Eastern Kentucky. Once a month or so I drove 3.5 hours from Lexington to the tiny hamlet of Phelps to the Peter Creek Presbyterian Church that sat at the foot of Dick’s Knob. It was a long drive on a lot of windy mountain roads used by large coal trucks. Often it was a bit harrowing, and I was always relieved to cross the last ridge and see the shadow of the mountain crossing the face of the church.
It was a sight I came to expect and to take for granted, until the last time I made the drive. As I crossed the final ridge I noticed something different. The quality of light was different and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I looked up to see if the weather had changed unexpectedly, but that wasn’t it. Then I realized: Dick’s Knob was gone! The top of the mountain had been entirely removed.
Like some 300 mountaintops in the Appalachians, including in Wise County, the mountaintop was gone. Jesus said it would take only the faith of a mustard seed to remove a mountain; if he were here today he would suggest that just such faith can save the mountaintop from being removed.
That’s what we’re asking you for today: just a little faith. Faith in good-old fashioned American ingenuity that is creating more and better alternative energy sources every day; faith in our common will and commitment to becoming better stewards and more frugal consumers of energy; and keeping faith with our children as we work together to hand them a world that still has mountaintops.
When I drive through the Valley these days with my own children on our own trips down to the southern end of the Appalachians where I grew up, we stop frequently to enjoy the beauty of this commonwealth. I hope they make the same journey with my grandchildren some day, and I hope that I do not have to explain how it was that people of my generation had so little faith as to let the mountains be removed.

Happy New Year!

Good to be away for a while, and to be back at home.
Here's a poem/song for today that we used as an advent hymn:

Christ is Coming
(Tune: Hymn to Joy)
Christ is coming, light the candles
Open hearts, prepare the way
All creation, still in wonder
Longing for a Christ-filled day
Midst the darkness of despairing
From the bleak of wintertide,
Raise this light of expectation, joy and hope in us abide

Christ is coming, light the candles
Shine the light of justice here
Blind have vision, lame are leaping
Day of jubilee draw near
To the center of Christ’s circle
Every outcast welcome in
When compassion knows no limits
Everyone is kith and kin

Christ is coming, light the candles
Hope and joy and peace and love
Christ before us, Christ behind us
Christ beneath and Christ above
Invitation to this myst’ry
By God’s grace it knows no bounds
Light the Christ light in this season
Keep it lit the whole year round

(Feel free to pass it along to a music director near you. All I ask is that it be cited as "copyright 2007, David Ensign.")

Peace on Earth

Entitling a Christmas homily “Peace on Earth” in 2007 demonstrates either outrageous foolishness or audacious hope, for no matter where on earth you look these days peace is in short supply.
Of course, Gabriel’s announcement to Mary must have seemed outrageous, and the angel’s proclamation to the shepherds must have sounded foolish.
Just as Isaiah’s promise to the exiles that God was about to do a new thing, to create a new heaven and new earth.
Just as Moses’ claim that he was called to set his people free.
Just as Gandhi’s insistence that his people would be free.
Just as King’s dream of freedom and equality.
Just as Mother Theresa’s insistence, through all of her deep personal doubts, that the least of these has dignity and worth and deserves compassion and love.
Just as the insistence, today, that God desires shalom – peace on earth – sounds foolish and naïve in the face of the reality of strife and war.
I cannot help but recall the near-mythical Christmas Eve truce of 1914, when German and British troops called a halt to the nonsense of war for the Stille Nacht – the Silent Night of peace.
Is it too naïve to wonder – on this night – if one night of peace might stretch into a day, and if a single day might not extend to two, and if two … then three, and then another and another and another, and then still more until war is no more and nation shall not lift up sword against nation and neither shall they study war no more, and the angels’ proclamation from that first Christmas Eve becomes a description of our common life: peace on earth and goodwill to all of God’s children.
Sure, I recognize that many will say that this is naïve and unrealistic, and, of course, they would be right.
It is naïve and unrealistic – but so is the conviction that with each child is born anew the hope of the world.
Let down the fences and defenses that the culture builds around hope, and gather close round the manger. Listen for the songs of the angels. Peace on earth is their promise and our calling. It is before us … always before us –
… if we would but open our minds to conceive it, open our hands to receive it, open our hearts to believe it.
Peace on earth; good will to all.
This is our Christmas prayer.
Hope you and yours have a very Merry Christmas. No more from here till next year. Peace.

A Dark and Stormy Night ...

OK, so it was not a dark and stormy night, but it was a cold and windy one when a couple of dozen folks gathered last evening at Lafayette Park to witness to a common desire for peace.
My 16-year-old son, who attended his first peace demonstration in utero during the first Gulf war, graded last night’s witness a 7.5 on a scale of 10. The weather knocked a few points off for him, although it added something for me. He says, “that’s why you have multiple critics.”
He also chided me for “blowing the closing prayer.”
A few dozen tourists had come up while we were standing across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House singing Silent Night, and Bud argued (well and rightly) that they didn’t know why we were there so it was a teachable moment that could have been seized by a prayer that blessed the stones we left on the sidewalk, and all those victims of the war represented by the stones, and, perhaps also the death of civil liberties here so perfectly represented last night by the closure of Pennsylvania Avenue that kept us from crossing to the White House fences due to some vague "security situation."
Instead, I wished folks “peace” and blessed them on their way through the cold and wind.
My colleague, Tara Spuhler, associate pastor at New York Avenue Presbyterian, led the worship last night and she reminded us of the transgenerational responsibilities to pass along the message of peace so that folks of her generation are drawn into movements for peace and justice and empowered there.
I do hope she felt empowered for her words were certainly filled with power, and I was reminded again of my own selfish reasons for continuing the witness. I am filled up by the experience. Last night was not a pleasant one to be out in, and I really did not want to leave the comfort of hearth and home – or couch and cocoa. I’m in the middle of a mild cold, so the couch was, indeed, enticing.
But since I am significantly to blame for this witness, I felt like I had to show up – besides that, I had the stones in the trunk of my car.
But Tara’s words, the wonderful music led by Meade Hannah from Our Lady Queen of Peace, and the opportunity to see a small but committed and ecumenical group of peacemakers refreshed my spirits and brought me closer to the spirit of Advent – the coming of the Prince of Peace.
That spirit, that power, that possibility and promise – that the peacemaker’s time is at hand – is why we witness. For in doing so we lift high that promise and place it in the center of the public square where it shines like an unquenchable flame, demanding attention as the powers and principalities shrink in the face of a fearfulness that they, themselves, unleashed upon the world.
Does the presence of 20 or 30 folks one evening a month standing in the dark in a park across the street from the White House make any difference? In the calculus of public policy probably not at all. But within the broader economy of the commonwealth of the beloved, that kingdom economy ruled by princes of peace and those anointed for the sake of compassion, the balance of power shifts when we witness.
And who knows, perhaps we are only a boffo closing prayer away from peace!
So, by way of do-over, my prayer is that we continue to witness, that we join our voices to the silent witness of the stones, that those in the way of this war find shelter and shalom, that wisdom prevail in places of power, that Advent hope sustain us through the dark winter of war, that the hopes and fears of all the years be met by God-with-us, and that each of you meet the new year full of the love that casts out all fear.

A Beautiful Day for Peace

I suppose every day could be a beautiful day for peace, but this is the day that we have been given and it's supposed to be partly cloudy and in the low 40s this afternoon: perfect weather for an Advent witness to the peace that God calls us to make. Hope to see you at Lafayette Park at 5:00 p.m.

Say It Ain't So ...

Actually, I'd more likely say, "why would you expect it to be any other way?" The Mitchell Report on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball, released yesterday, confirms what common sense should have told baseball fans for the past decade as aging stars defied the gravity of time to turn in record-shattering performances at ages when they should have been collecting retirement benefits.
It should not have taken a $100-million report to confirm what our eyes and experience were telling us. I'm certainly no professional athlete, but I am a 48-year-old hoopster who had a 30-inch vertical leap ... when I was 30 years old. The past 18 years have been a long, slow decline as muscles age and take longer to recover from running and jumping. Nothing at all unusual about that -- it is a universal experience. Why then the surprise from so many quarters when it is revealed that Roger Clemens' age-defying performances were helped along a bit by chemicals?
Could it be that baseball fans do not want to believe that the good ol' Texas boy (who happens to be white) would engage in the same kind of cheating of which the surly superstar Barry Bonds (who happens to be black) stands similarly accused? That comes as no surprise. What of the role of the players' union? That they are accused of aiding and abetting the steroid era is also no surprise. Nor is the role of the commissioner, nor his refusal yesterday to take any real responsibility. (He should resign if he truly wants to clear the decks for baseball to move forward, but that will never happen.)
The only surprising thing to me in all of this is the repeated defense of the teammates who knew and said nothing because they did not want to be accused of "ratting out another player."
I suppose I'm not so much surprised as I am left wondering. What is it about the truth that is so difficult to acknowledge or articulate? Not saying what is so won't make it not so ... even if you want to say it ain't so. If the truth will set you free, why do so many in baseball seem more bound to the recent past today than they did the day before yesterday? Perhaps you have to claim the truth before it can liberate you. Amidst all the denial, freedom seems a long way off.

An Agitation for Today

I am wondering, as I read in the Post about "what the Democrats knew and when they knew it" about rendition, torture, etc., if we need to be mindful of that dynamic in pressuring the Congress to act on the occupation? It seems to me that the Dems want to have it both ways -- criticize the president on Iraq while quietly supporting the worst aspects of the general war on terror. It is that general war without end that is the problem -- Iraq is but a symptom. Neither side in Congress has the vision or courage to address it. Moreover, the relative quiet in Iraq pulls energy from the antiwar movement -- unless it can be more clearly cast as a peace movement. As such, as a movement for peace, we cannot pull punches on the war on terror, and the recent revelations about Speaker Pelosi make that all the more clear and crucial.

American Heresies, Again

As the revelations about destroyed CIA torture tapes continue to unfold here in the heart of the empire we are being told again, by those in power, that Americans don't torture. "We're not like that," the powerful say -- and, one imagines, they want to believe it.
How are we, really? Many at home and abroad paint with too broad a brush in considering the torturers, the administration that guided their actions and the Democratic leadership that turned a blind eye on it all. While all of them stand complicit, much of the rhetoric of condemnation sounds a bit like Bruce Cockburn's haunting Rocket Launcher, from the 1980s Latin American war experience. Cockburn's words -- "if I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-a-bitch would die" -- stand as a signal expression of a perspective grounded on a fundamental theological error.
The heresy, shared by critics and defenders of American practices in the war on terror, denies both that all of us are created in the image of a loving God and also that all of us are broken.
The truth is, as the Biblical image of humanity makes clear, that each of us is some strange and volatile mixture of the angels of our better natures and our own profound brokenness.
We may not know anything about the spies who tortured or the officials who authorized them. Truth be told, we don't know that much about the President or the House Speaker, either. But about all of us, we do well to recall the words of the psalmist, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51: 3-5). While in the very same moment we must remember also that the psalmist says, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
All of us, are both of these things: those who transgress, and those who are wonderfully made. And we live, all of us, somewhere east of Eden.
Dr. King said that we must develop the capacity to forgive, for without that we cannot claim the power to love. Forgiveness begins, he said, when we recognize that the evil actions of our enemies do not express all that our enemies are. “This simply means,” he said, “that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.”
That vision, which seeks as its goal forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration, stands in stark contrast with the notion, given voice by the leader of our nation, that we are engaged in a war to “rid the world of evil.”
Alas, as James Carroll said, “evil, whatever its primal source, resides, like a virus in its niche, in the human self. There is no ridding the world of evil for the simple fact that, shy of history’s end, there is no ridding the self of it.”
Indeed, the notion that this nation, or any nation – no matter how nobly conceived or dedicated – could of its own actions rid the world of evil is perhaps the fundamental heresy upon which so much of our current foreign policy rests.
We cannot rid the world of evil when we so clearly participate in it ourselves. We cannot; any more than we can bring justice to the world by means of an unjust war; any more than we can bring democracy to the world by means of a war that the vast majority of the world’s people oppose. And the further into the morass of this war we go, the more we become like the very thing we hate.
Some 35 years ago, Martin Luther King said that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Lost amidst the news of destroyed videos and secret briefings is the spiraling cost of occupation.
It is not the job of the church to correct the state’s political and military strategies, but it is most certainly our job to correct errors of theology. It is also quite clearly our role to warn of the approach of spiritual death.
For, in this case, the two are so closely related. We lie and deceive ourselves at peril to our souls. We follow the false gods of power and security, and develop theologies of nationalism to honor them, and we wonder how it is that we become the very thing that we hate.
Theology matters. Show me your image of God, and I will show you your image of humanity. From those images of God and humanity grow the strategies of nations. And when those images are skewed by heresies, and those strategies perverted by false premises, from them develop the images that now dominate our news.
The church’s complacency in the midst of this is shattered – or should be – as we realize that amidst the howls of protest rising in response to recent revelations nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “love one another as I have loved you.” Nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). Nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “Be compassionate as your Father in heaven is compassionate” (Luke 6:36).
It seems that in this season, the voice of the Prince of Peace should be heard again.

Theories of Representation

There's a fascinating little story unfolding in a congressional election in Memphis where a white man, Rep. Steve Cohen, replaced Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., when Ford ran for the U.S. Senate. Now Cohen faces Democratic primary opposition from an African-American woman who is, according to some progressive voices, less likely to represent the economic interests of the largely black and quite poor district. Cohen's voting record rated higher than Ford's on the report cards of the Congressional Black Caucus, and his positions on report card issues are consistently more aligned with the CBC than are his opponent's.
There's a strong gay-bashing undercurrent to the race, as well.
All of it makes me wonder about theories of democratic representation. Who can represent whom? Can a white man adequately represent the interests of black folk? Can a straight man adequately represent the interests of gay men? What of the interests of women? Children? Old folks? Muslims? Atheists? Rural folks? What of the interests that cross the lines of interest group politics?
Interesting.

Nightmares and Agitations

For some masochistic reason, as I propped up the ankle, I tuned in the local news.
In DC today it was dominated by the sad story of Sean Taylor, a professional football player for the team my son calls the "racist-skins." Taylor, an All Pro defensive player, was shot in his Miami home in the wee hours of Monday morning and died early this morning.
There is much to be agitated about in a story that draws together the violent world of professional football, the violent worlds of Miami and Washington, the violent world that so many young, African-American men live in, and the violence of America's continuing legacy of racism.
I can't get past the news descriptions that reported Taylor getting out of bed when he heard an intruder in the house and grabbing for the machete that he kept near his bed for protection. What kind of nightmare world is it where some folks have to sleep with machetes near their beds?
As one Post writer pointed out, whether or not most of us live in that world, it seems to attract more than its fair share of young athletes who too often fail to connect the dots of contexts and consequences.
More than a fair share of those young athletes are African-American men. Could there be some slight connection between that factoid and cultural blindness to such things as team names like Redskins, that trace back to America's original sin? There is, after all, a connection between contexts and consequences. Indeed, linguistic contexts have real-world consequences. In other words, words matter.
I don't expect any real reflections on such connections to come out of this sad death, but Taylor's father said he hoped his son's life was not in vain. If it sparks some deeper reflections on race and violence, perhaps his life and his violent death might have some deeper meaning than just another nightmare of a young black man murdered.

a simple twist of fate

I was out running this morning and hit an uneven piece of pavement hidden under fallen leaves. So now I’m sitting in the kitchen with ice on a mildly sprained ankle searching for the metaphor that must be hidden in this minor event. I’m sure it’s there, hidden just like the crack in the roadway, ready to tip the unsuspecting and unbalanced, to stretch the ligaments that bind us together, and to leave one sipping red wine while contemplating the hidden meanings in a single misstep. Oh, to hell with it. I’ll just sip the wine, wait for the other drugs to take effect and go read the comics.

Counting Blessings in Autumn

for teachers who point out abundance
in an Olive Garden world
for friends who offer light in the gathering gloom
-- even if it's only smoldering ash from a summer campfire
for small ones with smiles too big for their faces
for big brown eyes
and for dried tears
for the songs that connect the lines
and give rhythm to the heart
for maples and running water and even grey skies
for the woods in autumn when everything smells of death
for questions that do not demand answers
for memory
and forgetting
for you and me and us, waiting for spring

A Civil Agitation

So, is civility a Christian value or a taming of Christian values?
The louder and coarser the public discourse becomes the more frequent come the calls for a return to civility. A piece in this morning's Post notes that an "elegant woman of patrician bearing" asked John McCain the other day about how he would "beat the bitch." Some folks are jumping on McCain for not chastising the woman about her public rudeness.
Perhaps it's time for the political classes to reread George Washington's rules for civility; although I'm not sure what to make of this one, the beginning of rule #27: "'Tis ill manners to bed one more eminent than yourself ...". (OK, I believe that must have been a typo on the web version, but it's worth considering as a general rule for civility nonetheless!)
Of course, reading George's rules -- typos notwithstanding -- should serve as a reminder that the lack of civility in public political discourse is nothing new under the sun.
Indeed, I suspect that calls for civility are sometimes nothing more than the protests of the privileged and powerful when their privilege and power are called into question. Speaking truth to power sometimes sounds rude.
As Frederick Douglas put it, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Even when one speaks the truth in love, when it is spoken to power on behalf of the powerless, it will be interpreted by some as a breach of civility.

Daily Agitation

An agitation for today: can one be a “policy realist” and call oneself a Christian?
This question popped into my mind riding the Metro home from Capitol Hill this afternoon. I was down there scouting sites for the March 7 Christian Peace Witness for Iraq. I was talking with a police officer on the steps of the Capitol, remembering a time, not that many years ago, when one could simply walk up those steps which today are fenced off and watched over by machine-gun totting guards. I was thinking, “well, I suppose that is the reality of our time.” And then wondering, “are we called to something completely beyond realism?”
I suppose, for the moment, that “Christian” is more readily understood than “policy realist,” although perhaps not.
Policy realist was initially a term of art in Cold War American foreign policy used to describe those who believed in “the need for military power and political will to maintain friendly alliances to contain Soviet expansion” (in the words of James H. Billington writing in Foreign Affairs). University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer says, “Realists basically believe that states are interested in gaining power, either because they’re hardwired that way or because it’s the best way to survive, and they don’t pay much attention at all to values.” Indeed, he argues that “there is not much place for human rights and values in the Realist story.” (Like so much theory from the place, it makes me proud to be a Chicago alum!)
While policy realism as a school of thought may be a relatively recent phenomenon, the idea traces its intellectual roots back to The Prince, where Machiavelli wrote, "It appears to me more proper to go to the truth of the matter than to its imagination...for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation."
The idea of calling oneself a Christian dates back a bit further, although the notion that Christianity consists of intellectual assent to a given proposition about the identity of Jesus – for example, I believe in God the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only son our lord – may be no less modern than Machiavelli. That is to say, Jesus of the gospels seems far less concerned about people having a precise ontological understanding of himself than with whether or not people were willing to follow him on a way that was – whatever else is may have been – utterly committed to nonviolence.

The Stones Still Speak

If these were silent, the stones themselves would cry out loud ...

Witness for peace at Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Sunday, Nov. 18, 5:00 p.m.

A liturgy of peacemaking including the laying of stones at the gates to the White House representing the Iraq War dead. Their voices have been silenced; the stones themselves will bear witness.

The time has come to break silence!!

"Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. ... Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. "A Time to Break Silence"

This gathering is being convened by a group of metro-DC area clergy and laity in response to the call to commitment from the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq -- the group that put together the peace witness at the National Cathedral last March. I hope some of you can join us in front of the White House this Sunday, and on the third Sunday of each month until the occupation ends. Peace. See listing.
(If the weather is too nasty to gather in the park we will meet at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. The notice will be posted here Sunday afternoon.)

Church Politics

I'm on the Bills and Overtures Committee of National Capital Presbytery, and we met last night to consider two overtures that would delete the section of the denomination's constitution that is used to bar the ordination of gay and lesbian candidates for ministry (and other ordained church offices). A friend asked me this morning for my reaction to the meeting, at which the committee decided to offer neither endorsement nor opposition to the proposed overtures. Here's what I told him:
I'm not at all clear on where things are headed within NCP. The conservatives seem to me to be the ones actively organizing right now. They have championed the change in the way we select commissioners to General Assembly. They have made specific pledges to uphold "b" a public litmus test for ordination. They have asked candidates to pledge to live in chastity or fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman, and thus raised Victorian sensibilities to the status of confession.
The call last night was OK -- neither a win nor a loss. I did not think it worth a fight for a small victory of marginal importance in that venue, so I voiced the opinion that sending the overtures to presbytery without comment from B&O seemed a faithful action. I believe that it was. I hope that compromise might be received as a small conciliatory gesture by conservatives who will be angry that anyone has the temerity to introduce an overture to delete "be" in the wake of the Peace, Unity, Purity task force report's call for a moratorium on legislation related to "b." Personally, I think we are seeing within NCP the continued toxic effects of "b" on the life of the church, and we've had a decade to discern that "b" does not further the peace, unity or purity of the church. How much discerning is necessary? When candidates are regularly subjected to inquisitions on the floor of presbytery concerning their sex lives, it's clear that the system is broken.
That said, I'm all for efforts to replicate the relationship building experience that the members of the task force enjoyed in their years together. Progressive and conservative members of that small body build something powerful and important together. But I don't think that is possible on a larger scale as long as "b" is in the constitution because it prohibits in advance the equality necessary for authentic relationships.
I lack the imagination to envision a non-legislative process for moving beyond this point, which is why I will continue, as long as I remain in the church, to stand with those who bring measures to delete "b" from its constitution. Not to put too grand a spin on it, but this is the Martin Luther moment for me -- here I stand, I can do no other.
Of course, conservatives will accuse us of grandstanding when we support another presybtery's overture. I look at consurring with the Hudson River overture as giving witness to our deepest convictions, even when they are not likely to prevail within the polity at this moment. Further, within our polity, such "grandstanding" is the way to have our voice heard at GA. It's only when a presbytery is willing to concur on a proposed overture that it can send someone to the assembly to advocate for it.
This is how we witness within the legislative arena of the church.
As you will have noted by now, I'm rehearsing a bit some of the points that we'll have to raise when arguing this before presbytery when it gets to that point. I'd much appreciate your perspective on all of this.

The Great Pumpkin

So, my 13-year-old is fond of posing this "eternal question": who's cooler, Jesus or Bob Marley?
As the pics of our punkin suggest, it's a tough call!
But what is beyond dispute? Just this -- there's nothing in the world cooler than carving Bob Marley's face into a gourd with a power saw! There were pumpkin bits flying all over the porch, and a few young trick-or-treaters were very frightened!
So, you be the judge: who's cooler?