My daughter Ruth was born twenty-seven and a half years ago in Medellin, Colombia. My former wife and I adopted her just twenty-seven years ago next month. Yesterday, she flew to Medellin on her first trip to the city where she was born. When she was twelve, we went to the city of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast, but Medellin was too dangerous then. The drug cartel was in charge, and her city was at the heart of it. Yesterday's New York Times ran an article about how Medellin is now a place of optimism; the new mayor is trying to make it lively, attractive, safe. Ruth told me before she left that Medellin is now safer than Philadelphia, where she lives. There is still a guerilla war going on in Colombia; some parts of it are definitely dangerous. She knows that. But she plans to travel around the country she left so long ago, taking care but not shirking the realities of her own life. She will be there about a month, returning close to the time she came to this country as an infant.
When I was about her age, in 1973, I flew to Nicaragua to spend three weeks on an island at the southern end of Lake Nicaragua with a community of revolutionaries, artists, and writers led by the poet and Roman Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal. I was twenty-nine and at a moment of transition in my own life, leaving one job and city for another publishing position in another city, but at the same time unsure I wanted to continue to be a publisher. I was writing poetry and publishing it. I was going to Solentiname, the island community in Nicaragua, because I was publishing a book of Cardenal's poems in English and he had invited me to come. In those days, I was alienated from the church and still six years from my return to it, through the Episcopal Church. It is probable that my experience with the Solentiname community helped move me toward that return.
Many suggest that liberation theology was born at Solentiname, and while I was there I witnessed the teaching of Marxist-Christian theology on the porch of the main house on the island. Peasants paddled dug-out canoes from the surrounding smaller islands on Saturdays to participate in the discussions. They were learning about their own oppression under the Anastasio Somoza regime. Eventually, these teachings would influence the church throughout Latin America and help to fuel the rebellion a few years later that overthrew Samoza. Many of the young people I met in 1973 were among the first killed in one of the first battles. The community at Solentiname was wiped out by the Nicaraguan national guard.
I was helped on my way to Cardenal's community by Sandinistas, although at the time I did not know what that meant. While I was there, the government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by the CIA; we heard the news on Radio Havana one night and we all got drunk with sorrow. I remember lying in a small motorboat looking up at the incredible stars and thinking about how courageous all of these people were, living under tyranny and risking their lives. And then I threw up.
Liberation theology still makes sense to me, perhaps even more so now in North America, in the West, than it did then in Nicaragua. The conditions we face now, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the indifference of the institutional church, are like those that generated a socially conscious Christianity in the seventies. The authoritarian church is ascendant, not only the Roman Catholic Church, and the emergence of a global corporate fascism is all too obvious. We are not teaching ourselves to rebel but rather to acquiesce. Like the famous fable of the frog placed in a pot of cold water that slowly heats to boiling, we are being cooked by a culture of lies and fairy tales.
And most of us are content to lie in the warming water (breathing the warming air), imagining that we are in a spa instead of a cauldron.
I am glad that my daughter is going to Latin America where the stakes are still visibly high. She will see the favelas on the hillsides where tens of thousands live in abject poverty even in the renewing city of Medellin. Urban renewal is usually built on the backs of the poor. She will see the poverty that begat her; she will meet the people who like her have no control over the future, the difference being they knew they lack control. What I hope is that she will return with some fury in her blood.
I felt some of that fury when I came back from Nicaragua, although it didn't last. It was like what motivated me and others in the 1960s to refuse to approve of the War in Vietnam. But we had grown tired. We had to go back to work. I went back to work. And now here we are in the warm waters of our lives believing that we are safe, that God loves us, that our prayers for peace are all it will take to ensure our daily bread and safe retirement to someplace wonderful. Some might say that the government that overthrew Samosa was also corrupt--and they would be right. The Sandinistas lost their moral compass; even Ernesto became for a time a poet apparatchik. But the effort to make the change was worth it, even so. The mistake is to assume that a failure to make permanent change excuses us from attempting to make any change.
As for me, I am going to try to climb out of the pot. I am not sure yet what that means, but I don't intend to stay here treading water.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
A Kairos Moment
The present reminds me of the Nixon administration and the years leading to the end of the war in Vietnam and the president's resignation. I am sure I am not alone in having this sense of deja vu (and those of you who follow the New York Times Magazine are reminded weekly of this connection to our past in Megan Kelso's "Watergate Sue"). It is all depressingly familiar. This morning I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in connection with a new book I am writing, and was forcefully reminded of how irrelevant the institutional church is in today's crisis. Our religious leaders have very little to say to us as the war drags on, as people are losing their homes and their lives, as so many suffer from the lack of compassion in our government: no, make that our own lack of compassion. The rich get richer and we just don't care very much as long as we get our share.
Last week I went to an Episcopal Church here in Portland and was shocked to read and hear in the written Prayers of the People a petition that for "patience with those who incite war." What? Is that all we have to say? It is oh so familiar. The congregation was large, wealthy, prominent. Being patient is easy when you have both money and power.
Bonhoeffer was far from patient. As we know, he was part of a plot to assassinate Hitler, and that led to his arrest and execution. Whether he was right to participate in such a plot is another question. He came to that point as part of his work against the regime that was killing Jews; Bonhoeffer himself returned to Germany from the United States to be part of the opposition when he could have stayed safely away, writing perhaps from Union Theological Seminary. He did not. He helped to found the confessing church that was in opposition to the established church, the one that collaborated with the Nazis.
The church today--almost in every incarnation--is a collaborator with the present government, part of the wealth and war machine that keeps the United States and its people in chains. We go along because as Christians we are no longer powerful enough to speak out, nor confident enough to risk our tax exemption, nor brave enough to risk outraging the those who profit from the current situation (or are so beaten down by it that they no longer know how to resist).
Near the end of his life, Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter from prison about what he called religionless Christianity. I have long been intrigued by what he has to say here (the letter was written in April 1944 when I was one-month old). Bonhoeffer writes:
"What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience--and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as 'religious' do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by 'religion.'"
He goes on to talk about how Christianity itself was historically conditioned and "a transient form of human self-expression." The time he describes, the mid-1940s near the end of the war, was not unlike our own, nor unlike the late 60s and early 70s. These were and are critical times for Christians. We are in our passivity confirming what Bonhoeffer was saying: "the western form of Christianity was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion."
What we have not discovered is the answer to Bonhoeffer's next question: "If religion is only a garment of Christianity--and even this garment has looked very different at different times--then what is a religionless Christianity?"
The question is, in fact, how do we transform ourselves from a passive people bound in the obsolete form of religion to a vibrant spiritual presence in a suffering world? It is clear to me right now that we don't know how to do it. All we can do is repeat the same old tired phrases and meaningless prayers.
Ironically, the state of religionless Christianity right now is most visible in the Christian religion itself. It is a religion without meaning. But the end of religion is a good thing, when the religion in question is no longer representative of the divine ground of being nor a passageway into that place of wholeness once promised by the church. You can't get there from here.
But this is also a Kairos moment if there ever was one. It is a time in which we can take action and change our way of living and being. During Lent I suggested that we give up church for Lent; I suspect nobody followed my lead. And I am certainly not going to suggest that people walk out of church. I know they won't. But I do wonder what we are doing in church. Why are we there? Who cares?
We went to a church yesterday not in the Episcopal tradition. The pastor spoke about the need to pay attention to what matters, to be organized in such a way that the mundane details of getting along do not mask what we really need to be doing. As an aside, he suggested that the present government administration might take some time off to reflect on what it's doing. It was a gentle antidote to "patience with those who incite war." I also wondered as I heard him whether the same might apply to the church today.
Time to ask ourselves: What are we doing? How will our actions be judged by the future? Where is our Dietrich Bonhoeffer in prison calling us to discipleship? As we religionless Christians go willingly to execution, who will come after us?
Just to be clear, I am not suggesting we revive religion. I am suggesting we give it up altogether and start over, that we accept religionless faith as a fact and figure out what a new Christianity looks like.
Last week I went to an Episcopal Church here in Portland and was shocked to read and hear in the written Prayers of the People a petition that for "patience with those who incite war." What? Is that all we have to say? It is oh so familiar. The congregation was large, wealthy, prominent. Being patient is easy when you have both money and power.
Bonhoeffer was far from patient. As we know, he was part of a plot to assassinate Hitler, and that led to his arrest and execution. Whether he was right to participate in such a plot is another question. He came to that point as part of his work against the regime that was killing Jews; Bonhoeffer himself returned to Germany from the United States to be part of the opposition when he could have stayed safely away, writing perhaps from Union Theological Seminary. He did not. He helped to found the confessing church that was in opposition to the established church, the one that collaborated with the Nazis.
The church today--almost in every incarnation--is a collaborator with the present government, part of the wealth and war machine that keeps the United States and its people in chains. We go along because as Christians we are no longer powerful enough to speak out, nor confident enough to risk our tax exemption, nor brave enough to risk outraging the those who profit from the current situation (or are so beaten down by it that they no longer know how to resist).
Near the end of his life, Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter from prison about what he called religionless Christianity. I have long been intrigued by what he has to say here (the letter was written in April 1944 when I was one-month old). Bonhoeffer writes:
"What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience--and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as 'religious' do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by 'religion.'"
He goes on to talk about how Christianity itself was historically conditioned and "a transient form of human self-expression." The time he describes, the mid-1940s near the end of the war, was not unlike our own, nor unlike the late 60s and early 70s. These were and are critical times for Christians. We are in our passivity confirming what Bonhoeffer was saying: "the western form of Christianity was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion."
What we have not discovered is the answer to Bonhoeffer's next question: "If religion is only a garment of Christianity--and even this garment has looked very different at different times--then what is a religionless Christianity?"
The question is, in fact, how do we transform ourselves from a passive people bound in the obsolete form of religion to a vibrant spiritual presence in a suffering world? It is clear to me right now that we don't know how to do it. All we can do is repeat the same old tired phrases and meaningless prayers.
Ironically, the state of religionless Christianity right now is most visible in the Christian religion itself. It is a religion without meaning. But the end of religion is a good thing, when the religion in question is no longer representative of the divine ground of being nor a passageway into that place of wholeness once promised by the church. You can't get there from here.
But this is also a Kairos moment if there ever was one. It is a time in which we can take action and change our way of living and being. During Lent I suggested that we give up church for Lent; I suspect nobody followed my lead. And I am certainly not going to suggest that people walk out of church. I know they won't. But I do wonder what we are doing in church. Why are we there? Who cares?
We went to a church yesterday not in the Episcopal tradition. The pastor spoke about the need to pay attention to what matters, to be organized in such a way that the mundane details of getting along do not mask what we really need to be doing. As an aside, he suggested that the present government administration might take some time off to reflect on what it's doing. It was a gentle antidote to "patience with those who incite war." I also wondered as I heard him whether the same might apply to the church today.
Time to ask ourselves: What are we doing? How will our actions be judged by the future? Where is our Dietrich Bonhoeffer in prison calling us to discipleship? As we religionless Christians go willingly to execution, who will come after us?
Just to be clear, I am not suggesting we revive religion. I am suggesting we give it up altogether and start over, that we accept religionless faith as a fact and figure out what a new Christianity looks like.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Sick on the Bus
The Number 17 Bus stops a block away from our apartment in downtown Portland and goes thirteen miles out to Sauvie Island, which is a rural paradise in the Columbia River. You can pick your own berries there. I rode my bicycle out to Sauvie Island Saturday morning but was not quite up to another ten miles around the island itself. The ride out was along an industrial area, not exactly beautiful, but I could have taken the bus and just cruised the island. Portland buses have bicycle racks on the front. Portland buses are amazing.
We can ride the 17 to Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, where we went to church yesterday morning. It is located in the northwest section of the city, near the Pearl District, where the arts are concentrated.
We caught the bus at about 9:25. I asked the driver the nearest stop to 19th and Glisan (pronounced Gleeson) and she smiled, "19th and Glisan." "Close enough," I said. The bus drivers here are incredibly friendly and helpful. A few stops along, she turned and said to an elderly man seated behind her and said, "This is your stop." But it the ride became even more remarkable.
Soon after we turned on Glisan, somewhere around 13th Avenue, we stopped at a light. A homeless man--or at least he looked homeless, and not at all well--had gotten on a stop before. He had that grizzled look of a hard life, a crusty white beard, sunken cheeks, pants gathered at his waist with a long belt. He shuffled as he walked. There were not many people on the bus. He sat somewhere behind us. At the light, he scuttled to the front and spoke to the driver.
"You have to be sick?" she asked. "Ok, go out. I'll wait."
The man got off the bus and threw up on the dirt at the base of a tree. He came back and thanked the driver.
"That's ok," she said. "Let me know if you have to be sick again."
He started back to his seat but, before the bus began moving, returned quickly.
"You have to be sick again," the driver asked. He nodded. She opened the door. He got out, doubled over. You could see that he was holding vomit to avoid throwing up on the bus. He spewed a yellowish liquid at the base of the tree and returned to the bus, which had been standing at a green light, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief.
The driver said, "Ok now?"
"Yeah."
"Medication?"
"Yeah."
"Ok. Let me know if you have to be sick again. I'll stop. We'll wait for you. And thanks for not getting sick on the bus. I appreciate that."
We all did.
This was definitely not New York City or perhaps any other city in the country. The man was considerate of the rest of us. When he vomited, it was not on the sidewalk. The driver was concerned for his well being and acted on that concern. No one in the bus got upset at having to sit through two lights while a homeless man was sick.
We went on to church, but we both felt that we had already been there. On the bus.
We can ride the 17 to Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, where we went to church yesterday morning. It is located in the northwest section of the city, near the Pearl District, where the arts are concentrated.
We caught the bus at about 9:25. I asked the driver the nearest stop to 19th and Glisan (pronounced Gleeson) and she smiled, "19th and Glisan." "Close enough," I said. The bus drivers here are incredibly friendly and helpful. A few stops along, she turned and said to an elderly man seated behind her and said, "This is your stop." But it the ride became even more remarkable.
Soon after we turned on Glisan, somewhere around 13th Avenue, we stopped at a light. A homeless man--or at least he looked homeless, and not at all well--had gotten on a stop before. He had that grizzled look of a hard life, a crusty white beard, sunken cheeks, pants gathered at his waist with a long belt. He shuffled as he walked. There were not many people on the bus. He sat somewhere behind us. At the light, he scuttled to the front and spoke to the driver.
"You have to be sick?" she asked. "Ok, go out. I'll wait."
The man got off the bus and threw up on the dirt at the base of a tree. He came back and thanked the driver.
"That's ok," she said. "Let me know if you have to be sick again."
He started back to his seat but, before the bus began moving, returned quickly.
"You have to be sick again," the driver asked. He nodded. She opened the door. He got out, doubled over. You could see that he was holding vomit to avoid throwing up on the bus. He spewed a yellowish liquid at the base of the tree and returned to the bus, which had been standing at a green light, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief.
The driver said, "Ok now?"
"Yeah."
"Medication?"
"Yeah."
"Ok. Let me know if you have to be sick again. I'll stop. We'll wait for you. And thanks for not getting sick on the bus. I appreciate that."
We all did.
This was definitely not New York City or perhaps any other city in the country. The man was considerate of the rest of us. When he vomited, it was not on the sidewalk. The driver was concerned for his well being and acted on that concern. No one in the bus got upset at having to sit through two lights while a homeless man was sick.
We went on to church, but we both felt that we had already been there. On the bus.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Summer Views of Mt. Hood
Friday morning I decided to ride my bike into the western hills of Portland where the Japanese Garden is located. It's only three miles from our apartment but the road to the Garden is steep. I've been biking along the river on the Springwater Corridor, a multi-use path for bikers, runners, and walkers, which is mostly flat. It was time to tackle the slopes. The only way out of Portland is over the hills.
We became members of the Japanese Garden as soon as we settled in. At just over five acres it is small but the design packs in a space- and mind-expanding array of plants and paths, two dry gardens, a pond busy with carp, a tea pavilion, and borrowed scenery that includes the Cascades. Even when there are crowds, it is possible to slip off into a corner behind a Japanese Maple and be alone.
Jefferson Street, where we are located, turns into Canyon Road just as the serious climb begins. I got about two blocks before I had to stop to breathe. I looked ahead; ahead was still up. Stopped again at the top of the next hill, I was panting when an elderly woman asked if I needed help. Yeah, I gasped, I'm lost. Where's the Japanese Garden (near by, I hoped)? Oh, she said, go up to the corner and turn left. You'll see the signs. I stood and pedaled to the top, turned left, turned right. Stopped to breathe. Not a walk in the park.
And so it went for another couple of endless hills. The scenery, by the way, was gorgeous, conifers of all sorts wedged among maples and a dozen varieties of green (I have to learn more about these trees). The clean air made my screaming leg muscles almost glad. At the top of the penultimate hill to the Garden, you can keep biking up the steepest incline or pick up your bike and climb the steps cut into a hillside. I picked up my bike. The switchback steps ascend a couple of hundred feet--not too bad given how far I'd come.
The Unitarian-Universalists were in town for their annual convention. I met a few coming down as I was heading up. You could tell they were UUs, as Connie and I call them, because they were wearing t-shirts with a flame on the chest. I felt like a sterling example of Portland culture hauling my bike on my shoulder up to the Garden. Grinning. Yeah, I do this all the time. Clean air, clean living.
There was an art show in the main pavillion, showcasing northwest artists who had created images based on the Garden. I bought a small collage by a resident of Lake Oswego, just south of Portland, and stuck it in my backpack. I went out to the graveled space in front of the pavilion and looked out across the city of Portland to the Cascades, which gently framed the city's modest skyline. Mt. Hood was not visible.
Hood looks like Mt. Fuji, just as this view from the Garden reminded me of a similar view I recalled from one of the Imperial Gardens overlooking Kyoto, Japan. On clear days you can see Hood from almost any part of the city, including our apartment terrace. I have begun writing a series of haiku, "Summer Views of Mt. Hood" (derived from the printmaker, Hokusai's, series, Views of Mt. Fuji). Here are a few of my haiku.
1
Extended wings
balancing a crow on a high spruce twig
fold carefully
2
Dawn silhouette
floating snowcap at noon
faded in evening marshgrass
3
Against darkening skies
at morning
the white cone advances
4
Pasted on the window
of the Wells Fargo tower
the mountain’s face
5
Crows call to crows
summer light rises
with the mountain
6
The eastern hills
edged in sharp pines
rain clouds shroud Mt.Hood
We became members of the Japanese Garden as soon as we settled in. At just over five acres it is small but the design packs in a space- and mind-expanding array of plants and paths, two dry gardens, a pond busy with carp, a tea pavilion, and borrowed scenery that includes the Cascades. Even when there are crowds, it is possible to slip off into a corner behind a Japanese Maple and be alone.
Jefferson Street, where we are located, turns into Canyon Road just as the serious climb begins. I got about two blocks before I had to stop to breathe. I looked ahead; ahead was still up. Stopped again at the top of the next hill, I was panting when an elderly woman asked if I needed help. Yeah, I gasped, I'm lost. Where's the Japanese Garden (near by, I hoped)? Oh, she said, go up to the corner and turn left. You'll see the signs. I stood and pedaled to the top, turned left, turned right. Stopped to breathe. Not a walk in the park.
And so it went for another couple of endless hills. The scenery, by the way, was gorgeous, conifers of all sorts wedged among maples and a dozen varieties of green (I have to learn more about these trees). The clean air made my screaming leg muscles almost glad. At the top of the penultimate hill to the Garden, you can keep biking up the steepest incline or pick up your bike and climb the steps cut into a hillside. I picked up my bike. The switchback steps ascend a couple of hundred feet--not too bad given how far I'd come.
The Unitarian-Universalists were in town for their annual convention. I met a few coming down as I was heading up. You could tell they were UUs, as Connie and I call them, because they were wearing t-shirts with a flame on the chest. I felt like a sterling example of Portland culture hauling my bike on my shoulder up to the Garden. Grinning. Yeah, I do this all the time. Clean air, clean living.
There was an art show in the main pavillion, showcasing northwest artists who had created images based on the Garden. I bought a small collage by a resident of Lake Oswego, just south of Portland, and stuck it in my backpack. I went out to the graveled space in front of the pavilion and looked out across the city of Portland to the Cascades, which gently framed the city's modest skyline. Mt. Hood was not visible.
Hood looks like Mt. Fuji, just as this view from the Garden reminded me of a similar view I recalled from one of the Imperial Gardens overlooking Kyoto, Japan. On clear days you can see Hood from almost any part of the city, including our apartment terrace. I have begun writing a series of haiku, "Summer Views of Mt. Hood" (derived from the printmaker, Hokusai's, series, Views of Mt. Fuji). Here are a few of my haiku.
1
Extended wings
balancing a crow on a high spruce twig
fold carefully
2
Dawn silhouette
floating snowcap at noon
faded in evening marshgrass
3
Against darkening skies
at morning
the white cone advances
4
Pasted on the window
of the Wells Fargo tower
the mountain’s face
5
Crows call to crows
summer light rises
with the mountain
6
The eastern hills
edged in sharp pines
rain clouds shroud Mt.Hood
Monday, June 18, 2007
Speaking in Anglican Tongue
The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church issued a statement last week that caught my interest. It was titled, “The Episcopal Church’s Commitment to Common Life in the Anglican Communion.” (Read it at www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_86804_ENG_HTM.htm.) Those of you who don’t care about the Anglican Communion—and you are legion—might hold on for a moment because the subject of this entry is the misuse of language; the example is specific but the point is more general and one that is especially relevant to our common public life today.
The communiqué was a response to demands by Anglican Primates (Bishops-in-Charge of other national churches around the world) that the Episcopal Church stop ordaining gays in same-sex partnerships (ie, not celibate). The Primates imposed a deadline of September 30, 2007. In its statement, the Executive Council said:
“. . . the requests of the Primates are of a nature that can only properly be dealt with by our General Convention. Neither the Executive Council, the Presiding Bishop, nor the House of Bishops can give binding interpretations of General Convention resolutions nor make an ‘unequivocal common commitment’ to denying future decisions by dioceses or General Convention. We question the authority of the Primates to impose deadlines and demands upon any of the churches of the Anglican Communion or to prescribe the relationships within any of the other instruments of our common life, including the Anglican Consultative Council.”
In other, clearer language: “You can’t tell us what to do.”
Read the second sentence in the quote above. Can you tell me what it means? And can you tell me how this statement belongs in a statement about the church’s commitment to common life? The entire statement is written in a similarly legalistic and obfuscatory style. It is a political message dressed up in churchy language. Those who have tried to make the Episcopal Church change its ways and have interfered in the constituted governing authority of the church are addressed here as “brothers and sisters” (there are no sister Primates, by the way). The communiqué denies it is resting its message on legalities, asserting instead that it speaks out of loving concern for relationship in Christ.
That may well reflect the feelings of those who drafted the communiqué. I can’t claim to know their hearts. They are certainly good people. But the unintended effect of the language used is to suggest insincerity and even deceit. It is a speaking in tongues. If I were on the other side of this issue, I would respond: Bullshit.
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14, makes a distinction that is perhaps helpful here between prophesy and speaking in tongues. (I thought it appropriate to bring in scripture since the communiqué itself begins with scripture, although a strange passage, in my opinion, for those seeking reconciliation.) The Council’s communiqué speaks in tongues, abusing the language of theology in the service of politics. The Episcopal Church is behaving prophetically in its stance on gays and women but politically in its dealings with the Anglican Communion. Paul says this:
“. . .those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church.”
The subject of this communiqué is not a mystery in the Spirit but an effort to placate members of the Communion who do not accept the stance of the American Church. It is a stall. It is in effect a lie. The Church is saying, "Well, we can’t do what you want because it isn’t the way we do things, and anyway, the point here is that we’re in relationship and we have to do something vague in Christ that allows us all to keep on as we are." Or something like that.
When we speak in tongues we mislead, intentionally or unintentionally, or as Paul says, build ourselves up. Corporate Speak is also like this. Political candidates always speak in tongues. So, increasingly, does the church. Unity bought at the price of deception and accommodation is no unity at all.
Some years ago when I was working in a parish in Manhattan I saw the implications of pandering to the toxic people among us. The few destroyed the work of many because we did not confront them directly. Everyone in every organization has seen the same thing. Toxicity spreads. In relationships, when your spouse continues to drink and beat the kids, you separate from him or her to protect yourself and your children. If a member of the church continues to accommodate those who abuse blacks or women or gays, while asseting a loving relationship to all, it is behaving hypocritically and in fact enabling discrimination.
In a true instead of rhetorical loving relationship, the Episcopal Church would not be worried about what to do if the family throws it out. It would be leaving.
And it would assert what it believes and why the current situation is intolerable in clear and forthright, even loving, language. The present communiqué is not a statement of love. It is a statement of aggression and deceit. Don’t believe it. The real subject is political power—something the new Presiding Bishop has claimed to abhor—and self-protection. The subject is money and property and power. It always is, even in the church.
That is not prophesy, no matter what prophetic work the Church does behind the veil of its snake-oil language.
The communiqué was a response to demands by Anglican Primates (Bishops-in-Charge of other national churches around the world) that the Episcopal Church stop ordaining gays in same-sex partnerships (ie, not celibate). The Primates imposed a deadline of September 30, 2007. In its statement, the Executive Council said:
“. . . the requests of the Primates are of a nature that can only properly be dealt with by our General Convention. Neither the Executive Council, the Presiding Bishop, nor the House of Bishops can give binding interpretations of General Convention resolutions nor make an ‘unequivocal common commitment’ to denying future decisions by dioceses or General Convention. We question the authority of the Primates to impose deadlines and demands upon any of the churches of the Anglican Communion or to prescribe the relationships within any of the other instruments of our common life, including the Anglican Consultative Council.”
In other, clearer language: “You can’t tell us what to do.”
Read the second sentence in the quote above. Can you tell me what it means? And can you tell me how this statement belongs in a statement about the church’s commitment to common life? The entire statement is written in a similarly legalistic and obfuscatory style. It is a political message dressed up in churchy language. Those who have tried to make the Episcopal Church change its ways and have interfered in the constituted governing authority of the church are addressed here as “brothers and sisters” (there are no sister Primates, by the way). The communiqué denies it is resting its message on legalities, asserting instead that it speaks out of loving concern for relationship in Christ.
That may well reflect the feelings of those who drafted the communiqué. I can’t claim to know their hearts. They are certainly good people. But the unintended effect of the language used is to suggest insincerity and even deceit. It is a speaking in tongues. If I were on the other side of this issue, I would respond: Bullshit.
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14, makes a distinction that is perhaps helpful here between prophesy and speaking in tongues. (I thought it appropriate to bring in scripture since the communiqué itself begins with scripture, although a strange passage, in my opinion, for those seeking reconciliation.) The Council’s communiqué speaks in tongues, abusing the language of theology in the service of politics. The Episcopal Church is behaving prophetically in its stance on gays and women but politically in its dealings with the Anglican Communion. Paul says this:
“. . .those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church.”
The subject of this communiqué is not a mystery in the Spirit but an effort to placate members of the Communion who do not accept the stance of the American Church. It is a stall. It is in effect a lie. The Church is saying, "Well, we can’t do what you want because it isn’t the way we do things, and anyway, the point here is that we’re in relationship and we have to do something vague in Christ that allows us all to keep on as we are." Or something like that.
When we speak in tongues we mislead, intentionally or unintentionally, or as Paul says, build ourselves up. Corporate Speak is also like this. Political candidates always speak in tongues. So, increasingly, does the church. Unity bought at the price of deception and accommodation is no unity at all.
Some years ago when I was working in a parish in Manhattan I saw the implications of pandering to the toxic people among us. The few destroyed the work of many because we did not confront them directly. Everyone in every organization has seen the same thing. Toxicity spreads. In relationships, when your spouse continues to drink and beat the kids, you separate from him or her to protect yourself and your children. If a member of the church continues to accommodate those who abuse blacks or women or gays, while asseting a loving relationship to all, it is behaving hypocritically and in fact enabling discrimination.
In a true instead of rhetorical loving relationship, the Episcopal Church would not be worried about what to do if the family throws it out. It would be leaving.
And it would assert what it believes and why the current situation is intolerable in clear and forthright, even loving, language. The present communiqué is not a statement of love. It is a statement of aggression and deceit. Don’t believe it. The real subject is political power—something the new Presiding Bishop has claimed to abhor—and self-protection. The subject is money and property and power. It always is, even in the church.
That is not prophesy, no matter what prophetic work the Church does behind the veil of its snake-oil language.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Planet Portland
We all have heard, I imagine, that after death the second most stressful life event is moving (my guess is that the stress of death is that felt by the survivors). Divorce comes third, job loss next. Connie and I are still blissfully married; no comment about jobs.
Moving to Portland has been an almost unalloyed pleasure. Looking out the window I see the varigated greens of a park; below our (small) terrace along Jefferson the trees obliterate the road. Beyond, Mt. Hood goes through its daily changes: a silhouette in the morning, a floating snowcap at noon, fading at dusk, and then fully revealed against dark clouds. It is like Mt. Fuji in so many ways, coming and going. Far to the north this morning I saw the outline of Mt. Adams. Both Adams and Hood are inactive volcanoes; somewhere out there is Mt. St. Helens, visible from the western hills on a very clear day.
A crow alights on the top and thinnest twig of a swaying conifer (not sure yet what kind) at eye level with my terrace. The twig is an improbable landing site. His broad wings extended balance him, his body adjusts, teeters, head still. Then the wings tilt. He settles, stops moving. The wings fold as carefully as origami. He looks around, satisfied with his perch, with the world.
We are like that, satisfied with our perch. Sunday morning, reading the New York Times, we could see twenty blocks down 3rd Avenue toward the Pearl District, which is where the art galleries mostly are--Portland's Greenwich Village--and not a single car was moving. Not one. We are located in the middle of downtown next to the federal building, across from the Wells Fargo Tower, and the nights are so quiet we wake to see if the city is still out there.
The first three days were hot and sunny, not typical but welcome. This morning was rainy, heavy clouds moving in from the Pacific. (The ocean is to the west, remember that.) The dramatic sky is always performing: right now there are heavy white cotton clouds above an eastward tending layer of gray, bordering a west-side wedgewood blue. To the south rain-laden dark gray hovers over Oregon State Health University's elevated tramway. But no rain at the moment. Here, there are people who don't believe in umbrellas. They walk out in the rain and the notrain.
Sunday evening we walked down to the Willamette River (rhymes with DamnIt), bought some sorbet, and sat on a bench overlooking the marina. Because this is Rose Festival Week here (the one hundredth anniversary no less) there is a lot of merriment, high-school girls hoping to be elected queen standing around in evening gowns. Two square-riggers are maneuvering into battle positions before us and begin to fire blanks, the explosions echoing along the city as the night before fireworks announced the beginning of the week's celebrations. On the river is a carnival with rides and music. Walkers and cyclists mosey around, making way for one another. We stop in astonishment at a slingshot ride that catapaults two people strapped into a kind of carnival loveseat straight up into the sky at least a hundred feet, maybe more. They crash earthward on bungy cords and are again flung up into Sunday's clear blue and for a moment it appears they will keep going, set free.
We are terrified by the daring of it.
But it's also how we feel this week. Slingshot into space, landing on this other planet: the holodeck of the Enterprise? Exhilerated by the daring of it.
More about Planet Portland to come as we explore the wonders of this distant colony in a galaxy far away.
Moving to Portland has been an almost unalloyed pleasure. Looking out the window I see the varigated greens of a park; below our (small) terrace along Jefferson the trees obliterate the road. Beyond, Mt. Hood goes through its daily changes: a silhouette in the morning, a floating snowcap at noon, fading at dusk, and then fully revealed against dark clouds. It is like Mt. Fuji in so many ways, coming and going. Far to the north this morning I saw the outline of Mt. Adams. Both Adams and Hood are inactive volcanoes; somewhere out there is Mt. St. Helens, visible from the western hills on a very clear day.
A crow alights on the top and thinnest twig of a swaying conifer (not sure yet what kind) at eye level with my terrace. The twig is an improbable landing site. His broad wings extended balance him, his body adjusts, teeters, head still. Then the wings tilt. He settles, stops moving. The wings fold as carefully as origami. He looks around, satisfied with his perch, with the world.
We are like that, satisfied with our perch. Sunday morning, reading the New York Times, we could see twenty blocks down 3rd Avenue toward the Pearl District, which is where the art galleries mostly are--Portland's Greenwich Village--and not a single car was moving. Not one. We are located in the middle of downtown next to the federal building, across from the Wells Fargo Tower, and the nights are so quiet we wake to see if the city is still out there.
The first three days were hot and sunny, not typical but welcome. This morning was rainy, heavy clouds moving in from the Pacific. (The ocean is to the west, remember that.) The dramatic sky is always performing: right now there are heavy white cotton clouds above an eastward tending layer of gray, bordering a west-side wedgewood blue. To the south rain-laden dark gray hovers over Oregon State Health University's elevated tramway. But no rain at the moment. Here, there are people who don't believe in umbrellas. They walk out in the rain and the notrain.
Sunday evening we walked down to the Willamette River (rhymes with DamnIt), bought some sorbet, and sat on a bench overlooking the marina. Because this is Rose Festival Week here (the one hundredth anniversary no less) there is a lot of merriment, high-school girls hoping to be elected queen standing around in evening gowns. Two square-riggers are maneuvering into battle positions before us and begin to fire blanks, the explosions echoing along the city as the night before fireworks announced the beginning of the week's celebrations. On the river is a carnival with rides and music. Walkers and cyclists mosey around, making way for one another. We stop in astonishment at a slingshot ride that catapaults two people strapped into a kind of carnival loveseat straight up into the sky at least a hundred feet, maybe more. They crash earthward on bungy cords and are again flung up into Sunday's clear blue and for a moment it appears they will keep going, set free.
We are terrified by the daring of it.
But it's also how we feel this week. Slingshot into space, landing on this other planet: the holodeck of the Enterprise? Exhilerated by the daring of it.
More about Planet Portland to come as we explore the wonders of this distant colony in a galaxy far away.
Friday, May 25, 2007
I'm Not Invited Either
I know I'm moving and not supposed to be doing another post for a couple of weeks (don't tell Connie) but the recent news about Gene Robinson's being excluded from Lambeth next year requires some comment (and I'm far from being the first).
Let's see: a gay bishop equals an illegally consecrated bishop equals (maybe) an archbishop associated with human rights violations equals.....
This grouping of the excluded simply supports what I've said before: we are seeing the church associate itself with the criminalization of gay identity. That's the slippery slope.
The Presiding Bishop has been speaking out on all the right issues, in my opinion: the war, immigration, etc. I am delighted that she is going public on social justice matters that we care about. But her initial response to Williams--let's not get excited--is simply institutional cowardice.
When you are in a bad marriage--TEC and the Anglican Communion, for example--and you have had counseling and have promised to do better and STILL are unfaithful to one another, continue to violate commitments, it is time for a separation. This latest outrage, even if in the end it gets worked out (ok for Gene to come as something else--maybe a goat?), is something KJS and the church needs to reject. Either Gene goes as himself or none of us goes.
Ok, I haven't been invited either, but that's because I'm a deacon. We never get invited to go anywhere. Well, except to leave town. Westward, ho!
Let's see: a gay bishop equals an illegally consecrated bishop equals (maybe) an archbishop associated with human rights violations equals.....
This grouping of the excluded simply supports what I've said before: we are seeing the church associate itself with the criminalization of gay identity. That's the slippery slope.
The Presiding Bishop has been speaking out on all the right issues, in my opinion: the war, immigration, etc. I am delighted that she is going public on social justice matters that we care about. But her initial response to Williams--let's not get excited--is simply institutional cowardice.
When you are in a bad marriage--TEC and the Anglican Communion, for example--and you have had counseling and have promised to do better and STILL are unfaithful to one another, continue to violate commitments, it is time for a separation. This latest outrage, even if in the end it gets worked out (ok for Gene to come as something else--maybe a goat?), is something KJS and the church needs to reject. Either Gene goes as himself or none of us goes.
Ok, I haven't been invited either, but that's because I'm a deacon. We never get invited to go anywhere. Well, except to leave town. Westward, ho!
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