Gone Fishin'

Off to see the parents, sibs and cousins for a week. Hope you have a sparkling 4th of July. Here's a good Independence Day pic from our Philly get away back in May.

Dear Mr. President

I sent this letter to the White House today.
June 25, 2009

The Honorable Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

I write as a supporter and as a friend in Christ with an invitation that I make with deep reservations.

I readily confess that back in January, as news of the church vetting process circulated in the metro area, I told friends I was extremely glad that we would never be considered, and that I would hate to try to cope with all of the security and media attention that is a part of your every day.

Nevertheless, your recent statements suggesting that your religious commitments lead you to oppose marriage equality for gays and lesbians prompt me to invite you to join us for worship at Clarendon Presbyterian some Sunday morning.

If you and your family were to join us, you would hear these words of invitation: “welcome to Clarendon Presbyterian Church. We are a congregation that tries, in our common life, to live out the love and the justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we welcome everyone – and we mean everyone – to this house of prayer for all God’s children.”

If you and your family were to join us, you would find yourself sitting in the midst of a small collection of people ranging widely in age, coming from all over the place, gay and straight, families and singles, mostly of European descent but some Latinos, Asians and Pacific islanders.

You would hear the lively word of the living God preached with passion and compassion, and you would see, in your mind’s eye, Jesus extending his healing touch to those left behind and marginalized by the dominant religious and secular culture.

But, as we Christians believe that truth is incarnate and understood best in relationship, what you would see and hear is far less important than who you would meet. We both know that you are highly unlikely to set foot in the place (or even to read this letter), so let me introduce your staff to Mike and Clark, who have been members here for more than 10 years. They sing in the choir. Mike is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Clark served our country in the Army. Clark grew up in my native Alabama, and Mike grew up in Tennessee. They met in the most old-fashioned way, more than 15 years ago, at a church function. Their parents regularly worship with us when they come up to visit. They are in the midst of a home improvement project, as settled, committed, loving and boringly domestic as any straight married couple, and yet they are denied, because of their sexuality, more than 200 legal benefits that accrue without question to those of us who are married.

You might also meet Heather and Lisa, a young couple whom I was fortunate enough to make, in Lisa’s words, “unlawfully wedded wives” in a beautiful worship service this spring. They travel about 25 miles to worship with us because there are simply not that many houses of worship where they feel welcome.

On the day of their wedding, right after Heather’s and Lisa’s fathers had walked them down the aisle, I said to the gathered community, “Jesus said ‘render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s.’ To God belong our hearts, our love, our promises, our faithfulness. Caesar does not recognize what we do here, but God does and God blesses it richly.”

After the service, one of Lisa’s brothers told me that his daughter – about the same age as Malia – asked her dad if the wedding was going to be on the news. I laughed and said, “thank God, no – we don’t need that today.” But he stopped me and said, “it should be, then people would see how ordinary this really is.”

I have the same reservations in inviting your to worship with us. We certainly do not need the hassles that would bring. But, Mr. President, for the sake of your own wholeness, you need to come and see.

As Dr. King so often said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Now is the time to bend it just a little further, and here at Clarendon, we are about the work of bending it. Come and see.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Dr. David Ensign, Ph.D.
Pastor

Angels and Demons?

Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh, cry or scream. And then, there's this: a church exorcising the homosexual demons.
It never occurred to me that demons might have sexual preference ....
When will people learn to love the amazing variations of creation, and stop condemning difference?

A Light Read to Begin the Summer

Just finished Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato. O'Brien is among the best writers to emerge from the American experience in Vietnam, and this was his masterpiece. Strange and dreamy, it struck me as the Vietnam answer to Saving Private Ryan. Although both stories focus down on the platoon level, everything perceived as good and right about Private Ryan's war is stripped away in Private Cacciato's.
O'Brien captures the war's futility in just a few sentences toward the end of the novel:

The end was coming. He could feel. Already he anticipated the textures of things familiar: decency, cleanliness, high literacy and low mortality, the pursuit of learning in heated schools, science, art, industry bearing fruit through smokestacks. Wasn't this the purpose? The goal? Some vision of virtue? Weren't these the valued things? Wasn't freedom worth pursuing? If civilization had meaning, weren't these the reasons? Hadn't wars been fought for these very promises? Even in Vietnam -- wasn't the intent to restrain forces of incivility? The intent. Wasn't it to impede tyranny, aggression, repression? To promote some vision of goodness? Oh, something had gone terribly wrong. But the aims, the purposes, the ends -- weren't these fully virtuous and proper? Wasn't self-determination a proper aim of civilized man? Wasn't political freedom a part of justice? Wasn't military aggression, unrestrained, a threat to civilization and order? Oh, yes -- something had gone wrong. Facts, circumstances, understandings. But had the error been wrong intention, wrong purpose?

Those are the questions that arise in reflection upon American military misadventures since the "great war" of the "greatest generation." But, as events that apparently no American experts foresaw unfold in the streets of Iran, one wonders if we haven't used entirely ineffective means to pursue the intentions and purposes that we always claim guide our actions in places such as Vietnam ... or Iraq.
As always, it will take the great writers of the American experience in Iraq to bring us to deeper and fuller understanding. Unfortunately, by that point we will doubtless be already engaged in another misbegotten misadventure. Sigh.
I think I'll go back to a good, light murder mystery for these early summer days.

Standing on History ...

Always good to find yourself standing with Lincoln ... or, at least, standing where he stood.

Freedom Summer

Images of freedom. At the top, Michael Kinnemon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches (and dean at Lexington Theological Seminary when I was a student there many years ago -- and a fine hoops player, too), speaking at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture witness in front of the White House last week calling for a full investigation of the instances of torture during the terror war. In the middle, a desk in Freedom Hall in Philadelphia on which the Declaration of Independence was signed a few years back (and which we visited a few weeks ago).
Bottom: the foundations of my family life and marriage shutter once again as my daughter leads the More Light Presbyterians contingent in the DC Metro Pride Parade along with the Rev. Rusty Lynn.

Tortured Faith

The photo barrage will continue soon, but first this brief interruption for some text blogging.
I was back in front of the White House today for another witness, joining friends from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to call on the Obama Administration to create a truth commission to investigate the use of torture by American forces in various aspects of the terror war.
There are all kinds of good reasons to participate in NRCAT's call, but for me one reason stands out: people who go to church are more likely to support the use of torture than those who do not.
The church has utterly failed on this crucial moral and theological issue. We have failed to teach clearly that torture violates the teachings that flow forth from the creation story. If all of us are created in the image of God, then torture of any creature debases the Creator.
Now the Obama Administration, saying it wants to look forward and not back, wants to compound the failing of the church -- or, at least, to take advantage of it by avoiding a politically costly investigation.
Truth commissions in other countries -- countries who have faced far more difficult and divisive challenges than do we -- have led to authentic reconciliation and allowed countries to move forward honestly. If we do not move forward honestly we will have failed to learn our own history.
It is only a matter of time until we repeat it.

Getting Self Reflective on Our Last Day in Italy

Confused I Was by This

Indecent and Out of Order

This sign, in the entrance to a church in Venice, cracked me up.
It also reminds me that tomorrow Clarendon hosts the third annual NoVA Pride Interfaith Worship sponsored by People of Faith for Equality in Virginia. The service is all about marriage equality -- no doubt seen as indecent and out of order by some. Ah well, come out anyway. It promises to be a great evening.

Flowers in Florence

Venezia

Among the Knockers of Florence

Campo di’ Fiori -- plaza of flowers

Reflections of Venice

Young Woman and Fire in Roma

Sunset on the Arno from the Gold Bridge

Ciao for Now

Heading to Italy with the eldest this week to celebrate his turning 18 and graduating and heading of to Mary Wash in the fall. No blogging. No tweeting. No e-mail till after Memorial Day! Lots of Italian food, fine wine, maybe a rented Vespa, and much good time with a very good kid.

Random Thoughts on a Rainy Day

Completely random queries that came to mind on another rainy day in DC.
Why do baseball players continue to cheat on such a grand scale?
Why do athletes get so many second chances? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Why should same sex marriages undermine straight marriage?
Why has it rained for nine straight days? And when should we start building the ark?
Do actors sometimes confuse themselves for the characters they play?
Is it ever too late for justice?
Will the Caps beat the Pens?
Will the Nationals ever get better?
Will the Racistskins ever change their name?
Who will stop the rain?

Clergy Call

Spent the morning at the Human Rights Campaign's Clergy Call. Here's an AP article on the event.

By BRIAN WESTLEY, The Associated Press
2009-05-04 WASHINGTON -
The U.S. Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop is among hundreds of clergy members urging Congress to support gay rights, including the passage of an expanded hate crimes bill that would give gay victims of violence new federal protections.
V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire and more than 300 clergy of various faiths will spend Tuesday on Capitol Hill lobbying lawmakers to push through a bill that broadens the definition of hate crimes to include those motivated by a person's sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. The legislation was passed by the House last week.
Clergy also will push for legislation providing protections against workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
"They're not here to grind political axes," said Harry Knox of the Human Rights Campaign, which is sponsoring the event. "They're here out of a pastoral concern for real people in their congregations who have to deal with the ramifications of hate violence and employment discrimination."
It is the second time the lobbying effort known as Clergy Call has been held on Capitol Hill; the first event was held two years ago.
This year's event comes amid significant victories for the gay-rights movement, including the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa and Vermont.
On Tuesday, the District of Columbia city council is expected to hold a final vote on legislation recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The vote will place the issue before Congress, which has final say over the city's laws.
Robinson, who delivered the invocation during a kickoff concert at the Lincoln Memorial for President Barack Obama's inauguration, said that despite recent momentum, an uphill struggle continues for gay rights supporters in the religious community. He said that's because their message is often overshadowed by many on the religious right.
"Religion in general still presents the greatest obstacles we face in full equality," he said Monday during a speech at the Calvary Baptist Church in downtown D.C. "Ninety-five percent of the oppression that we know in our lives comes from the religious community."
Robinson's 2003 consecration has divided the Episcopal Church in the United States and abroad. Last year, theological conservatives upset by liberal views of U.S. Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans formed a rival North American province.
Robinson said he continues to deal with threats. On Monday, he spoke of a scare earlier this year in which a man was arrested while driving with a sawed-off shotgun, a map to his home, and photographs of the bishop and his partner taken from the Internet.
Still, he spoke of the importance of clergy members who are reaching out to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
"We actually are the bridge between the LGBT equality movement and those institutions which are afraid of it," he said.
Knox, the director of the Human Rights Campaign's religion and faith program, said Tuesday's daylong lobbying effort will include 325 clergy members from various denominations - including Christians, Buddhists, Jews and Muslims.

Bishop Robinson's remarks were powerful, intelligent and grounded in his own rich story, but the word that spoke most powerfully to me was a Basque saying he quoted: if no one feeds the shepherd, the shepherd will eat the sheep.
Not having had a real day off in three weeks, I decided that the best way to spend the afternoon was a wonderful Mexican lunch (quatro de Mayo?) in Chinatown with my beloved and then a long afternoon nap.
Tomorrow I'll be on the Hill speaking with my representatives about hate crimes legislation.
But first, gotta listen to Neil Young's Ohio on this, the 39th anniversary of the the Kent State shootings. The four dead in Ohio would all be about 60 years old now. I wonder what they might have accomplished had they not been murdered in the midst of exercising their constitutional right to assemble and speak out against an immoral war. Rest in peace Jeff, Sandy, Allison and Bill.