Within hours of getting this site up and running, I'd started gathering notes for a posting tentatively named 'Calling them on it-' a naming of some of the worst ugliness and denials of grace in this current debate the church finds itself in.
One great wall of shame, starting with cowardly ++Rowan Williams and + Peter Akinola , but also 'nailing' some of the reactionary priests and bishops who have posted on-line. A great idea perhaps, except the accumulative weight of their invective overwhelmed me- and to what end?
Sitting with this, I ended up realizing I was letting myself get caught in the same 'trap' of so much organized religion needs to survive ie: dualistic thinking;. Us & Them, good and bad etc. with the divide always at a safe distance from where we might be standing.
One of the great gifts of my years in Zen practice has been to show me how 'resorting to the dualistic' is usually a fearful defense mechanism, or at its most nefarious a grab for the illusion of power. And yet there I was 're-acting,' building my list. The courageous words of the Bishop of New York brought me to my senses. We are they- he said of his LGBT members he refuses to abandon.
So with +Akinola's hideous piece of legislation about to be voted on in the Nigerian parliament, I'd ask your prayers for the people of Uganda, +Akinola himself and the other church leaders who labor so tirelessly to stir up hysterical hate.
The other thing I was reminded of, sitting with the toxicity of my gay anger, is of the articulate intelligence of so many of the wondrous LGBT brothers and sisters I've met over my years and of how many of them and our allies are standing up and speaking out in these times. They don't need my list- they're at least as involved as am I.
So with this in mind I'd offer the following resources:
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/ Thinking Anglicans
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/ens/ The Episcopal News Service
http://www.anglicanjournal.com/ The Anglican Church of Canada
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/ The Church of England
For those of us in Canada, please check out http://www.wholemessage.ca/ for details on 'The Whole Message Conference' organized by Integrity (don't you just love that name) April 13-14 in Ottawa. Essentially the conference is to work out a LGBT response to the edict of Tanzania for this summer's Canadian Synod .
Facilitating Saturdays plenary "Theological and Scriptural Models of the “Inclusive Church” will be my fellow Montrealer, Rev. Patricia Kirkpatrick (McGill) one of the Canadian church's preminent Biblical scholars.
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