Almost two weeks ago, a friend who first came into my life almost three decades ago as a buddy-trainee in the early years of the local AIDS holocaust called me. She’s now a very successful psychologist, a cradle Anglican in exile from the Church but someone who takes her Christian practice very seriously and holds the local Church accountable, if now from a distance. Sadly she will also be leaving Montreal this Spring, to be with her daughter. She’d been trying to remember the source of something she remembered reading in the last couple of months. In the process of elimination I ended up suggesting the national and diocesan media of our Church, and offered to check the most recent issues of the diocesan paper if she, more technically accomplished did the same for the Anglican Journal.
In the end we never found what she was looking for, but in the process, I stumbled across a phrase which has repeatedly come to mind in the days since. Buried in the obituary of a man I never knew, who had served for many decades as a priest in our Church. Of a decided evangelical orientation, his wife mentioned he felt a particular calling to ‘Christians at liberty;’ individuals who, for one reason or another have left the Churches.
Christians at liberty
Strangely, the first resonances which same to mind were of my father’s stories of life in uniform during WWII. ‘at liberty’ there is after all just the faintest whiff of a British accent to the term, and Dad was a British air force instructor- that’s what brought him to Canada at the height of ‘hostilities.’
Christians at liberty
And I thought of one small paragraph in another recent post by a beloved sister, where she prays for and offers an apology to those ‘who have been smashed by the Church-‘ such a dramatic term necessary to cover the great scope of pain and harm our particular models of organized religion have inflicted over the centuries. I remember sitting in front of the screen, literally stopped in my tracks by the moral courage and faith of this dear priest.
Christians at liberty
Ed+ Hay’s book ‘Letter to Christians in Exile’ came to mind, and the great pains Ed goes to; the fine line he has to walk to minister to those who someone else once called ‘the prophetic exiles’ while maintaining his good standing in the Church of Rome.
Christians at liberty
Everything I read in his obituary led me to believe that Fred+ Dykes to be a very Bible centred priest who had not only served the Church- our Church, long and faithfully, but to be a man who knew his Gospel well.
Christians at liberty
Just what were they ‘at liberty’ from ?
And, perhaps most tellingly what does the term 'Christians at liberty' say about the rest of us, about our Church, the life and functioning of our Communion, if a well educated, faithful, long-serving priest could not only entertain this concept, but base years of generous ministry on this understanding?
Christians at liberty
And yes, this also brought to mind ‘E’ who is becoming increasingly dear to me. Since the events touched on in my earlier post, she’s been ‘swimming in the sea of critical Scriptural study’ to find ‘what’s left- so the Holy Spirit can make an adult Christian of me.’ She’s actually thinking of enrolling in theological studies when she gets home in a year.
‘What’s going to be really interesting, is this Christmas.... Going home to my Mum, and attending Church with the knowledge that so many of the details and images associated with the Christmas story are pagan in origin... What’s the Holy Spirit doing here?’
While ‘E’ is home in the mid-west she’s actually going to be checking out schools which might be able to accommodate her worklife.
Which I suppose brings me to last evening which aesthetically turned into one of Montreal’s magical snow and light shows as we came out of one of the big downtown churches following the CBC Christmas Carol Sing Along with a massed choir, brass ensemble, and a great organ.
‘I’ve got something I wanted to ask you’ my good and interesting friend ‘J’ told me as we’re shuffling out of the pews and down the aisle.
It took ‘J’ a while to cast her question, as we shuffled down the slow moving aisle into the fluffy snowfall. It had to do with new models ‘for being Church,’ and the three mediums for change she brought up were ‘liturgy, music and teaching,’ as far as I can remember.
I say as far as I can remember, because instinctively I interrupted with the suggestion that as long as we were building a model within the existing monolith of Church culture any change would be little more than surface and short-lived, and the dream of ‘transformation and renewal’ would remain a far off thing.
A little background: ‘J’ knows not only of the work I did in organizational transformation in a university culture, but of some of my work within AIDS. She knows how the work of people like Wheatly, Senge et al excite me- nowhere more so than for the exciting potential for Spirit led transformation and renewal under the three-legged stool of Anglican practice.
Making our way through traffic and snowfall, travelling on le metro, ‘J’ knew exactly what she was doing planting her question- she even offered to take me for dinner, but truth is I think best organizationally with pen in hand and page before me, and neither of us had come equipped.
By the time I’d made it home I had my first working title, and a sketch of several of what I’m calling ‘principles of search’.
Blessedly the creatures were waiting for me at time, and Willy ( the miraculous daschund) and I had a delightful walk in the flurries before the three of us settled down with a good cup of tea and a whole evening for the challenge ‘J’ had so casually placed in my lap.
Many hours later and a new day, there’s a new working title ‘A Church Unafraid’ and pages of notes. Surprisingly the evening also included two long distance conversations which have also fed into the process and pages of notes.
Where exactly this is going I’m not sure.
One thing I do know though, is that any vital manifestation of the living Body of Christ as a Church in the future is going to be a servant Church, and for this deep sense I am grateful to another cherished sister and vibrant priest.
‘Why are you even wasting your mind on the Church,’ one very dear longtime friend challenged late last evening on the phone. ‘You’re unemployed, no revenue coming in, the threat of losing your house-‘ I know both this dear friends heart and the decades we have walked together, but as I tried explaining last night, she’s never sat under the three legged stool- the Anglican vault of heaven I actually called it at one point, waxing lyrical perhaps. ‘And whatever else might be raining down, there’s always space under there- it’s wide open with a particularly Anglican possibility; biggest dance floor in the Universe, that and the Holy Spirit’s the most interesting dance partner on the floor..
So yes, there just might be something else out there I should be applying for. But ‘J’ and I are supposed to be speaking this morning, we might even manage coffee. She won’t be able to read my handwriting, but we’ll talk..... and possibly dream, of just what it would be like.... A Church Unafraid.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Perspective- just a thought
‘The most significant basis for the meeting of men of different religious traditions,’ wrote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel ‘is the level of fear and trembling, of humility and contrition, where our individual moments of faith are mere waves in the endless ocean of mankind’s reaching out for God, where all formulations and articulations appear as understatement, where our souls are swept away’ and the human spirit is ‘stripped of pretensions and conceit,’ It is then, Heschel concludes, that ‘we sense the tragic insufficiency of human faith.’ God, Heschel says with staggering simplicity, is greater than religion.
Practicing Catholic
James Carroll Pp 281
Practicing Catholic
James Carroll Pp 281
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Pieces of the Whole
A telephone call yesterday- from a wonderful person whose faith is embodied most obviously in her work with battered and immigrant women in her city. Our first contact however many years ago, was through an international anti-nuclear initiative. This friend’s sense of compassionate justice is awesome, and paired with an unfailing ability to cut to the essential, it makes her a real force to be reckoned with - believe me! Usually our contact is by e-mail, so when she called yesterday I knew it had to be something serious. Uncharacteristically for her it took a while.
‘.... about your e-mail this morning, I’m finding myself with .... a certain....struggle to make this young man the central focus of my prayers for the next week. With so much suffering, so much injustice, so much inequity in the World.’ She fell silent.
We both were, until I asked a question.
‘When you’re out there in the middle of the night, rescuing one of your women who’s waiting on a street corner with the little she’s managed to grab before fleeing what she thought of as her home, where’s your focus?’
‘On her of course,’ she told me after a moment, surprised.
I waited hoping she’d make the connection herself.
‘And what about all the other battered women in the world at that moment, when you’re scooping her up & bringing her to your shelter?’
It took a while.
‘... At that moment she’s the only one I can do anything about....’
A little background:
Earlier that morning I’d sent out an e-mail to an incredibly diverse group of generous, caring individuals, each with a faith practice which in one way or another amazes me or gives me very real hope. I call them my ‘Giants’ and believe me from what I know of each one of them they are remarkable beings and truly living blessings.
I’d written about one of those living blessings. A remarkable Episcopal priest, who has become incredibly dear to me over the months and years we’ve each been bumping around on the internet. A no-shit lady who, with two feet planted firmly in a faith formed by her great love of God and of the liturgy and office of our Church, she is one of the most.... muscled Christians I know. And yup, you guessed it, our first contacts were because this priest, living in the ‘South,’ in a diocese where women priests are still a very small minority had very publically taken the cause of the full inclusion of LGBT lives within our Church as her own.
This same ‘priest’ (and yes I’m proudly flouting that word at the moment) and her beloved spouse, clergy himself, in the last months took into their home a gentle, sweet young man whose only offense was fleeing the violence of his upbringing and being caught as an illegal in the U.S. of A. In the next seven days, that young man, Juan, has to undergo two judical hearings which could see him seized, and thrown into jail until officials have filled a planeload with ‘illegals to be returned to Mexico.
‘What’s really going on here?’ I asked my friend on the phone.
Long silence.
‘Overwhelming at times isn’t it,’ I eventually offered; only stating the obvious.
‘How about overwhelming most of the time’ she eventually admitted with just the faintest hint of what could have been an ironic chuckle.
‘Are you saying.... I’m... depressed’ she eventually asked, pain and perhaps fear choking her voice.
‘Nope’ I teased her.
‘Nope?’ just the faintest hint of.... anger/frustration.
‘First off, we’re how many miles apart- physically? Secondly I wasn’t there for the last week, the last month of your very busy life.... What I am suggesting is that my e-mail came at a rather inopportune time and because of everything else you might have confused the lense for the picture.’
‘I need... a break... It’s been more than two months since I’ve even had a week-end at the country place.’
‘Sounds to me like you know what you need.’
‘Yeah, but-‘
‘Hey, there’s a professional staff at the shelter-‘
‘Whose hours we’ve had to cut back- yet again’
Silence.
‘You’re right.... I’m just the president, I’ve got to let the whole organization-‘
I cut her off, eager to reassure her she’d done nothing wrong, as long as she’s got in touch with her own need, her own state of being before they became toxic for herself or her clients.
Long silence.
‘And what was that about a lense?’ she eventually asked.
‘When you’re leaving your bed in the middle of the night and racing off to that street corner to pick up that terrified, perhaps injured woman-‘
‘- I had a call just a couple of nights ago.’
‘At that moment she’s her own unique history and situation, but at that moment for you she’s also every victim of injustice or violence in the world- the only one you can do anything about, to use your words.... until your next meeting, fundraiser or protest, ‘I added.
‘And all you were asking was for prayers- for your friend, for that young man- what’s his name again?’
‘Juan’ his name sounding like a prayer.
‘Juan-’
‘And all you were feeling was the overwhelming injustice, violence; blindness and indifference Juan’s situation embodies.’
‘That priest friend of yours must be really something...’
‘She is, and so are you... All I’m asking, is when you can, carry Juan in your heart/mind- if only his name.’
‘But is it enough?’
‘Who knows... that’s where the Holy Spirit comes in... all we can do is open our hearts, as you do every day, offer them up that they might resonate with God’s love, sort of like those solar cookers our Church is distributing in Africa-‘
‘Solar cookers?’
‘Never mind- another story for another day. But about that ‘overwhelmed,’ sounds like you need to get yourself organized for a very long week-end with Clarke and the dogs- in the country.’
‘I don’t know, he’s kind of busy these days too- with work.’
‘Three days- four max,’ I persisted. ‘All you can do is ask.’
‘I’ll ask... oh, and about Juan- I won’t forget.’
‘That’s all I’m asking,’ I reminded her.
Oh, and this morning, shortly after 5:30 a.m. there was another call- from ‘P’. Overwhelmed, in another way, by the love and support he’s felt ever since his friend the Episcopal priest called him at work yesterday, to tell him to check out my latest post.
‘I sat there, tears streaming down my face, not even realizing my office door was still open- and I’ve never felt so loved, so supported. To think, there are good people out there, and they know about me- if only as ‘P’, and they care. I can feel it.’
‘P’ also had a very insightful gift for ‘E’ who shared his post- about ‘the people of God’ rather than the monolith of the institutional Church being where ‘God is really happening.’ I promised to pass it along.
And one last word from ‘P’ ‘-whoever they are, wherever they are, tell them thank-you. Tell them I love them, I feel so loved and blessed- because of them. ‘
Juan- carry him in your hearts, on your breath, through out your day please. The decisive date is Monday, December 7th- the Deportation hearing. Thank-you.
David@Montreal
‘.... about your e-mail this morning, I’m finding myself with .... a certain....struggle to make this young man the central focus of my prayers for the next week. With so much suffering, so much injustice, so much inequity in the World.’ She fell silent.
We both were, until I asked a question.
‘When you’re out there in the middle of the night, rescuing one of your women who’s waiting on a street corner with the little she’s managed to grab before fleeing what she thought of as her home, where’s your focus?’
‘On her of course,’ she told me after a moment, surprised.
I waited hoping she’d make the connection herself.
‘And what about all the other battered women in the world at that moment, when you’re scooping her up & bringing her to your shelter?’
It took a while.
‘... At that moment she’s the only one I can do anything about....’
A little background:
Earlier that morning I’d sent out an e-mail to an incredibly diverse group of generous, caring individuals, each with a faith practice which in one way or another amazes me or gives me very real hope. I call them my ‘Giants’ and believe me from what I know of each one of them they are remarkable beings and truly living blessings.
I’d written about one of those living blessings. A remarkable Episcopal priest, who has become incredibly dear to me over the months and years we’ve each been bumping around on the internet. A no-shit lady who, with two feet planted firmly in a faith formed by her great love of God and of the liturgy and office of our Church, she is one of the most.... muscled Christians I know. And yup, you guessed it, our first contacts were because this priest, living in the ‘South,’ in a diocese where women priests are still a very small minority had very publically taken the cause of the full inclusion of LGBT lives within our Church as her own.
This same ‘priest’ (and yes I’m proudly flouting that word at the moment) and her beloved spouse, clergy himself, in the last months took into their home a gentle, sweet young man whose only offense was fleeing the violence of his upbringing and being caught as an illegal in the U.S. of A. In the next seven days, that young man, Juan, has to undergo two judical hearings which could see him seized, and thrown into jail until officials have filled a planeload with ‘illegals to be returned to Mexico.
‘What’s really going on here?’ I asked my friend on the phone.
Long silence.
‘Overwhelming at times isn’t it,’ I eventually offered; only stating the obvious.
‘How about overwhelming most of the time’ she eventually admitted with just the faintest hint of what could have been an ironic chuckle.
‘Are you saying.... I’m... depressed’ she eventually asked, pain and perhaps fear choking her voice.
‘Nope’ I teased her.
‘Nope?’ just the faintest hint of.... anger/frustration.
‘First off, we’re how many miles apart- physically? Secondly I wasn’t there for the last week, the last month of your very busy life.... What I am suggesting is that my e-mail came at a rather inopportune time and because of everything else you might have confused the lense for the picture.’
‘I need... a break... It’s been more than two months since I’ve even had a week-end at the country place.’
‘Sounds to me like you know what you need.’
‘Yeah, but-‘
‘Hey, there’s a professional staff at the shelter-‘
‘Whose hours we’ve had to cut back- yet again’
Silence.
‘You’re right.... I’m just the president, I’ve got to let the whole organization-‘
I cut her off, eager to reassure her she’d done nothing wrong, as long as she’s got in touch with her own need, her own state of being before they became toxic for herself or her clients.
Long silence.
‘And what was that about a lense?’ she eventually asked.
‘When you’re leaving your bed in the middle of the night and racing off to that street corner to pick up that terrified, perhaps injured woman-‘
‘- I had a call just a couple of nights ago.’
‘At that moment she’s her own unique history and situation, but at that moment for you she’s also every victim of injustice or violence in the world- the only one you can do anything about, to use your words.... until your next meeting, fundraiser or protest, ‘I added.
‘And all you were asking was for prayers- for your friend, for that young man- what’s his name again?’
‘Juan’ his name sounding like a prayer.
‘Juan-’
‘And all you were feeling was the overwhelming injustice, violence; blindness and indifference Juan’s situation embodies.’
‘That priest friend of yours must be really something...’
‘She is, and so are you... All I’m asking, is when you can, carry Juan in your heart/mind- if only his name.’
‘But is it enough?’
‘Who knows... that’s where the Holy Spirit comes in... all we can do is open our hearts, as you do every day, offer them up that they might resonate with God’s love, sort of like those solar cookers our Church is distributing in Africa-‘
‘Solar cookers?’
‘Never mind- another story for another day. But about that ‘overwhelmed,’ sounds like you need to get yourself organized for a very long week-end with Clarke and the dogs- in the country.’
‘I don’t know, he’s kind of busy these days too- with work.’
‘Three days- four max,’ I persisted. ‘All you can do is ask.’
‘I’ll ask... oh, and about Juan- I won’t forget.’
‘That’s all I’m asking,’ I reminded her.
Oh, and this morning, shortly after 5:30 a.m. there was another call- from ‘P’. Overwhelmed, in another way, by the love and support he’s felt ever since his friend the Episcopal priest called him at work yesterday, to tell him to check out my latest post.
‘I sat there, tears streaming down my face, not even realizing my office door was still open- and I’ve never felt so loved, so supported. To think, there are good people out there, and they know about me- if only as ‘P’, and they care. I can feel it.’
‘P’ also had a very insightful gift for ‘E’ who shared his post- about ‘the people of God’ rather than the monolith of the institutional Church being where ‘God is really happening.’ I promised to pass it along.
And one last word from ‘P’ ‘-whoever they are, wherever they are, tell them thank-you. Tell them I love them, I feel so loved and blessed- because of them. ‘
Juan- carry him in your hearts, on your breath, through out your day please. The decisive date is Monday, December 7th- the Deportation hearing. Thank-you.
David@Montreal
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
my Dec 1st
December 2, 2009
The day after World AIDS Day, and I can’t help but wonder, did anyone learn anything yesterday?
Living with the hard reality of unemployment and diminishing financial resources meant that World AIDS Day this year was observed the way I would have done so every year in the last 20+: in silence, in practice and prayer.
World AIDS Day is very personal for me.
It’s not just the loss of my beloved Louis, one of the most extraordinary beings I’ve ever known, co-founder of the first AIDS service organization here in Montreal and defining gift of my life.
It’s not just the 300+ buddies and friends who died in the care of a programme I helped run before moving on to other forms of activism.
It’s not just the great flood of memory and detail of two over-sized decades on the front lines of service and activism locally.
It’s not just the POZ folks I have known, most unforgettably from Africa, through conferences and networking.
It’s also the great wall of chosen indifference we’d thrown ourselves up against again and again for decades now.
It’s also the aching sense I’ve had since the very first time I met a POZ person from Africa that her suffering and the sense that , the obscene suffering of her great continent needn’t have ever happened if Westerners had re-examined their homophobia and stepped forward to help in that first, nightmarish decade of HIV/AIDS when some winter weeks we had folks dying daily.
It's all interconnected.
Sometime mid-afternoon, keeping my ass on the bench and the long-suffering of my creatures had brought me to a space beyond the memories of helpless frustration, loss and the seeming inability to make a real difference; to a reflective space.
Truth is, my life was totally altered by those decades- in more ways that you’d really want to know about.
Truth is, because of the very real courage, passion and grace I witnessed and shared in the lives of those we lost there are just some things I have zero patience with now.
Truth is it can never be the same: the way life was before those two over-sized, transformiatve decades.
Which strangely enough brought me to the seeing just how those years shape and inform my sense of what is going on in our Church at this moment.
The Church and AIDS you ask? Bare with me please.
Sitting there, the silence ended up asking a series of questions.
In those raw, first years before anyone really knew anything much; before AIDS had been normalized and so many careers were being built on the back of HIV AIDS; what were our options- what was our only real option.
To turn up- to step into the very real poverty of the ‘need’.
What did you have to work with?
Nothing much except each other. Let me rephrase that- nothing much but the grace of God in and through each other.
Please don’t misunderstand me, I am NOT glamorizing, idealizing, or fondly looking back.
I remember just how little there was in the way of resources; and how much at times, we were able to do with it.
I remember the end of too many months when there was NOTHING to give.
The meals left out in the hospital hallway- on the floor!
Medical staff double-gloved and masked just to take a temperature.
Substandard housing, inadequate welfare and treatments options running out.
Friends carried out of their apartments, while the landlord hovered, impatient to change the lock.
Unpaid bills, unbought winter clothes, the indifference or rejection of families.
Funerals and late night bedside vigils.
The polite avoidance both by too many churches and the corporate sector.
I remember wasting flesh, the rawness of diapers needing to be changed, silent sunken eyes and fetid breath.
Yes, there was also moments of extraordinary grace- so many of them. Laughter, the incredible Christmas parties we somehow organized, the silent defiance of our marches through the gay village and the joy and generosity of our friends when they knew that Louis and I really were a couple.
Mostly, I remember the raw chasm of ineffective helplessness with each death, and none more so than that of my beloved.
Sitting there, a kalidescope of faces and memories- many of them of ‘the moment’ when individual lives broke open to the hard reality and grace of their situation. The naked place where ‘who,’ ‘when,’ ‘how’ became irrelevant; where victimhood was cast off, and Life- every precious moment of it became the only priority.
Which brigs me even closer to this sense of the interconnectedness between the reality we lived then and the current state of our Church.
Current appearances to the contrary- yes inspite of all the noise, the panicked fear, the threats, recriminations, the supercilious posturing and condamnations; we, the Church - let me be more specific, the Anglican Church is standing on very sacred ground, where the Holy Spirit is closer to us than breath, where the transformative possibilities are limitless; where the ‘dream of God,’ and the call to heal Her creation has never been stronger or clearer.
But inherent in that dream- that call, are a few things the Church- our Church has to embrace and own up to; and as I say this the face of one exquisitely precious friend comes to mind. An accomplished correographer and dancer, it was only in that quite, but very sacred moment when she owned her sero-status, that she stepped beyond being a victim of either circumstances or virus and owned the gift of life she had been given, with all its many graces, its gifts and its lessons.
Likewise, I’d suggest there are a few things our Churches have to own up to and own:
1) It’s history, and the suffering & harm it has done in too many lives, the scandal and insanity it has, at times been implicit in- never more so than currently in Uganda.
Buried in this hard but radically freeing truth is a TREMENDOUS gift once we step into the realization that the life, ministry and death of our blessed Lord and Saviour was about anything but power. It was and is about Life
I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.
2) The sacred ambiguity (h/t saint Verna) which contemporary critical study of Scriptural texts calls us into is a wondrous, freeing, ambiguous gift. Within this context it is my understanding that ‘idolatry’ is essentially a futile attempt to control reality, to colonize or franchize the Living God and the sacrament of life itself- usually in the exercise of power.
3) The sacramental gift of the lives, grace and ministry of the faithful laity, and none more so now than the LGBT faithful, who continue to fill our pews, continue to contribute of their gifts and time, and continue to stand witness to that ‘Love beyond our wildest imaging’ in their lives and vocations within a patriarchal monolith which continually wills them back to a ‘crucified place.’
To quote one, very dear sister, ‘when are they going to realize, it’s our best they receive- the best of our loves, our lives and faith.’
Please let me contextualize this within two conversations which began in the weeks before December 1 but which resonated deeply within my practice and observance yesterday.
‘P’ is a man in his thirties, an accountant by profession, a faithful son of the Roman Catholic Church, who recognizing his gender as a gay man chose to remain faithfully celibate, and for more than a decade worked in his diocesan structure as a professional accountant before moving on to work in the corporate sector. ‘P’ knew of me through a family member of his in another city with whom he’d often had issues over her leaving ‘the Church’ over the issues of the ordination of women and the full inclusion of LGBT faithful. ‘P’ like too many closeted faithful was ‘the Church’s’ staunchest defender' in their ‘discussions he told me ironically.’
Two things in particular brought ‘P’ ‘to the wall,’ to use his words: ‘taking on’ James Carroll’s ‘Practicing Catholic’ and subsequently the ‘arrogant pronouncement of the American Council of Bishops’ on the efficacy of end of life suffering.
‘It all just shattered- like that’ he told me through audible tears. ‘Carroll is right- so much of it is man-made b.s. inflicted on a Jesus-hungry faithful to shore up the power of a bunch of old men in skirts.
There was one paragraph in particular ‘P’ read to me over the phone:
‘When the Gospels have Jesus ‘predicting’ the destruction of the Temple and identifying himself as the replacement, they are describing an after-the-fact adaption that Jesus’ followers made to what the Romans had already done. Writing in 80 or 100 a story that claims to be happening in 30, they bring into that story, as prophecy, the decisive destruction of the Temple in 70. The Temple will be destroyed, Jesus says, because the Jews are rejecting him. But the rejection in question is experienced not by Jesus in 30, but by Jesus’ followers in 80 or 90 or 100, afer the Temple has been destroyed.
James Carroll, ‘Practicing Catholic’ pp 143
‘Why were we never taught this? How can they continue to teach inerrancy,’ ‘P’ challenged me over the phone.
The other conversation began almost two weeks earlier, from ‘E’ in her late forties; single mother of two adult children; a narcotics officer seconded for a year to an American federal agency. ‘Away from home for a year’ on this posting, she’d quite innocently asked the pastor of the Lutheran Church she is currently attending for some reading suggestions for the long evenings she spends alone in her’ temporary quarters.’
‘E’ was reading Marcus Borg when she called- referred by that same pastor who has been an online friend of mine for more than two years now.
‘Jesus, Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary’ was the volume in question, and ‘the wall’ ‘E’ had hit was Borg’s chronological de-construction of Scripture.
Rather than weeping, ‘E’ was angry- without being sure who the real target was, and uncomfortable sharing what she was feeling with her interim pastor, ‘someone I barely know,’ she told me without being aware of the irony of speaking to an absolute stranger long distance.
When my initial suggestion, that what was really going on here was a call from the Holy Spirit, an invitation to embrace both a larger life and a larger faith, ‘E’s anger and the pain beneath it found its bullseye- yours truly.
Less than an hour later she called back, and we talked, prayed in our respective silences, and yes, even laughed late into the night. (Danged time differences!)
Several times ‘E’ quoted to me what I sensed were the articles of the faith of her particular denomination, none of which I ever challenged.
However I did suggest they might be only part of the picture, a ‘particular context.’
Sometime after midnight, with me asking questions more than anything ‘E’ was silent for several very long moments. ‘... I think I’m finally getting it... there’s God, and there’s the Church, and what I’ve been doing... what I’ve been holding on to is the Church, not God.’
I reminded her of her own family’s story, how one of her grandfathers or great grandfathers had literally been responsible for much of the construction and all of the beautiful carving in the prairie church she still considered her spiritual home, and that there is real beauty in all of that.
‘Yes, but Church without... personal relationship with God is... rules and real estate.’
We actually ended up discussing ‘the gift of Borg,’ how the scholarship he shares can be used as a lense- an always incomplete lense, for ‘seeing through the structure to God waiting for us in the very sacrament of our lives.
Yes, we actually talked about the sacrament of ‘E’s’ life, and that’s when there were tears.
‘E’ I sent back to her pastor with the suggestion that perhaps they might want to start a group study of Borg’s book.
‘P,’ with his permission I put him in touch with a gay Episcopal priest I know of in his city. Not for conversion- for friendship.
Their first contact was when ‘P turned up ‘unannouced’ at Sunday Eucharist, and sat there in tears, ‘at the sheer wonder if it all. So many tears I almost didn’t go up to receive the Sacrament,’ he told me.
‘P’ and his new friend have got together several times, for an ‘incredible meal’ at the rectory, for a film 'that had nothing to do with anything but laughter,' and several long walks.
‘E’s’ last e-mail to me closed with ‘ not a cloud in the sky. Everything is indeed possible with God.’
And sitting there late last night it all fit together- my understanding of the great blessings our ordained sisters have brought our Church; the awesome miracle of November 2, 2003 and the truly great gift the faithful of New Hampshire gave our Church; the frightened noisy theatrics from what another friend calls ‘the peanut gallery of the Anglican purity police’; the persistent wonder of the faithfulness and generosity of so very many LGBT lives within our Church and the life-affirming powerful ways in which the Holy Spirit is using those lives to bring us into ‘life more abundantly.’
Yes, there were tears, of love and thankfulness, of awe and remembrance.
Thanks be to God.
The day after World AIDS Day, and I can’t help but wonder, did anyone learn anything yesterday?
Living with the hard reality of unemployment and diminishing financial resources meant that World AIDS Day this year was observed the way I would have done so every year in the last 20+: in silence, in practice and prayer.
World AIDS Day is very personal for me.
It’s not just the loss of my beloved Louis, one of the most extraordinary beings I’ve ever known, co-founder of the first AIDS service organization here in Montreal and defining gift of my life.
It’s not just the 300+ buddies and friends who died in the care of a programme I helped run before moving on to other forms of activism.
It’s not just the great flood of memory and detail of two over-sized decades on the front lines of service and activism locally.
It’s not just the POZ folks I have known, most unforgettably from Africa, through conferences and networking.
It’s also the great wall of chosen indifference we’d thrown ourselves up against again and again for decades now.
It’s also the aching sense I’ve had since the very first time I met a POZ person from Africa that her suffering and the sense that , the obscene suffering of her great continent needn’t have ever happened if Westerners had re-examined their homophobia and stepped forward to help in that first, nightmarish decade of HIV/AIDS when some winter weeks we had folks dying daily.
It's all interconnected.
Sometime mid-afternoon, keeping my ass on the bench and the long-suffering of my creatures had brought me to a space beyond the memories of helpless frustration, loss and the seeming inability to make a real difference; to a reflective space.
Truth is, my life was totally altered by those decades- in more ways that you’d really want to know about.
Truth is, because of the very real courage, passion and grace I witnessed and shared in the lives of those we lost there are just some things I have zero patience with now.
Truth is it can never be the same: the way life was before those two over-sized, transformiatve decades.
Which strangely enough brought me to the seeing just how those years shape and inform my sense of what is going on in our Church at this moment.
The Church and AIDS you ask? Bare with me please.
Sitting there, the silence ended up asking a series of questions.
In those raw, first years before anyone really knew anything much; before AIDS had been normalized and so many careers were being built on the back of HIV AIDS; what were our options- what was our only real option.
To turn up- to step into the very real poverty of the ‘need’.
What did you have to work with?
Nothing much except each other. Let me rephrase that- nothing much but the grace of God in and through each other.
Please don’t misunderstand me, I am NOT glamorizing, idealizing, or fondly looking back.
I remember just how little there was in the way of resources; and how much at times, we were able to do with it.
I remember the end of too many months when there was NOTHING to give.
The meals left out in the hospital hallway- on the floor!
Medical staff double-gloved and masked just to take a temperature.
Substandard housing, inadequate welfare and treatments options running out.
Friends carried out of their apartments, while the landlord hovered, impatient to change the lock.
Unpaid bills, unbought winter clothes, the indifference or rejection of families.
Funerals and late night bedside vigils.
The polite avoidance both by too many churches and the corporate sector.
I remember wasting flesh, the rawness of diapers needing to be changed, silent sunken eyes and fetid breath.
Yes, there was also moments of extraordinary grace- so many of them. Laughter, the incredible Christmas parties we somehow organized, the silent defiance of our marches through the gay village and the joy and generosity of our friends when they knew that Louis and I really were a couple.
Mostly, I remember the raw chasm of ineffective helplessness with each death, and none more so than that of my beloved.
Sitting there, a kalidescope of faces and memories- many of them of ‘the moment’ when individual lives broke open to the hard reality and grace of their situation. The naked place where ‘who,’ ‘when,’ ‘how’ became irrelevant; where victimhood was cast off, and Life- every precious moment of it became the only priority.
Which brigs me even closer to this sense of the interconnectedness between the reality we lived then and the current state of our Church.
Current appearances to the contrary- yes inspite of all the noise, the panicked fear, the threats, recriminations, the supercilious posturing and condamnations; we, the Church - let me be more specific, the Anglican Church is standing on very sacred ground, where the Holy Spirit is closer to us than breath, where the transformative possibilities are limitless; where the ‘dream of God,’ and the call to heal Her creation has never been stronger or clearer.
But inherent in that dream- that call, are a few things the Church- our Church has to embrace and own up to; and as I say this the face of one exquisitely precious friend comes to mind. An accomplished correographer and dancer, it was only in that quite, but very sacred moment when she owned her sero-status, that she stepped beyond being a victim of either circumstances or virus and owned the gift of life she had been given, with all its many graces, its gifts and its lessons.
Likewise, I’d suggest there are a few things our Churches have to own up to and own:
1) It’s history, and the suffering & harm it has done in too many lives, the scandal and insanity it has, at times been implicit in- never more so than currently in Uganda.
Buried in this hard but radically freeing truth is a TREMENDOUS gift once we step into the realization that the life, ministry and death of our blessed Lord and Saviour was about anything but power. It was and is about Life
I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.
2) The sacred ambiguity (h/t saint Verna) which contemporary critical study of Scriptural texts calls us into is a wondrous, freeing, ambiguous gift. Within this context it is my understanding that ‘idolatry’ is essentially a futile attempt to control reality, to colonize or franchize the Living God and the sacrament of life itself- usually in the exercise of power.
3) The sacramental gift of the lives, grace and ministry of the faithful laity, and none more so now than the LGBT faithful, who continue to fill our pews, continue to contribute of their gifts and time, and continue to stand witness to that ‘Love beyond our wildest imaging’ in their lives and vocations within a patriarchal monolith which continually wills them back to a ‘crucified place.’
To quote one, very dear sister, ‘when are they going to realize, it’s our best they receive- the best of our loves, our lives and faith.’
Please let me contextualize this within two conversations which began in the weeks before December 1 but which resonated deeply within my practice and observance yesterday.
‘P’ is a man in his thirties, an accountant by profession, a faithful son of the Roman Catholic Church, who recognizing his gender as a gay man chose to remain faithfully celibate, and for more than a decade worked in his diocesan structure as a professional accountant before moving on to work in the corporate sector. ‘P’ knew of me through a family member of his in another city with whom he’d often had issues over her leaving ‘the Church’ over the issues of the ordination of women and the full inclusion of LGBT faithful. ‘P’ like too many closeted faithful was ‘the Church’s’ staunchest defender' in their ‘discussions he told me ironically.’
Two things in particular brought ‘P’ ‘to the wall,’ to use his words: ‘taking on’ James Carroll’s ‘Practicing Catholic’ and subsequently the ‘arrogant pronouncement of the American Council of Bishops’ on the efficacy of end of life suffering.
‘It all just shattered- like that’ he told me through audible tears. ‘Carroll is right- so much of it is man-made b.s. inflicted on a Jesus-hungry faithful to shore up the power of a bunch of old men in skirts.
There was one paragraph in particular ‘P’ read to me over the phone:
‘When the Gospels have Jesus ‘predicting’ the destruction of the Temple and identifying himself as the replacement, they are describing an after-the-fact adaption that Jesus’ followers made to what the Romans had already done. Writing in 80 or 100 a story that claims to be happening in 30, they bring into that story, as prophecy, the decisive destruction of the Temple in 70. The Temple will be destroyed, Jesus says, because the Jews are rejecting him. But the rejection in question is experienced not by Jesus in 30, but by Jesus’ followers in 80 or 90 or 100, afer the Temple has been destroyed.
James Carroll, ‘Practicing Catholic’ pp 143
‘Why were we never taught this? How can they continue to teach inerrancy,’ ‘P’ challenged me over the phone.
The other conversation began almost two weeks earlier, from ‘E’ in her late forties; single mother of two adult children; a narcotics officer seconded for a year to an American federal agency. ‘Away from home for a year’ on this posting, she’d quite innocently asked the pastor of the Lutheran Church she is currently attending for some reading suggestions for the long evenings she spends alone in her’ temporary quarters.’
‘E’ was reading Marcus Borg when she called- referred by that same pastor who has been an online friend of mine for more than two years now.
‘Jesus, Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary’ was the volume in question, and ‘the wall’ ‘E’ had hit was Borg’s chronological de-construction of Scripture.
Rather than weeping, ‘E’ was angry- without being sure who the real target was, and uncomfortable sharing what she was feeling with her interim pastor, ‘someone I barely know,’ she told me without being aware of the irony of speaking to an absolute stranger long distance.
When my initial suggestion, that what was really going on here was a call from the Holy Spirit, an invitation to embrace both a larger life and a larger faith, ‘E’s anger and the pain beneath it found its bullseye- yours truly.
Less than an hour later she called back, and we talked, prayed in our respective silences, and yes, even laughed late into the night. (Danged time differences!)
Several times ‘E’ quoted to me what I sensed were the articles of the faith of her particular denomination, none of which I ever challenged.
However I did suggest they might be only part of the picture, a ‘particular context.’
Sometime after midnight, with me asking questions more than anything ‘E’ was silent for several very long moments. ‘... I think I’m finally getting it... there’s God, and there’s the Church, and what I’ve been doing... what I’ve been holding on to is the Church, not God.’
I reminded her of her own family’s story, how one of her grandfathers or great grandfathers had literally been responsible for much of the construction and all of the beautiful carving in the prairie church she still considered her spiritual home, and that there is real beauty in all of that.
‘Yes, but Church without... personal relationship with God is... rules and real estate.’
We actually ended up discussing ‘the gift of Borg,’ how the scholarship he shares can be used as a lense- an always incomplete lense, for ‘seeing through the structure to God waiting for us in the very sacrament of our lives.
Yes, we actually talked about the sacrament of ‘E’s’ life, and that’s when there were tears.
‘E’ I sent back to her pastor with the suggestion that perhaps they might want to start a group study of Borg’s book.
‘P,’ with his permission I put him in touch with a gay Episcopal priest I know of in his city. Not for conversion- for friendship.
Their first contact was when ‘P turned up ‘unannouced’ at Sunday Eucharist, and sat there in tears, ‘at the sheer wonder if it all. So many tears I almost didn’t go up to receive the Sacrament,’ he told me.
‘P’ and his new friend have got together several times, for an ‘incredible meal’ at the rectory, for a film 'that had nothing to do with anything but laughter,' and several long walks.
‘E’s’ last e-mail to me closed with ‘ not a cloud in the sky. Everything is indeed possible with God.’
And sitting there late last night it all fit together- my understanding of the great blessings our ordained sisters have brought our Church; the awesome miracle of November 2, 2003 and the truly great gift the faithful of New Hampshire gave our Church; the frightened noisy theatrics from what another friend calls ‘the peanut gallery of the Anglican purity police’; the persistent wonder of the faithfulness and generosity of so very many LGBT lives within our Church and the life-affirming powerful ways in which the Holy Spirit is using those lives to bring us into ‘life more abundantly.’
Yes, there were tears, of love and thankfulness, of awe and remembrance.
Thanks be to God.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Just a thought
Any authentic religious message, like any scientific method presupposes fallible minds and tolerance... Finally, religion and science are both grounded in mystery. and when religion and science insist on seeing each other as antagonists, the truth in the mystery is lost.
Practicing Catholic
James Carroll pp 247
Practicing Catholic
James Carroll pp 247
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Just which values are we working with
I am talking to you here as someone belonging to the so-called First World of the industrial West. And the real exile of Christians in the First World is that we have learnt to put up with that exile.
We do not look on our life in the affluent society as if we were in Egypt. On the contrary, we have adapted ourselves to it to such and extent that in the very midst of Egypt, under the domination of the Pharaoh, we feel quite at home. We Christians in the First World have adapted ourselves to the Egyptian way of life, and we have taken over the Egyptains fundamental outlook- the assumption, for example that individualism is the highest stage of human development; or the assumption that history is a senseless seesaw; sometimes one group is up; sometimes- after a revolution, perhaps,- it’s another. We have learnt very successfully to endure our exile- so successfully that as Christians we no longer see ourselves as being in exile at all, or as strangers in a foreign country. In fact we are more concerned to Egyptianize the whole world. We consider that the countries which have not as yet adapted themselves completely to the capitalist way of life and its system of values are ‘not yet’ as advanced as ourselves. The context of our lives is Egypt, but we try by all possible means to avoid taking this historical context of ours too seriously. We prefer to ontologize Egypt, saying that the things we don’t approve of in our countries are in accordance with man’s sinful naure, which is an eternally given fact. We declare that certain quite specific human characteristics, which have without any doubt developed in the course of history, are simply natural- competitive greed for example, or envy, and the lust for possessions . The Egyptian way of life seems to us the natural one...
In the First World we have learnt to put up with exile, and that means that we have even forgotten the thirst for justice and righteousness. We have become one with the objective cynicism of the prevailing culture.
Chosing Life
Dorothee Soelle
We do not look on our life in the affluent society as if we were in Egypt. On the contrary, we have adapted ourselves to it to such and extent that in the very midst of Egypt, under the domination of the Pharaoh, we feel quite at home. We Christians in the First World have adapted ourselves to the Egyptian way of life, and we have taken over the Egyptains fundamental outlook- the assumption, for example that individualism is the highest stage of human development; or the assumption that history is a senseless seesaw; sometimes one group is up; sometimes- after a revolution, perhaps,- it’s another. We have learnt very successfully to endure our exile- so successfully that as Christians we no longer see ourselves as being in exile at all, or as strangers in a foreign country. In fact we are more concerned to Egyptianize the whole world. We consider that the countries which have not as yet adapted themselves completely to the capitalist way of life and its system of values are ‘not yet’ as advanced as ourselves. The context of our lives is Egypt, but we try by all possible means to avoid taking this historical context of ours too seriously. We prefer to ontologize Egypt, saying that the things we don’t approve of in our countries are in accordance with man’s sinful naure, which is an eternally given fact. We declare that certain quite specific human characteristics, which have without any doubt developed in the course of history, are simply natural- competitive greed for example, or envy, and the lust for possessions . The Egyptian way of life seems to us the natural one...
In the First World we have learnt to put up with exile, and that means that we have even forgotten the thirst for justice and righteousness. We have become one with the objective cynicism of the prevailing culture.
Chosing Life
Dorothee Soelle
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Rocky but sacred ground
Before anything else, a very deep bow to ‘K’, former Zen priest, teacher, partner, father and dear shanga buddy, who complains that the longer he knows me the more Anglican he’s becoming. Many years now, since his first e-mail querying my ‘rather original practice’ ( no bowing to statues, no chanting in languages I didn’t understand). ‘K’ was one of the first to realize, when I was blogging more regularly that most of my posts were about a lot larger things than just the then-current events in the Anglican Communion. He has also graciously, but very persistently reminded me that I have been noticeable for my absence from this space.
A deep bow also to my beloved siblings in Christ Jesus. You know who you are, the kick-ass brothers and sisters who receive and act on my Prayer Calls, the bloggers whose sites I visit and comment on frequently- often on a daily basis. Living blessings each one of you, for me personally you’re also the most real embodiment of the extraordinary blessings of being a member of the Living Body of Christ.
Yes, it’s been a while- July 27 2008 to be exact, the date of my last post.
Lambeth 2008 was drawing to a close, and the title of my previous post was ‘Sad but Confident.’
Yes something happened- yet again the Church, OUR Church broke my heart- ‘shattered’ perhaps a more exact description of what happened this time, because there were pieces, lots of pieces.
It wasn’t just the dis-invitation of the blessed Bishop of New Hampshire.
It wasn’t just the extremely comic but obscene extravagance of the Big Blue Tent, when the C of E remains one of the largest property owners in Great Britain;
nor was it just the obscene expense of all those security fences and the people manning them; the fancy passes, the shuttling back and forth from Cathedral to campus...
It wasn’t just the hypocritical theatrics of a very public walk to end world poverty which lasted but one hour - a lot less time than it took everyone to lunch at ++Rowan’s London palace or to take tea with the Queen.
You don’t need my experience and study in organizational transformation to see what a patently hollow, exercise in passive-aggressive control and avoidance Lambeth 2008 really was.
At one of the most critical and decisive junctures in our Church’s history, the host and seeming episcopal head of our Church not only excused by his silence the very individuals who were levelling threats against our Church, he exiled one of our Church’s most prophetic voices, declared ahead of time that no decisions would be made; and then, just as everyone’s already packed & saying their fond farewells he slams down on the table two papal-like takes on Anglican reality- the latest Windsor-Whatever, and his summation of the exercise.
Give the party a exotic name, build a fancy venue, create a tight programme which leaves everyone overwhelmed but feeling good, and then send them home too exhausted to question what’s just happened, but so very glad they’ve been invited.
Sounds pretty controlling and disingenuous to me, and as I write these words I’m remembering an e-mail from an African priest now living outside. “Rowan and his ilk owe the people of Africa and saint Desmond Tutu a public and heart-felt apology for misappropriating ‘Indaba' and mis-using it to their own hollow ends.’
When it came time in 2008 for me to write my next post, on the outcomes of Lambeth 2008 I wrote it with my tears and prayers, and never posted it.
In the year plus, it has primarily been my beloved siblings in Christ who have essentially been the Living Body of Christ for me.
As I said, earlier you know who you are, and you have no idea of the blessings, the sources of love and grace you’ve been for me personally, and thank-you doesn’t quite cover it.
But failing or declining to meet the opportunities the Holy Spirit was offering our Church in 2008 we’ve come to an even darker, harder place. A chance and calling writ large, the Holy Spirit’s invitation to act like the redeemed people we are; to accept Her transformative gifts implicit in the situation in Uganda; to speak truth to those who inspite of their atrocious acting out are still our brothers in Christ.
I am referring of course to the proposed anti-homosexual legislation in Uganda. Legal insanity which could see imprisonment for ‘suspected homosexuality’ the death penalty for ‘aggrivated homosexuality’, and imprisonment for friends and family who fail to report our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within 24 hours. Legislation, encouraged, aided and abetted by the leaders of the Anglican Church of Uganda. And shamefully, with only two public exceptions, the leadership of our Church has not found its voice.
On so many levels it should be clear, this IS a defining moment for our Church. And once again the Holy Spirit clearly appears to be ‘leading from the floor’ as she did in Anaheim.
As I have reeled and wept over much that has been reported on this horror, I have also cheered and glowed with pride over the postings, letters and protests by many I am blessed and honoured to call brothers and sisters in Christ. They’ve done some incredible work- and we will keep it up.
And I’m talking about some of the Church’s biggest, most unrecognized defenders, some of it’s hardest workers and most generous; many of whom have paid a very real price for their faith in one context or another and continue to bear the marks of that sacrifice. But they’re also some of the most radiant, loving people I know. I fear for where our Church might be without them.
But its hard and it’s real- and a verrrrry sacred the place in which we stand right now as a Church- absolutely transformative in its possibilities. And after much prayer, silence and tears it’s my sense that it’s those possibilities which may have something to do with the shameful silence from the Churches so-far.
None of our Provinces of the Church have a very good record of wholeheartedly embracing the opportunities of growth, grace and healing the Holy Spirit is offering us by welcoming and celebrating the loves, lives and vocations of our LGBT faithful and those who will follow them back to the Church we are called to be. If Rowan or Katherine speak prophetically on Uganda things can’t possibly remain the same in their own provinces. And perhaps that's what's scaring them the most.
Anyone else see the radically transformative possibilities here?
But to quote one slightly irrevrant brother ‘and maybe it’s just possible that +Rowan’s grown too comfortable with a picket up his ass, sitting on that proverbial fence?’
Yes, I’ve heard the theorizing about how any comment from ‘the west’ could only incense greater reprisals, wilder insanity inflicted on our brothers and sisters in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa.
Nice theory, but the individuals involved are not only legally responsible adults- parliamentarians, priests and bishops, many of them are baptized Christians who are called to accountability by the same God as you and I. THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR REACTIONS, FOR THEIR REACTIVE BEHAVIOR.
All we can be responsible for is witnessing to the truth as we see it in the two-fold commandment given us by our Savior ‘To love the Lord your God with your whole heart and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’
Our responsibility is for our words or our silence; our actions or cowering inactivity.
As one beloved sister reminded us powerfully in her recent post SILENCE = DEATH, and in this instance the death won’t just be of our Ugandan brothers and sisters but of the prophetic voice & moral witness of a Church called to be implicitly prophetic by embodying the wisdom, grace and ambiguity in the tension & balance of our model of practice- the three-legged stool.
One voice out of Uganda suffices: this thanks to The Changing Church
http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2009/11/should-archbishops-of-canterbury-and.html
I have no doubt that behind the scenes, in a delicate Anglican way, feelers are being put out and contacts made both in the UK and Uganda to discern what might be an appropriate reaction to the Bill, and how Church of England leaders might exert and influence.
One of the reasons advocated for saying nothing in public is that western outsiders, and ex-colonial rulers to boot, have no right to comment on legislation and morality and church teaching in Uganda. Gug, one of Changing Attitude’’s gay Ugandan contacts, begs to differ.
He writes:
Funny, I am a Ugandan, desperately worried because of this Bill in parliament. If it passes, which most likely it will, I and my partner will face life imprisonment, or death, once caught.
Is it surprising that I don’’t mind anyone, even a 'foreigner' speaking out for me? Especially when I cannot speak out myself in my country about this bill? I used to like political correctness until I realised that life does not follow its rules. My country mates plan to kill me, and you fear to say no, because you don’’t think you as a foreigner should comment?
It happened in Nazi Germany, for Jews, and homosexuals; it happened in Rwanda as recently as 20 years ago.
When, I pray, do you as a 'foreigner' plan to challenge my murderers that they have gone beyond the pale of humanity? When I am dead? Do you really think that will help?
I believe it is actually an opportunity for the Archbishop of Canterbury to take back the moral high ground from the Church of Uganda leaders. They have made it abundantly clear that they support the Bill. They support it in its terribleness. And now they have started back peddling. They are in a dilemma. It is almost impossible for them to recant, but the Bill is so terrible that they must recant! These guys have gone too far, and they realise it. They are on the back foot.
Let the Archbishop just be gracious and negotiate with them. I am sure they don’’t have a clue on how to retake their international standing. Besides now not having an 'official' stance on the bill, they are stopping the comments. On the day of the debate, the representative of the Church of Uganda who was supposed to support it did not appear. Yes, the pressure is working. Instead, his place was taken by someone else who was sadly funny. Except, the blood they are baying for is mine. They are not in danger!
Uganda is contemplating gay genocide. And yet, the people who are behind it are also adamant that they love gay people. They are just fearful of the spread of the gay disease. Not AIDS but homosexuality. They fear for themselves, they fear for their children, and their fear has translated into a fight for life, the lives of people like me. And we are losing.
In tears, I first read this powerful witness many hours ago, and it wouldn’t let me go.
Yes, I’ve e-mailed, written letters, signed petitions and prayed my heart into tearful silence- but it’s not enough. Our brothers and sisters in Uganda still live in fear for their very lives; for something not of their making; for a toxic theology; for generations of blood-soaked generations misogeny looking for a new prey.
When, I pray, do you as a 'foreigner' plan to challenge my murderers that they have gone beyond the pale of humanity? When I am dead? Do you really think that will help?
When, I pray, do you as a 'foreigner' plan to challenge my murderers that they have gone beyond the pale of humanity? When I am dead? Do you really think that will help?
When, I pray, do you as a 'foreigner' plan to challenge my murderers that they have gone beyond the pale of humanity? When I am dead? Do you really think that will help?
I can’t forget these words. They won’t leave me alone.
So yes I’ve still not recovered from Lambeth 2008, but our brothers and sisters in Uganda can’t wait for the Bishop of New Hampshire to receive his personal letter of apology from the Archbishop of Canterbury or from the Bishop of Durham either.
So David@Montreal is back, and you’re going to be hearing from me. Count on it!
In closing, a dear brother in Christ who has become a treasure and radiant source of blessing in my life posted a prayer on this matter
A Prayer for Deliverance
O God, your glory blazes with the light of love and justice, your righteousness and your mercy flow together as one mighty stream: May we who beseech deliverance from violence, oppression, and degradation be purged within of their roots--of fear, envy, powerlessness, anger, resentment, the lust for revenge and the desire to hurt--and of the blindness and willfulness which beset our best intentions; that we may not act with violence, neither oppress nor degrade any of your creatures, but may strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being; for Jesus' sake. Amen.
And may the people of God say Amen.
Your brother in Christ
David@Montreal
A deep bow also to my beloved siblings in Christ Jesus. You know who you are, the kick-ass brothers and sisters who receive and act on my Prayer Calls, the bloggers whose sites I visit and comment on frequently- often on a daily basis. Living blessings each one of you, for me personally you’re also the most real embodiment of the extraordinary blessings of being a member of the Living Body of Christ.
Yes, it’s been a while- July 27 2008 to be exact, the date of my last post.
Lambeth 2008 was drawing to a close, and the title of my previous post was ‘Sad but Confident.’
Yes something happened- yet again the Church, OUR Church broke my heart- ‘shattered’ perhaps a more exact description of what happened this time, because there were pieces, lots of pieces.
It wasn’t just the dis-invitation of the blessed Bishop of New Hampshire.
It wasn’t just the extremely comic but obscene extravagance of the Big Blue Tent, when the C of E remains one of the largest property owners in Great Britain;
nor was it just the obscene expense of all those security fences and the people manning them; the fancy passes, the shuttling back and forth from Cathedral to campus...
It wasn’t just the hypocritical theatrics of a very public walk to end world poverty which lasted but one hour - a lot less time than it took everyone to lunch at ++Rowan’s London palace or to take tea with the Queen.
You don’t need my experience and study in organizational transformation to see what a patently hollow, exercise in passive-aggressive control and avoidance Lambeth 2008 really was.
At one of the most critical and decisive junctures in our Church’s history, the host and seeming episcopal head of our Church not only excused by his silence the very individuals who were levelling threats against our Church, he exiled one of our Church’s most prophetic voices, declared ahead of time that no decisions would be made; and then, just as everyone’s already packed & saying their fond farewells he slams down on the table two papal-like takes on Anglican reality- the latest Windsor-Whatever, and his summation of the exercise.
Give the party a exotic name, build a fancy venue, create a tight programme which leaves everyone overwhelmed but feeling good, and then send them home too exhausted to question what’s just happened, but so very glad they’ve been invited.
Sounds pretty controlling and disingenuous to me, and as I write these words I’m remembering an e-mail from an African priest now living outside. “Rowan and his ilk owe the people of Africa and saint Desmond Tutu a public and heart-felt apology for misappropriating ‘Indaba' and mis-using it to their own hollow ends.’
When it came time in 2008 for me to write my next post, on the outcomes of Lambeth 2008 I wrote it with my tears and prayers, and never posted it.
In the year plus, it has primarily been my beloved siblings in Christ who have essentially been the Living Body of Christ for me.
As I said, earlier you know who you are, and you have no idea of the blessings, the sources of love and grace you’ve been for me personally, and thank-you doesn’t quite cover it.
But failing or declining to meet the opportunities the Holy Spirit was offering our Church in 2008 we’ve come to an even darker, harder place. A chance and calling writ large, the Holy Spirit’s invitation to act like the redeemed people we are; to accept Her transformative gifts implicit in the situation in Uganda; to speak truth to those who inspite of their atrocious acting out are still our brothers in Christ.
I am referring of course to the proposed anti-homosexual legislation in Uganda. Legal insanity which could see imprisonment for ‘suspected homosexuality’ the death penalty for ‘aggrivated homosexuality’, and imprisonment for friends and family who fail to report our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within 24 hours. Legislation, encouraged, aided and abetted by the leaders of the Anglican Church of Uganda. And shamefully, with only two public exceptions, the leadership of our Church has not found its voice.
On so many levels it should be clear, this IS a defining moment for our Church. And once again the Holy Spirit clearly appears to be ‘leading from the floor’ as she did in Anaheim.
As I have reeled and wept over much that has been reported on this horror, I have also cheered and glowed with pride over the postings, letters and protests by many I am blessed and honoured to call brothers and sisters in Christ. They’ve done some incredible work- and we will keep it up.
And I’m talking about some of the Church’s biggest, most unrecognized defenders, some of it’s hardest workers and most generous; many of whom have paid a very real price for their faith in one context or another and continue to bear the marks of that sacrifice. But they’re also some of the most radiant, loving people I know. I fear for where our Church might be without them.
But its hard and it’s real- and a verrrrry sacred the place in which we stand right now as a Church- absolutely transformative in its possibilities. And after much prayer, silence and tears it’s my sense that it’s those possibilities which may have something to do with the shameful silence from the Churches so-far.
None of our Provinces of the Church have a very good record of wholeheartedly embracing the opportunities of growth, grace and healing the Holy Spirit is offering us by welcoming and celebrating the loves, lives and vocations of our LGBT faithful and those who will follow them back to the Church we are called to be. If Rowan or Katherine speak prophetically on Uganda things can’t possibly remain the same in their own provinces. And perhaps that's what's scaring them the most.
Anyone else see the radically transformative possibilities here?
But to quote one slightly irrevrant brother ‘and maybe it’s just possible that +Rowan’s grown too comfortable with a picket up his ass, sitting on that proverbial fence?’
Yes, I’ve heard the theorizing about how any comment from ‘the west’ could only incense greater reprisals, wilder insanity inflicted on our brothers and sisters in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa.
Nice theory, but the individuals involved are not only legally responsible adults- parliamentarians, priests and bishops, many of them are baptized Christians who are called to accountability by the same God as you and I. THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR REACTIONS, FOR THEIR REACTIVE BEHAVIOR.
All we can be responsible for is witnessing to the truth as we see it in the two-fold commandment given us by our Savior ‘To love the Lord your God with your whole heart and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’
Our responsibility is for our words or our silence; our actions or cowering inactivity.
As one beloved sister reminded us powerfully in her recent post SILENCE = DEATH, and in this instance the death won’t just be of our Ugandan brothers and sisters but of the prophetic voice & moral witness of a Church called to be implicitly prophetic by embodying the wisdom, grace and ambiguity in the tension & balance of our model of practice- the three-legged stool.
One voice out of Uganda suffices: this thanks to The Changing Church
http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2009/11/should-archbishops-of-canterbury-and.html
I have no doubt that behind the scenes, in a delicate Anglican way, feelers are being put out and contacts made both in the UK and Uganda to discern what might be an appropriate reaction to the Bill, and how Church of England leaders might exert and influence.
One of the reasons advocated for saying nothing in public is that western outsiders, and ex-colonial rulers to boot, have no right to comment on legislation and morality and church teaching in Uganda. Gug, one of Changing Attitude’’s gay Ugandan contacts, begs to differ.
He writes:
Funny, I am a Ugandan, desperately worried because of this Bill in parliament. If it passes, which most likely it will, I and my partner will face life imprisonment, or death, once caught.
Is it surprising that I don’’t mind anyone, even a 'foreigner' speaking out for me? Especially when I cannot speak out myself in my country about this bill? I used to like political correctness until I realised that life does not follow its rules. My country mates plan to kill me, and you fear to say no, because you don’’t think you as a foreigner should comment?
It happened in Nazi Germany, for Jews, and homosexuals; it happened in Rwanda as recently as 20 years ago.
When, I pray, do you as a 'foreigner' plan to challenge my murderers that they have gone beyond the pale of humanity? When I am dead? Do you really think that will help?
I believe it is actually an opportunity for the Archbishop of Canterbury to take back the moral high ground from the Church of Uganda leaders. They have made it abundantly clear that they support the Bill. They support it in its terribleness. And now they have started back peddling. They are in a dilemma. It is almost impossible for them to recant, but the Bill is so terrible that they must recant! These guys have gone too far, and they realise it. They are on the back foot.
Let the Archbishop just be gracious and negotiate with them. I am sure they don’’t have a clue on how to retake their international standing. Besides now not having an 'official' stance on the bill, they are stopping the comments. On the day of the debate, the representative of the Church of Uganda who was supposed to support it did not appear. Yes, the pressure is working. Instead, his place was taken by someone else who was sadly funny. Except, the blood they are baying for is mine. They are not in danger!
Uganda is contemplating gay genocide. And yet, the people who are behind it are also adamant that they love gay people. They are just fearful of the spread of the gay disease. Not AIDS but homosexuality. They fear for themselves, they fear for their children, and their fear has translated into a fight for life, the lives of people like me. And we are losing.
In tears, I first read this powerful witness many hours ago, and it wouldn’t let me go.
Yes, I’ve e-mailed, written letters, signed petitions and prayed my heart into tearful silence- but it’s not enough. Our brothers and sisters in Uganda still live in fear for their very lives; for something not of their making; for a toxic theology; for generations of blood-soaked generations misogeny looking for a new prey.
When, I pray, do you as a 'foreigner' plan to challenge my murderers that they have gone beyond the pale of humanity? When I am dead? Do you really think that will help?
When, I pray, do you as a 'foreigner' plan to challenge my murderers that they have gone beyond the pale of humanity? When I am dead? Do you really think that will help?
When, I pray, do you as a 'foreigner' plan to challenge my murderers that they have gone beyond the pale of humanity? When I am dead? Do you really think that will help?
I can’t forget these words. They won’t leave me alone.
So yes I’ve still not recovered from Lambeth 2008, but our brothers and sisters in Uganda can’t wait for the Bishop of New Hampshire to receive his personal letter of apology from the Archbishop of Canterbury or from the Bishop of Durham either.
So David@Montreal is back, and you’re going to be hearing from me. Count on it!
In closing, a dear brother in Christ who has become a treasure and radiant source of blessing in my life posted a prayer on this matter
A Prayer for Deliverance
O God, your glory blazes with the light of love and justice, your righteousness and your mercy flow together as one mighty stream: May we who beseech deliverance from violence, oppression, and degradation be purged within of their roots--of fear, envy, powerlessness, anger, resentment, the lust for revenge and the desire to hurt--and of the blindness and willfulness which beset our best intentions; that we may not act with violence, neither oppress nor degrade any of your creatures, but may strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being; for Jesus' sake. Amen.
And may the people of God say Amen.
Your brother in Christ
David@Montreal
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