There’s been a quote dancing on my spirit for the last many days, and it's not been an easy or comfortable experience. It's from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 'Letters & Papers from Prison'.

The resonances to this particular quote are several:

The Easter experience of a young friend of mine fighting her second bout of cancer and she’s barely in her twenties. When she showed up with her head swaddled in a turban at Easter Mass, a well-meaning, very pious individual insisted on assuring her that ‘it’s all in God’s hands, but it’s a mystery,’ all my friend had to do was pray. And that’s when my friend lost it- out there in the Church parking lot.

Another would be my deep concern for another very dear friend who has pretty much isolated herself and is living through some pretty rough duhkkha- the hollowness of life right now. This individual too was a child of the Church- a long time ago, and has done rather well for herself- materially. Only her conspicuous consumption is getting pretty close to the limits of its anaesthetic effectiveness, and her ‘management skills’ are keeping us all at what I’ve been calling a dangerous distance in my practice.

And then there’s the on-going scandals and revelations about sexual abuse- both pedophilia and misogyny in the Church of Rome http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/us/12abuse.html?pagewanted=1&hp

The quote is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 'Letters and Papers from Prison' and for me speaks to all of the above suffering.

My haunting/wrestling/ prayer has been referencing this quote in two separate parts:

Jesus asked in Gethsemane, 'Could you not watch with me one hour?' That is a reversal of what the religious person expects from God. Humans are summoned to share in God's sufferings at the hands of a godless world. We must therefore really live in the godless world, without attempting to gloss over or explain its ungodliness in some religious way or other. We must live a 'secular' life, and thereby share in God's sufferings.

I admit, reading what might almost be mistaken as yet another rant about ‘a godless world’ and more particularly ‘God’s suffering at the hands of a godless world’ was almost enough to have me clicking ‘Delete’. But this was Bonhoeffer, an old friend whose personal integrity & suffering humanity go unchallenged in my house, whose ‘suffering at the hands of a godless world’ is part of the historical record. .

The cutting edge for me- once again, too often of late- was to find another ‘official voice’ of organized religion objectifying and vilifying God’s creation for their own ends. Yes, Bonhoeffer does go on to tell us:

‘We must therefore really live in the godless world, without attempting to gloss over or explain its ungodliness in some religious way or other.’

But once again, there’s that distant objectification of God’s creation, and if that weren’t enough, he goes on to tell us we must live’ a 'secular' life, and thereby share in God's sufferings.’

Now before anyone rushes unnecessarily to brother Dietrich’s defense, let me assure you I am only too aware of the conditions under which the sainted man was writing- from a nazi prison, there for his heroic resistance to a godless regime if there ever was one. Rather, what I was so deeply shaken by was the implicit duality in the first part of his quote- both in its analysis and its proposed solution and the ramifications of this duality.

My reaction, of course is a reflection of the time in which I live, and so the weeks during which I have returned again and again to this quote have been as much as anything an expression great respect with which I cherish Bonhoeffer’s integrity. That said, however:

A godless world?

A concept I would suggest which is both an insult to the Creator and his/her Creation; possible only if one has reduced God to an idol; revelation to a time-limited offer, and Life itself in all its dazzling diversity to a static reality contained by the limits of first century c.e. understanding.

A godless world?

A dualistic lie implicitly denying not only of the living, active presence of the Holy Spirit herself among us, but of God’s love for her/his Creation- a love embodied most tangibly in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Godless?

And just how much of this ‘godlessness’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuated by the vested interests of official religon ? A inevitable outcome of the objectification, not only of God’s creation itself, but more specifically of the transactional codification of the life of faith, the objectification & denigration of our sisters and their bodies, the manipulation of Scripture, the objectification and wanton exploitation of our universe, and most recently of the vilification of God’s gay and lesbian sons and daughters- all at the hands of those who claim to speak ‘officially’ for the Living God?

I would be far from the first to suggest that ‘organized religions’ just might bear an inordinate share of responsibilities for the suffering, the sorrow and the grief of God; a possibility which informs my understanding of much of what is going on currently in the Vatican, the halls of Lambeth and certain councils of Islam.

To quote another dear friend ‘the vested interests see it as a breaking apart, the ordinary person of faith sees it as a welcome, long overdue breaking-open.’


Which brings one to Bonhoeffer’s solution: a ‘secular’ life.

More dualism.

More us/them- a paradigm I believe God and creation itself has grown impatient with, a prissy conceit, objectification and inequal sharing of resources which life itself can no longer sustain.

At the risk of stating the obvious I’d suggest there’s but One life, One Creation, One God and one race- the human one, anything less is an obscene lie.


As one of the many hundreds of thousands of alienated Christians in this province very pointedly asked me recently- ‘Where’s the Church following its own example in this disgusting mess: confessing, repenting, doing penance- maybe even making reparation? South Africa had its ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission founded by the very victims of its ‘godless’ past, you telling me they knew better than God’s ‘official mouthpiece’ ? Sounds to me like the Vatican needs your Desmond Tutu to teach them a thing or two.’ If only!


But thankfully, brother Dietrich doesn’t end there.

To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be human--not a type of human, but the human that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life.

Which I guess was what I was trying to explain to another ‘alienated Christian’ over Easter- that the real and only question is what we’re doing with ‘the one inescapable sacrament.’

Startled, she started listing off the seven sacraments of the Church. ‘And which one of the seven is inescapable? Baptism perhaps?’ she chuckled.

‘The gift of life, ‘ I suggested, only after a pause for dramatic effect, ‘all the others are detailing.’

This has perhaps been one of the most challenging, most interesting and most engaging Lents of many for me personally, which in some small part might be reflected by what I’ve just written. The errors and any inaccuracies in this post are mine, but the offering, at least in part is made in love and very real gratitude for the ongoing love and prayers – for the priesthood of two much beloved siblings in Christ- P.S. and M.W., whose personal integrity and passionate, prophetic faith are a constant source of blessing for me personally, and a wondrous, if underappreciated gift to our Church

Teasing apart the knot

Quite the Lent again this year; for a lot more reasons than I can go into here this morning.

Strange thing is that even in the years when my life & faith were most frequently and immediately realized through the non-dualism of my mindfulness practice and dharma study, Lent, and most particularly Good Friday have been times of particular observance.

This Lent, like many others has been rich with unexpected detours in the reading and practice and more than a few unexpected conversations. A case in point, a story I came across when I’d gone looking for a particular quote for something else I’m writing, only to come across a collection of sermons by a Canadian, United Church minister and a story he quotes from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Once upon a time, an Inuit hunter went to see the local missionary who had been preaching in his village.
‘I want to ask you something,’ the hunter said.
‘What’s that?’ the missionary inquired.4’If I do not know about God and sin,’ the hunter said,’ would I go to hell?’
‘No,’ the missionary said, ‘not if you did not know.’
‘Then why,’ asked the hunter, ‘did you tell me?

’

(quoted in: ’Summoning the Whirlwind’ by Bruce Sanguin)

Though I may not remember its effect the first time I read this, today it literally stopped me in my tracks- had me reaching for my mug of tea and settling into the rocking chair.

I didn’t have to look far for the reasons this story resonates so powerfully for me this time around.

Yet more stories of generations of child abuse, denial, lies and cover-up in the Roman Catholic Church in the media on a daily basis this Lent. And then of course there had been the powerful online witness of both our Grandmère Mimi and a powerful post by Elizabeth Kaeton on the topic. Living here in Québec, and more specifically Montréal, a city which once boasted more churches per capita than any other city in North America, the Roman Catholic Church has been a truly oppressive presence historically.

Personally I have to go no further than the memories of my two decades on front-line AIDS care and counselling for a sadly too-rich store of lives marked by self-loathing, fear, emotional & corporal alienation and abuse inculcated by the teachings of Church of Rome for this story to become very personal for me.

Not that our own denomination is exempt- one has only to look at the toxic bilge which has been spewed in the wake of the prayerful election of Mary Glasspool, an exceptional priest by all accounts who as we all know was recently, prayerfully elected as one of two new suffragan bishops in one of the most prophetically courageous diocese of the American church. Between the misogynist simperings of suffragan Paul Lambert (Dallas) and the ugliness of too many exchanges I am told on the HoB listserve of that same Church it is only too obvious how much we have yet to learn about our vocation to be the living Body of Christ and the embodiment of the Good News in the world.

But then there’s also one of my online connections which has been the source of some incredible conversations during this penitential season. An individual I wrote about more than a year ago who came from what he now recognizes as a seriously dysfunctional family where his mother’s primary means for her denial of her husband’s drinking was a toxic, sex-obsessed form of religious hysteria. That same hysteria was used to neutralize what the poor woman feared was her eldest son’s homosexuality and to keep him at home until her death from cancer in his very late thirties.

No this individual is not a victim of sexual interference- one of the few things he was spared- but in his mid-forties he’s still working hard to make a life for himself and discover just who he is, in a city far from his upbringing and the remaining members of his family. Some of the stories he has to tell about getting to where he is now are heart-breakingly funny: like who would have ever thought deciding the colour of your bathroom towels or which toaster you were going to buy could be near-paralyzing decisions, requiring literally weeks of comparison shopping?

Yes, my friend is receiving professional help, but from a therapist who is not really able to fully engage with either his wrestling with effects of his Roman Catholic upbringing or with his current spiritual search, which is where I and a number of other on-line friends come in. Incredibly in my case, contact was made through the therapist’s gay son who had been in contact with me via an online shanga. Another of this man’s online friends is ‘E’ who is part of my own online community of faith, and about whose friendship I have written elsewhere. Both of us received copies of Bart Ehrmans ‘Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them) in the mail from ‘E’ early in Lent. I’ve written of my experience with this important book elsewhere, and will undoubtedly do so again. The specific conversation this man and I had, sparked by Erhman, on the franchisization of ‘sin’ is what perhaps resonated most powerfully with me this morning reading this Annie Dillard story.

Not that either of us are denying the existence of sin- either in our individual lives or in human history. Rather it is the ‘doctrine of sin,’ more specifically the Christian doctrine(s) of sin which has caught our attention. ‘Sin’ as a self-fulfilling prophesy most specifically, perhaps even ‘sin’ as a method of crowd control.

In a much earlier post, reaching for the beginnings of a transformative model for us to become the Church I believe God is calling us to be, I suggested that for the Church to even open itself up to the process to which the Holy Spirit is calling us certain things would be necessary.

1) That the Church has to own its history and recognize and embrace the call of the Holy Spirit embedded in those lies, and excesses. Not just its self-published, lavishly illustrated versions of the past, but more importantly the secular version, most readily available in the lives of those who have left or fled the Church

2) That the Church has to come clean on the findings of contemporary historical/critical Scriptural study and thereby open itself to the raw vulnerability of the ambiguity of faith- of dancing with the Holy Spirit in the raw sacrament of our lives. In a similar manner the Church has to stop hiding behind a reactive shamanism which essentially ignores the contradictions and limitation of first and second century ‘doctrines’ constructed on perceptions and prejudices which are no longer credible (slavery, misogyny, being two which most readily come to mind.)

3) That the ‘professionals’ of the Church must essentially become midwives of the living Body of Christ rather than guardians of a propertied fortress of medieval secrets with more holes in them than a Montreal street in spring. Key to this will be the sharing of ministry, the active pursuit shared with the laity of the latest Scriptural study and the critical re-examination of the assumptions of so much of Christian faith and practice.

No, I’m not talking about questioning the divinity of Jesus Christ- in this space and in this particular life Jesus Christ is and will always be Lord. I’m talking about unchallenged doctrines hobbled together in radically different historical realities than ours.

As a theologian friend reminded me very recently, for any of this to happen, ‘it’s going to have to come from the priesthood of the laity- it always does’. Ironically it may because they’re always the one’s most available to the invitation and prompting of the Holy Spirit in the elemental sacrament of their lives.” (more on this later.)

As someone reportedly challenged not too long ago; just how long would any of us hang around if our doctor came into the examining room with a handful of leeches, chanting semi-articulate incantations? And yet in so many aspects of ‘official’ Christian faith actually takes pride in mimicking the rites and worldview of the distant past rather than being brought into the complexity, confusion and rawness of our day.

As I said, the Christian doctrine of original sin is the case in point which started a conversation now involving more than the original two parties, and which several of us now sense might be yet another example of the deconstruction and renewal I believe to be implicit in our vocation to be the living Body of Christ in these times.

Essentially a second century C.E. reaction to a popular doctrine Gnosticism, the central role ‘original sin’ has played in the power of the religious establishment, and the length of time it has gone unquestioned raises a whole rank of questions, perhaps for another time.

A reaction! So much for original, inspired insight!

And just how many other second century ideas or artefacts go unchallenged and play key or defining roles in our sense of self, in our careers or emotional and physical health in everyday life?

Not too many I’d bet.

Scripture tells us by their fruits you shall know them, well let’s look at the fruits of the current models of the Christian institution:

Empty pews, churches and convents being sold off for condo conversion or demolition might suggest that current modeling for the delivery of the Good News and embodying the Living Body of Christ aren’t quite doing it.

The great cloud of ‘raised ’ witness outside our Churches, the prophetic witness and lessons of their lives might suggest that even with all the papal tours, the big blue tents and carbon-heavy councils might suggest that ‘the Church’ has somehow missed the Holy Spirit waiting for us in the primary sacrament of our lives, as confusing, imperfect and small as they might be at times.

The too readily identifiable violence, acrimony, psycho-emotional damage, and injustice which can be directly linked to the practices, pronouncements and structures of ‘official Christianity’ should be a more than convincing proof of the Church’s need for radical renewal and a reconfiguration of our role in the world. Let those with eyes see- inspite of themselves the Holy Spirit is breaking the current models of being Church wide open and sadly those who do nothing more than defensively cling to their self-interests in the existing structures will fare little better than those who might have clung to the pillars of the Hotel Montana in the recent Haitian earthquake.

Of course central to the old model is the need for the official Church to always be ‘right’ and everyone else to be wrong- power which is always essentially the embodiment of fear. And in the process how many untold generations of human suffering have propped up an institution which in too many cases- both large and small, has essentially been anti-life, a frightened damning condemnation of the wondrous, sacred gift of Life itself and of God’s creation. The damning objectification of ‘the world’ just doesn’t work anymore, a first century paradigm reflective of life under Roman domination, it has itself only become the medium for too many other empires, too often in the name of God.

By their fruits you shall know them? How about the objectification, exploitation &, degradation of more than one half of creation, the denial of full their personhood as beings created ‘in the image and likeness of the true and living God?’ Where the Churches have too often become the embodiment of idolatry, prejudice and violence based on first and second century fears, ignorance and domination where is the Holy Spirit going to speak most clearly and most powerfully but outside its marbled, gilded walls and big blue tents; in the inequality, struggles, suffering and violence of contemporary life.

It is my sense, that if the Church is not going to miss out on this invitation writ large by the Holy Spirit the paradigm shift can be as simple as a slight shift of a camera lens- bringing into focus what’s really going on, seeing, listening and hearing the world and its cries as the embodiment of our vocation and not as an objectified ‘other’ to be walled out, condemned, exploited and objectified in a lingo few even understand any longer.

Two other stories to illustrate the wonderful, challenging, at times painful resonances this current discussion has had for me personally.

Early on, the friend I mentioned earlier asked in our forum ‘but what if Erhman’s book is heretical? And if it is, how come his work goes unchallenged?’
Responses ranged from the suggestion that heresy has essentially become a meaningless term, and might even be considered a compliment which one considers the context in which it was coined; to a question in return ‘Do you really think God is afraid of the limitations of Scripture?’

The other are the treasured memories of some of the wonderful fellowship I recently shared with an academic priest currently on sabbatical- his ‘pilgrim year’ as he calls it. A personal pilgrimage which is taking him, not to the seats of ecclesiastical power (Canterbury & Rome) or to the sites of the artificats of the early centuries of Church history, but ‘out there’ in the raw mix of our vocation to be the living Body of Christ. In the short time he stayed with me we rarely slept; prayed, studied and shared late into the night and he left the members of our household mightily blessed, powerfully nourished and delightfully challenged.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, this treasured friend and brother has campus chaplaincy responsibilities, and prior to his departure for his sabbatical year made a truly courageous proposition to the congregation which numbers more than a hundred twenty, currently with four weekly Eucharists.

The invitation?

Essentially to imagine themselves into being the Church the Holy Spirit is calling them to be; one which will limit itself less to the official rites, but one which will also search out opportunities for shared study, discussion and challenge and which will find more opportunities to encounter each other as people of faith and individuals created in the image and likeness of God.

On the last night he was here, my friend surprised himself with the realization that most of the time together, more than anything else we had been prayerfully sitting with ‘the questions’ rather than referencing ‘official answers’ and perhaps it was the openness of those questions which had permitted the Holy Spirit to make it such a blessed time.

How could we possibly wish for anything less for our beloved Church with its exciting inheritance of Scripture, Tradition and Reason?

From one of the two books I've included in my Lenten practice this year is 'Taking a Chance on God' by John J. McNeill; a passage which immeadiately brought to mind two treasured siblings in Christ- M.W. & P.S., both of them living blessings and extra-oridinary Episcopal priests:

For Jesus, all human suffering was contrary to God’s plan. God and suffering are diametrically opposed, and God always seeks to remove it. The only redemptive suffering is that which is voluntarily undertake or accepted in the effort to liberate others. Any suffering that we impose on each other is anathema. Evidently, Jesus was little interested whether the suffering was the consequence of sin or was innocent. Neither piety nor its lack set any limits to his concern. In his ministry, Jesus saw the suffering of others as his task, his mission in life was to do all he could to bring relief.

This understanding gives us a norm, a litmus test, to judge whether aspects of Christian practice are in conformity with the spirit of Christ. Whatever aspects of Christian practice contradict the demands of of a personal and collective human liberation must be rejected in the name of Christian faith itself. As followers of Jesus, we are obliged by our faith to be active in shaping justice and peace in our society.

Our Tribe and some notable allies- voices from the past

Slowly....make that very slowly working my way through all that is involved with transitioning from one main computer to another, I came across a collection of quotes I'd transcribed from The Advocate 25th Anniversary edition back in 1992.

Some incredible folks- many of them gone too soon and too long. Some of them amusing quite, others so voiced with the truth of our journey, at least one of them poignantly tragic for the implicit internalized homophobia; I'll probably save the original file, but these are just too good not to be shared.

"We ask that the government stop its blatant support of sheer, naked prejudice."
James Bradford, a gay rights activist at a San Francisco protest rally, 1968

"They used to say if men had sex together `What will happen to the baby population?' Well, take a look There's plenty of come to go around, thank you very much."
Gore Vidal, 1970

"I've seen too many men who are unfulfilled human beings because they have a distorted sense of what it means to be a man. True fulfillment as a human being comes when each of us is able to recognize the masculine and feminine within ourselves... That's one of the enormous contributions the strong gay movement can make."
Jane Fonda, 1976

"I think macho is the core of the American problem, which is why the gay movement is so important. America must accept that macho is not healthy."
60's radical Jerry Rubin, 1976

"I met a man in a bar in Detroit, Mich. He was in his 70's and he didn't know who I was. And then somebody came up to him and said, "Hey do you know who you were talking to? Matlovich." And this very old man just started crying right in front of me. And it really humbled me to see this old man, possibly old enough to be my grandfather, cry just because he had met me."
Sgt. Leonard P Matlovitch, discharged from the Air Force after disclosing his homosexuality, 1978

"The gay movement is the avant garde of the new quest for self-awareness, and if it should perish, we, the heterosexual `inner émigrés' won't have flanks anymore.
Jersy Kosinski 1978

"It's appalling that there have to be movements organized to give human beings the right to be human beings in the eyes of other human beings."
Glenda Jackson 1979

"You can't start talking to people about Leonardo da Vinci. Most of today's people don't know who he is."
Lena Horne on the challenge of educating the public about gays, 1979

"I pounded on my car and screamed, They misspelled it! They misspelled it! For some reason that offended me more than anything else."
Openly lesbian Massachusetts representative Elaine Noble after finding LESBEAN scrawled on her vehicle, 1984

I think we should be tying up whole cities. We should cripple this country. We should throw bombs. We should set fires. We should stop traffic. We should surround the white house."
Activist and playwright Larry Kramer, responding to the AIDS crisis, 1987

"My entire life has been one long effeminate gesture. Without it, I must admit I would have survived my adolescence in comparative safety, but it is also true that without it I would have lived my declining years in total obscurity."
Quentin Crisp, 1989

"A lot of people in England still find it difficult to believe lesbians do anything. Except perhaps knit together."
Dame Maggie Smith, 1990

"I don't take a stand on anything."
Rock Hudson, when asked what he thought about Anita Bryant, 1977

"There hasn't been a studio head I've worked for who hasn't come out and asked me if I'm a lesbian. I say "Normally this would be none of your business. However I will answer you... It's possible. I'm not practicing at the moment, but I will not say it will never happen or hasn't happened in my past."
Whoopi Goldberg

"By all reasonable accounts, we're going to lose a third of the entire Third World [to AIDS], and that's unacceptable. How could this not be the most important thing in the world right now?"
Folksinger Arlo Guthrie, 1992

"Until being a lesbian is as honorable an alternative as any other, any of us can be stopped by [ lesbian baiting]. It hurts hertro women as well. As long as you can be stopped by this accusation, it's paralyzing."
Gloria Steinman, 1992

OH HAPPY DAY! OH HAPPY DAY

Very real tears of joy, wonder & thanksgiving here at the sight of this image!
And I make no apology to anyone for my celebration.

You'd have to have walked at least a couple of miles in the dessert of abandonment, fear, pain and loss my gay and lesbian Anglicans have known for too long, to know what a radiant miracle this indeed is.

To my eyes this is but another cause to give heartfelt thanks for the living blessing and great gift to our Church the Holy Spirit has given us in the life and service of her beloved son the Bishop of New Hampshire. If only certain quarters could recognize this and learn to say 'thank-you.'

And speaking of Living Blessings I'd also draw your attention to yet another magnificent post by a very much beloved sister http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/2010/01/twelfth-night.html and the insightful, prophetic wisdom of the poet priest Mark Harris http://anglicanfuture.blogspot.com/2010/01/prophetic-spirit-and-year-of-tyger.html

This morning our tiny house resonates with praise and thanksgiving.
I'd ask your prayers for Betsy, Ellie, blessed Gene, and for the continuing blessings of Elizabeth and Mark's priesthood to the Church.

Aaargh!

Call me slow at times perhaps,
‘preoccupied’ might be a more apt description considering how the last many years have been spent in getting beyond the decade of my life which one professional referred to as ‘psychic rape in the name of God’ and avoiding the subsequent self-victimization one could have collapsed into.
It’s also been the very real adventure in grace of growing into the gift of being born a gay man and person of faith and claiming the blessings of both.
Striving to be authentically present and of service in the darkest years of the AIDS hollocaust here in Montreal; and to be authentically alive and present in the decades since, with all they have brought.

But this week-end has seen another one of those ‘aah-ha’ moments
long overdue perhaps (what took you so long,, I can almost hear one particular and very dear sister asking me already).
Maybe not quite on the scale of July 27, 2006, but one of those tight almost inevitable places when you’re dancing with the Holy Spirit; where almost everything cannot help but be changed- wether it’s broken open or now resonantly perceived in a larger context and understanding.
And as so often in my life there’s a person involved.

In this instance it’s ‘G’ who has been part of my life for more than twenty years, and is one of the very few still among the living who knew my beloved.
‘G’ first turned up as a too-well-intentioned Westmount lady wanting to volunteer for those ‘poor souls suffering with AIDS.’
An Anglophone, barely capable of managing the simplest of conversations in French, she was given to me for sensitization and training. Inspite of the great disparity of our economic backgrounds; our common Anglian background, and our personal struggles with the almost complete absence of both the official Church and practising Christians from the front lines of AIDS service made for a real closeness and prayerful practice.
Since then ‘G’ has gone a long way, and she gives me more credit than I am due when she calls me her chief cheerleader. The lady, and her adult daughter are both living wonders!

And it was ‘G’ who lobbed this particular experience my way.
Knowing that one of the sharpest bites of my current economic situation has been the loss of the freedom to buy books, and being partner of what I personally find an exceptionally rich on-going conversation on faith beyond patriarchy, ‘G’ thought of me when she came across a particular, recently released book. ‘A Lily Among the Thorns: Imagining a New Christian Sexuality’ by Miguel A. De La Torre, professor of social ethics (Illif School of Theology), a director of the Society of Christian Ethics. A single copy ordered several months ago, ‘G’ apparently thought of it as a possible Christmas gift for me. Only one day last fall, out of what she admits was idle curiosity, she dipped into the book herself- and ended up literally throwing it across the room at one point- where it apparently laid for several months.

In the meantime she ordered a second, undamaged copy for me. Which she tried presenting me with when we got together over the holidays.(a story for another time and place). Sufficed to say I ended up with ‘the more interesting copy’ and insisted on ‘G’ inscribing it to make my winning our tussle official.

Since then, ‘G’ has returned to Dr. de La Torre’s offering- leaving me two voice oblique messages, asking if I’ve ‘started’ the book or ‘reached that chapter yet?’

Well, beloved ‘G’ I did, and I have, and ‘that chapter’ has been one of the most agonizing reads in a longtime, and if you knew the contents of my bookshelves, you’d know that is saying a lot.

For me at least, as a person of faith, Dr. De La Torre is an individual at least ‘to be dealt with.’ Having said that, as my read of his offering is still unfinished, it is important for me to make clear this in no way implies a recommendation of the book.


Dr. De la Torre’s struggle is with the misogyny, racism and homophobia in the Bible, and he presents an what could be an interesting alternative to the standard either/or alternatives on Biblical interpretation and inerrancy- most particularly when tacking ‘those verses.’ This post however is not about his methodology. It’s about my experience of that chapter.

‘Liberating the Female Body’ - an innocuous enough title perhaps, though as a gay feminist, I confess to a certain guardedness to anything spoken or written by a straight theologian- no matter how well-intentioned, about my sisters, their lives or bodies or about my LGBT tribe, our lives or our bodies-



Give Dr. De La Torre credit though. I have yet to discover how workable his methodology for liberated Scriptural interpretation might be, however he sure had got my attention, and he sure does know his Scripture. That chapter ends up being an articulate, concise catalogue of the culturally defined objectification, exploitation and abuse of women in both the Hebrew and the New Testaments. In addition, Dr. De La Torre cites some of the consequences of those same verses in subsequent Church culture through the writings of Church patriarchs and those who have followed in their steps. And the whole experience left me positively reeling.

Yes, I might have already known many of the individual objectionable verses, recognized or vaguely remembered others, but it was seeing them all there in one chapter; not even simply listed but contextualized; this wasn’t casual curiosity about something which might prove interesting. This was my faith tradition standing convicted of something I detest, and each new instance registered physically, almost like an actual blow. Several times, I had to stop before continuing, resorting to my meditation training to get beyond my visceral reaction. By the time I had finished I was both raw and angry- very angry, and just sitting there with that inarticulate rawness seemed the most prayerful practice I was capable of late that evening.


Sitting there, a number of questions came to mind
How has this been allowed to go on so long? (cue that question from a certain beloved sister again)How can any intelligent human being, cognizant of these verses and of the insights of contemporary critical Scriptural study continue to claim inerrancy?
Where is the Church- our Church’s self-critical examination, discussion and repentance of the effects of this pernicious misogyny in our structures, theology and practices?
Where have our ordained and consecrated sisters-in-faith learned such heroic patience with their colleagues still trapped in privileged patriarchy? And has their patience indeed been heroic?

How serious is this?
I wouldn’t presume to try to mirror Dr. De La Torre’s scholarship by quoting Scripture, a few quotes from heirs of Scriptural misogyny suffice to show where it leads when unchallenged:

Woman was merely man’s helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God.

Augustine

Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman

Clement of Alexandria ( c 150 -215)

God created man with a broad chest, not broad hips, so that in that part of him he can be wise; but that part out of which filth comes is small. In a woman, this is reversed. That is why she has much filth and little wisdom.

Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)

Does one need to get more specific than Martin Luther to recognize the foulness of Christian misogyny?

Well if Luther weren’t bad enough I would include but one example of Dr. De La Torre’s analysis which could very well be the point at which my friend sent the volume sailing through the air.

Women were considered the weaker sex, in part, because they were perceived to be the negation of men. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the Law understood the legal concept of person to be male-centered; women (and children) were perceived to be incomplete males. Maleness was considered normative, the ideal. Anything that fell short of the norm fell short of God’s ideal. Thomas Aquinas wrote that ‘woman is [a] defective and misbegotten’ male- probably due to ‘some influence, such as that of a south wind, which is moist.’

This ideology was manifested in how the physical differences between women and men were comprehended. Women’s genitalia were viewed as the anatomical antithesis of men’s. From as early as the second century until the eighteenth century, the woman’s cervix and vagina were imagined as an inverted penis. Even the internal position of the ovaries was construed to be the counterbalance to the external location of the testicles. In this one-sex model, women had reached only a lower evolutionary stage of development; this categorized them as something less than fully human- a ‘defective and misbegotten’ man. Their stunted and inverse ‘penis’ only served to prove their deficiency as humans, their lack of complete maleness.

Sitting there late into the night it was my very clear sense that if our Church had indeed owned, self-critically examined and discussed and truly repented of its misogynist heritage when our sisters first stepped forward to claim their vocations to the priesthood, the current shameful circus and scandal over the full inclusion of LGBT baptized couldn’t have become the disaster it has allowed to develop into.

Even later I found myself wondering if part of the muddledness which exists in current discussions might have been avoided if we had not allowed the patriarchal interests to essentially define the issue and our role in it. Perhaps most particularly, I’m referring to being called ‘liberal’ which my have been but the initial wedge which has allowed them to accelerate into all sorts of name-calling ugliness while wearing the garments of their priesthood.

Liberal I and many I love and honour may be, but that label has nothing to do with our faith or our sense of what the Holy Spirit is striving to accomplish in and through the exemplary medium of Anglican practice in these times. An incredible diversity of individuals whose lives and experience have only informed their love and passion for the Christ the liberator who calls us to have life more abundantly. A people who reject the ‘necessary lies’ of violence, fear and the reign of guilt. Individuals whose lives are defined and liberated by our baptismal covenant, and who are equally unafraid of science, ambiguity and the finding of critical Scriptural scholarship. A people sure in the faith transmitted by the saints who recognize the elemental sacrament of the lives we’ve been given and of the interesting challenges of living in these times, who reject the fearful construct of medieval dualistic thinking.

My sense is that the term may not yet have been coined to describe the larger, post-patriarchal vision we share, and equally that we have yet to claim the skills to redefine the what is really at stake in the current turmoil our Church is undergoing. But with God’s grace and the long-suffering patience of the Holy Spirit this is still possible. Too often personal prejudice or opinion have been allowed to stand unchallenged as good theology, too often selective manipulation of Scripture and elective amnesia of contemporary critical academic study have been allowed to stand.


As I shared with ‘G’ on the phone last night, one thing the current debate has taught us is that the justice of LGBT inclusion is not even going to register with the patriarchy’s purity police when they have been so comfortable with overlooking and abetting so many centuries of institutionalized misogyny within the Church. As with my sisters in faith and their vocations, the redemption and vocations of my LGBT brothers and sisters rests alone on the great blessing and redemptive seal of our baptism and the covenant made at that time.

Bottom line, for me the essential question always is and remains which vision and understanding of what is currently at stake renders great glory to our wondrous God?



To echo a comment I made recently to a beloved sister, which gave her some pause; it is long overdue that we began behaving like the redeemed people we are. And it is my deep sense that it is only in that redeemed confidence the more intelligent and better educated than I will find their prophetic voices.

Christians at Liberty

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.