Am I that out of line?

In my sermon on Sunday, I apologized to the congregation and to David, who was being baptized for the Collect of the Day. ('Collect' is Episcopal-speak for a prayer....also, the entryway to the church is the 'narthex' and the basement is the 'undercroft'--go figure Anglicans!)

Here it is: the collect for the Sunday closest to July 20...

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking; Have compassion on our weakness and mercifully give us those things  which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

OK, in one prayer (sorry, 'collect') we are calling ourselves "ignorant, weak, unworthy and blind". And we prayed that prayer on a day when David IV (and the other three were all there!) was being 'marked as Christ's own forever' and declared both a child of God and a member of Christ's Body.

It is times like that which cause me to think Christianity is schizophrenic! On a day we declare David and ourselves "marked as Christ's own" and, indeed, Christ's Body in this world we decide that we are, as Marcus Aurelius (not a Christian, a Stoic) said: 'a bag of bones and foul smell'.

Ignorant, weak, unworthy and blind are hardly attributes of "Christ's Body in this world". And certainly far, far, far short of the Bible's assertion that we are created 'in the image and likeness of God'.

So, which will it be? God's beloved or pond scum? The Body of Christ or miserable, nasty, sinful, awful creatures?

So I told the group I go to on Tuesday mornings about my apology and read them the collect to prove my point. They'd all heard it since 3 of them were priests and the 4th is an every-Sunday worshiper.

And to my utter dismay, none of them were offended at all by the collect. They even seemed to agree with it. I became so irrational that I really could do very little except sputter in exasperation and utter four-letter words....

I just assumed they, like me, thought of human beings (much less Christians) as beloved 'children of God'. Can I be that out of line? I'm not stupid. I can't miss the incredible evil of the world. But I simply assume that 'evil' is a perversion of who we really are.

I have known for some decades that my heresy of choice is Pelagionism. Pelagious was British but taught his theology in Rome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. What he taught was rather simple (if condemned by 5 or 6 church councils and St. Augustine!). It went like this: human beings were born with the same free will and moral choices as Adam before the Fall. Humans could choose to do 'the right thing' without Divine intervention. The concept of 'original sin' was rejected by Pelagious.

I reject it too. I told David IV's parents that God loved David IV as much before he was baptized and God would love him after  he was baptized. We are not 'born sinful' in my theology.

(By the way: since you're going to be a heretic anyway, CHOOSE your heresy carefully. I start my classes in Gnostic Christianity at UConn by saying, "How many of you are heretics?" Only a brave soul or two might giggle and raise their hands. Then I ask, "How many of you believe in the Immortality of the Soul?" Every time either all or almost all raise their hands. "So," I tell them, "read the Nicene Creed. We believe in the 'resurrection of the body', not 'the immortality of the soul'. You're all heretics!")

More and more these days, I find that I'm outside the 'orthodox' box. I've never much wanted to be 'inside' it, but I'm often struck by how 'out of line' I am.

I still think that's a terrible Collect!

Some of the Episcopal Church's collects are wonderful in their wisdom and guidance. My favorite is the Collect for Good Friday. Listen: Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.....

Now that's something to hang your Pelagion hat on: we are God's 'family' and Jesus was willing to die for us.  That's the humanity I'm a part of. Part of the Family. Worth dying for. Know what I mean?

Am I that out of line?

 

Pokemon...NO!!!

Ok, I'll be honest, I scarcely know what Pokemon is. I didn't get it first time around and I don't get it now.

But from all I can hear or see or learn about 'Pokemon Go' it is like a mind-altering drug.

So, it's an 'augmented reality' game, whatever that is?--played on a smart phone (which I don't own) by downloading an apt (or is it ap?--I don't do it so I don't know). You walk around and see what is right in front of you on your phone (which you could see for real if you put down your phone!) and these Pokemon characters appear in the 'reality' on you're smart phone. (If anything on a phone can be called, accurately, 'reality'.) Then you, what? Capture or kill them? I'm not sure.

So, your 'reality'--which isn't really 'real' if it's on your phone--is 'augmented' by this game I don't understand nor care to.

People are walking into traffic, falling off cliffs, bumping into people (with or without smart phones) and generally spending literally hours doing whatever it is you are doing in Pokemon Go.

Several universities have opened their football fields to make sure students playing Pokemon Go are safe. The Holocaust Museum had to post a sign forbidding people from doing Pokemon Go in the museum! On the other hand, Westboro Baptist Church, which has anti-gay protests are funerals for soldiers killed in duty (since LGBTQ folks are what cause God to make wars!) is an official 'Pokestop'--a place where you can get "Pokeballs" to capture the Pokemon and 'eggs' which grow into Pokemon. None of the Pokemon (which is a plural noun if you didn't get than already) must be gay since 'God hates fags', according to WBC.

People have apparently made 'Pokestops' in places without getting permission. One family I saw on line had dozens of people a day knocking on their door because their house was a Pokestop and the strangers wanted Pokeballs and eggs. Pretty annoying, I'd say. Also, playing Pokemon Go apparently eats up your power and may even cost you lots of money because of the data it uses (whatever that means--no smart phone, no charge for data!)

Four or five of the jokes on "Wait, Wait, Don't tell me" this week were about Pokemon Go. So, if the game has the attention of Public Radio it must be a phenomena since Public Radio is still trying to understand baseball as a cultural event.

I will never play it and promise not to write about it again. But since it's interfering with my Public Radio addiction, I had to mention it today.

The final segment of Wait/Wait asked the three panelists to predict what the next 'ap phenomena' (or 'apt' or whatever) might be. Jessie, a comedian, said "Pokemon NO...it doesn't do anything but it does blow up your phone."

Well put, Jessie.

In this night

The moon is almost full
but the clouds make it only
an image through gauze.

There is a concert
at the park
across from the high school,
but I can only hear echoes,
not the words,
only the rhythm.

There is a spider
who keeps building
a web that touches
our porch post
and banister
and a wind chime
of wolves
that my daughter
gave me years ago.

There are little moths
I call 'millers'
(from my childhood, surely)
who bat against the light
on our back porch
and, from time to time,
rush my face
as I sit smoking.

And there are the crickets
in my head
that are called tinnitus
and are always there
on the back porch
or wherever I am.

The clouds will move
and the moon will shine
and the clouds will move
and the moon will shine.

The concert will end
whether I hear it end
or not.

And because the spider
is so unwise
the web will break
if not by morning
some time tomorrow.

The little moths, most of them,
live only a few days
and won't bump against
the light on the porch
beyond Monday.

The crickets in my head continue.
But when I come to die
we will say goodbye
and part forever.

Like this night
nothing endures.
Change is the reality.
Permanence is a myth.
Like the sea,
all roll on.

Day will come, surely,
to end this night.

And then, night again.

Rhythm is what goes on.
And on and on and on....

7/16/16

Thunder

This afternoon about 5:30 it got really dark and we had a brief thunderstorm.

There's not a lot I like better than a thunderstorm unless it's a thunder storm at the beach.

I sat out on the porch today and watched the whole thing. The lightening was above the clouds and back lit them. It was great. Though greater still is the lightening way out on the ocean.

We'll be on the beach in September--a good time for thunderstorms. Downside: once we had to leave early because of a hurricane.

Don't like hurricanes. Like thunder and lightening a lot.

I'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow and took the yukky stuff right after the thunder storm so I'm having my own internal thunder storm right now.

Which means, I need to end this now....

As if I needed proof...

I know it in the first two steps I take when I get out of the car.

I know it when I look in the mirror.

I know when I look at my calendar and see the number of Dr.'s appointments this month.

I know from how vein-y my ankles are.

I know when I pick up something over 20 pounds.

I know when I look at my hands.

I know because my driver's license tells me so.

I know because I hold the handrail when I go up steps.

Then today I got three pieces of mail and they were all from AARP.

A fine organization but I don't need that much mail from them to realize I'm old!

Perfect Day

To be this far into July and have such a perfect day is amazing. I didn't check the temperature, but it wasn't hot and almost no humidity. A great day to sit on the deck and read.

But it wasn't a perfect day in Dallas, where a Memorial Service was held for the victims of the hate crime against cops today.

Obama's speech made me so proud that he is my president. Oh, he got social media hatred for daring to mention gun control at a service for 5 men murdered with a gun.

But then for lots of folks out there whatever Obama mentions whenever he mentions it is cause for hating him. If he mentions God, Motherhood and Apple Pie someone will tweet: "Obama never mentions Jesus, demeans mothers and has no appreciation of Blueberry Pie."

I think the racial tensions in our culture are lived out in people's spitefulness toward Obama's blackness. And the great irony is that the people who capital H-A-T-E him would claim it has nothing to do with his race, not in the least bit.

Until we are all able to look honestly at our own racial bias--and we all have them, we do--how can we deal honestly with the scourge of racial bias in the larger society?

Obama's grace and character and even nobility in the face of the irrational hatred directed toward him has been a source of hope and pride for me.

He is a good man. A good, good man--he deserves better.

Bern said she cried during his speech. And she's a tough lady who doesn't waste tears or suffer fools.

PRIVILEGE

Privilege is what I have.

I am not wealthy, but I have an income from my part time job, my SS and Bern's, and the Church Pension Fund that has been in 6 figures the last 6 years--it never was before that, by the way. So, I have all the money I need. And with the Pension Fund's health insurance beyond Medicare, we hardly ever have a medical or dental bill more than $16.

I am also white, male, heterosexual and Protestant.

Newt Gingrich, of all people said it today: "Most average white people have no idea what it's like to be Black."

No kidding.

Back in the Viet Nam years, with my hair much longer than now, I got some 'looks' from police officers--but they never looked at me the way some police look at young Black men...like a threat, like a danger, like someone to fear.

There was a photo on line today from somewhere--Memphis? maybe--at a Black Lives Matter demonstration. A 28 year old black woman in a long dress is standing absolutely still as two police officers in riot gear rush toward her.

It reminded me of the photo of the single demonstrator staring down a tank in Tinneman Square in China and the photo of of a Viet Nam demonstrator, a young woman, putting a daisy in the barrel of a National Guard soldier's rifle and of so many of the photos from the civil rights movement when peaceful people stood still in the face of armed police and police dogs.

I served an historically black church in Charleston, West Virginia and two deeply integrated churches in Connecticut cities. And Newt was right (about this if little else!) I don't have any idea what it's like to be black.

And I have never needed to know.

That is 'privilege' that the growing number of people of color in my nation don't have.

I sometimes notice, when my granddaughters and son and daughter in law are walking in Baltimore with Bern and me, that white people do a double take at Cathy because she's Asian and the rest of us look white (though the grand-daughters are mixed-race). But it's not a double take with much more than curiosity. If she were Black or Hispanic or Muslim with a head scarf, I'm not sure what the double take would be about.)

No white person has ever done a double take at me. Except maybe for my hair. But it is usually amusement that I haven't advanced from the 60's.

I live in a town so safe that we never lock the doors or our cars. Many people of color and poor white people couldn't imagine that--just like I can't imagine being them.

The thing is, now that I ponder it, people without 'privilege' probably can't imagine being 'privileged' any more than I can imagine being them.

So here we are in the only country I'd want to live in (except maybe New Zealand) and we can't imagine what it's like to be on the other side of the divide between privilege and "not".

My privilege gives me guilt. And I have mixed with 'the other' most of my life.

Somehow, someway, we have to bridge this gap, this divide.

I promise to try to work on that--though I have no idea how to do it. And I hope you will ponder doing the same.

We can't live in such a divided society. We must do something to enable the diversity of our nation make us strong and united rather than divide us. We must do something about the distribution of wealth that drives much of the divide. We must find ways to come to identify with 'the other' so that we can be 'one'.

I long to know--really 'know'--my brothers and sisters who are not like me.

I pray for the wisdom to somehow, someway do that.

My 'privilege' is a weight on my back. I long for it to be my ballast in the rough seas of life.