They're Here! (This time good ones...)

I wrote a week or so ago about the 'Open CT' demonstrators.

For the last few days a small number of folks have been on Main Street with "Black Lives Matter" signs. Just a few--and all white.

Cheshire is the whitest place I've ever lived, but today a large crowd was out to protest the racism in our country.

It gladdens my heart.

They rallied on the Green and than walked, with police closing side streets for them, to the park across from the high school.

Again, almost all white.

That's the thing about this world wide demonstration--it is truly 'integrated'.

There have been demonstrations on every continent--the ones from Japan are very moving and very peaceful.

Almost all peaceful.

Please cable news, stop showing violence! Peaceful is truly soothing and interesting.

A 'Black Lives Matter' demonstration in oh-so-white Cheshire....

It gives me hope. It gives me hope.

Trinity Sunday

Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday. Luckily for me, Bryan is preaching on 'virtual church' tomorrow. I greatly dislike preaching on the trinity. But I'm sending you a sermon I did preach 16 years ago when my assistant and seminarian were both away on Trinity Sunday. I hope it explains my discomfort with the Trinity.

TRINITY SUNDAY 2004

          Today is my greatest nightmare as a preacher: the dreaded and despised Trinity Sunday.

          It is little wonder that both Malinda Johnson and Michael Spencer both found compelling reasons to be out of town this Sunday! They knew, given any option, I wouldn’t preach today….

          People sometimes ask me why I always complain about preaching on Trinity Sunday. Three reasons:

          *First of all it’s a doctrine. This is the only Christian Holy Day that celebrates a “doctrine”—not much of a story there….and it’s hard to tell a story about. Since I think preaching is about 90% story telling, the Trinity presents a problem.

          *Secondly, just about everything that “can be said” about the Trinity “has been said”. Not much new ground to cover about 3 in One and One in 3. Not a lot of room to maneuver. Better to just sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” and let it go at that.

          *But finally, I think what we’ve done, as Christians, with the doctrine of the Trinity, is that we have limited and constricted our opportunity to “know and be known by God”. The Church has used the Trinity to narrow the possibilities to discover God and be discovered by God.

          I’m really quite exhausted at tilting with the Trinity. I don’t make any friends, usually, by criticizing such a basic Christian doctrine. In fact, by taking on the Trinity and trying to open it up so it “includes” rather than “excludes” our experiences of God, by doing that I tend to alienate and confuse rather than enlighten. And there’s always the danger that someone who hears me whine and complain about how limiting and narrow the Trinity has made the church will call the Doctrine Police or the Bishop and turn me in for trashing the Trinity.

          And I really don’t need to deal with the inquisition of bishops about my doctrinal purity….

          So, how about this: I’ll stop now if you’ll tell everyone that I really did preach about the Trinity today and it wasn’t half bad….How about that?

          Ah, a good idea, but in the end it won’t work. After all, I get paid to talk about this stuff and you—well, actually, you pay to listen to me talk about this stuff.

          Boy, that’s a weird way to think about preaching, isn’t it?

          Ok, I’m going to take one swipe at it. Here goes….

          Things Happen and then we talk about what happened. The confusion arises because “what we SAY about WHAT HAPPENED” becomes all entangled with WHAT HAPPENED so that we can’t distinguish between what WE SAID and WHAT HAPPENED any more.

          Here’s the only example I’m going to give you: two people have a disagreement (that’s What Happens) and then they both go off and “say things” about the disagreement.

          Two people: parent/child; husband/wife; brother/sister; two friends; two enemies; two strangers—pick which works for you or make up another one that works better—so two people have a disagreement. (What they disagree about doesn’t matter: politics, abortion, the war in Iraq, religion, what color to paint the living room, what to have for dinner, where to go on vacation, whose turn it is to take out the garbage, Red Sox/Yankees…pick a disagreement that is alive in your life.)

          All that “happens” is that two people disagree. That’s all that happens.

          But one of them says, “if you don’t respect my opinion, you don’t respect me.”

          The other one says, “if you don’t agree with me, you don’t love me.”

          So, suddenly, whether to have chicken or fish has become an issue of “respect” and “love” and a disagreement about what to have for dinner has become a struggle about the meaning of life. It’s like the War about the Position of the Toilet Seat. It’s the reason public bathrooms are gender specific. Otherwise men and women would be murdering each other in airports and restaurants over the toilet seat. Whether you leave the toilet seat up or down becomes an issue about respect or love.

          Listen: it’s just a toilet seat….

          Hold the “chicken or fish” disagreement and the Toilet Seat War in your mind for a moment.

          SOMETHING HAPPENED. People experienced God. People knew and were known by God. People encountered the Holy and discovered the Eternal.

          Then, some of those people, known as Christians, started talking about WHAT HAPPENED and where the conversation led was that they “named” WHAT HAPPENED when they experienced God. The names they came up with were FATHER, SON and HOLY SPIRIT.

          Do you see that the Trinity, as a Doctrine, is something Christians have “said” about experiencing God?

          God didn’t make the Trinity up—the Church did. God just shows up to be known and to know us. God just shows up to be discovered and experienced and encountered and unconcealed. God just shows up. And then we SAY THINGS about what we discovered and experienced and encountered and unconcealed and took a vote and said: “Let’s call What Happened there Father, son and holy spirit.”

          Now, the problem becomes that how we “named” experiencing God—what we “said about” the experience of God for Christians—limits and narrows how we “experience God” in the future.

          If your “experience of God” doesn’t neatly fit into FATHER/SON/HOLY SPIRIT…well, well then, that must not be God you’re experiencing, fellow.

          The church has a habit of “getting in the way of God”.

          Some of the most holy and spiritual people I know never darken the door of a church. And when I can engage them in conversation, they tell me that the church keeps getting in the way of their experience of God.

          The Church is all about control and order and crowd management and drawing lines and boundaries to decide “who’s in” and “who’s out”. God is all about freedom and chaos and messiness and drawing circles so eternally large that everyone is included.

          I believe the church has to get out of the “Being In The Way of God” business and get into the “Opening The Path to God” business.

          If the doctrine of the Trinity works for you, that’s Great. Really, I mean it. I’m not messing with what “works” for you in knowing and being known by God.

          What I want to do is open the doors and windows and knocking down the walls so that we—as the church—can welcome home Dangerous Mystics and Spiritual Rebels.

          That’s the business the church should be in: creating Dangerous Mystics and Spiritual Rebels.

          The business the church should be in is the business of “letting God be God” and not limiting how God can show up and be discovered and experienced and encountered.

          GOD HELP US—and I mean that quite literally—if we don’t commit ourselves to “getting out of God’s way”. That’s the Church’s real job—and our only job—getting out of God’s way. So call the bishop if you must. Tell him he’ll find me somewhere trying to stay out of God’s way….

After Life

I just watched the 4th episode of After Life, a comedy (of sorts) written, directed by and staring Rickie Gervais.

His wife has died and he is considering suicide (not funny so far--but it is). He works for a small newspaper in England and has, as he tells a co-worker in this episode, never tried to 'move up' because all he wanted to do was get home and be with his wife.

It's on Netflix, if you have that, and is really warm and tender and, in it's own way, funny.

Rickie Gervais is one of the wonders of our time. You can find him all over you tube too.

Well worth finding and watching.

(See, I got through a whole post without being political!!! But it was hard.)

Birds, birds everywhere

I heard part of an NPR story about Black bird watchers today. They all said there were more birds and more different birds than they remember.

While we stay 'at home',  Nature flourishes.

Maybe the planet would be better off without us--or, at least, with much fewer of us.

The pandemic and our reactions to it has been good for birds, for all nature, really.

We have more birds in our back yard than ever before. Cardinals, Robins, Wrens, Crows, Sparrows, even a few Hawks, and birds I don't recognize.

It is a symphony of birdsong.

I love it.

I sit on our deck and listen and watch.

Birds, the last of the dinosaurs, are wondrous, beautiful, much welcomed in the so-strange time we are in.

Go outside, enjoy them.

Give thanks for them.

Sing with them.

Welcome them to make our lives more lovely, more calm, more wondrous.

The devil is beating his wife

Back home in southern WV when it rained while the sun was shining, people said, "The devil is beating his wife!"

It did that today, rain and sunshine, so I googled the phase. Here's the result.

(I copied the stuff below before I started typing. That's why my font is so large and I can only do caps!!!)

 

 

the devil is beating his wife

the devil is beating his wife
also known as sunshower or sun shower

Meaning | Synonyms

• raining whereas the sun is shining
• when the sun is shining yet it's raining
• when raining but the sun is shining at the same time

Example Sentences

1. Today, the devil is beating his wife in our city - it's raining cats and dog and sun is also shining.
2. Yesterday, I saw a very rare event which is called - the devil is beating his wife.
3. In people Southern United States of America usually comes across a weird natural phenomenon known as the devil is beating his wife.
4. Everybody laughed, when a kid asked her mom, "Mamma, I want to see how the devil is beating his wife".

Origin

Several cultures now ascribed this phenomenon to folkloric tales featuring clever animals or tricksters being related or getting married to the devil. For instance, in the Southern United States and Hungary, when they experience a sun shower, they say "the devil is beating his wife with a walking stick", while the French would say "the devil is beating his wife and marrying his daughter."

The illustration of the idiomatic phrase can be explained as that of the devil spitting the fire of hell (the sun rays) and his wife's tears (the rain).

Source: theidioms.com

Proud to be an Episcopalian

Our yard and all of Cheshire is blooming like nothing I remember. Nature is thriving as we humans are struggling with pandemic and much needed protests.

I'm going to try to copy a letter from the bishops of New England to show what gives me pride about my church.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 

New England Episcopal bishops respond with one voice to President’s “cynical” photo-op by calling out “the abomination of continued oppression of and violence against people of color in this nation”

 

What President Trump did in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square on the evening of June 1 was disgraceful and morally repugnant.  Displaying a Bible from which he did not quote, using as a mere backdrop an Episcopal church where he did not pray, and – more callously – ordering law enforcement to clear, with force and tear gas, a path through demonstrators who had gathered in peace, President Trump distorted for his own purposes the cherished symbols of our faith to condone and stoke yet more violence.

 

His tactic was obvious.  Simply by holding aloft an unopened Bible he presumed to claim Christian endorsement and imply that of The Episcopal Church.  Far more disturbingly, he seemed to be affecting the authority of the God and Savior we worship and serve, in order to support his own authority and to wield enhanced use of military force in a perverted attempt to restore peace to our nation.

 

His actions did nothing to mend the torn social fabric of our nation. Instead, they were a blatant attempt to drive a wedge between the people of this nation, and even between people of faith.  No matter where we may stand on the partisan spectrum, we, as Christian leaders called to proclaim a God of love, find his actions repugnant.  Jesus taught us to love our enemies, to seek healing over division, and make peace in the midst of violence.

 

Our church may rightly feel outraged and insulted by having the symbols of our faith used as a set prop in a cynical political drama.  The real abomination before us, however, is the continued oppression of and violence against people of color in this nation.  Let us reserve and focus the energies of our indignation to serve our Lord Jesus Christ’s higher purpose: to extend love and mercy and justice for all, and especially for those whose life, liberty, and very humanity is threatened by the persistent sin of systemic racism and the contagion of white supremacy.

 

The Rt. Rev. Laura J. Ahrens, Bishop Suffragan, Connecticut

The Rt. Rev. Ian T. Douglas, Bishop Diocesan, Connecticut

The Rt. Rev. Thomas James Brown, Bishop Diocesan, Maine

The Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates, Bishop Diocesan, Massachusetts

The Rt. Rev. Gayle E. Harris, Bishop Suffragan, Massachusetts

The Rt. Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld, Bishop Diocesan, New Hampshire

The Rt. Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely, Bishop Diocesan, Rhode Island

The Rt. Rev. Shannon MacVean-Brown, Bishop Diocesan, Vermont

The Rt. Rev. Douglas J. Fisher, Bishop Diocesan, Western Massachusetts

 

 

Be well and stay well my blog readers.

Pain on top of pain

On top of this virus that has so damaged our nation came the murder of George Floyd on video by a policeman in Minneapolis. This pain on top of pain.

And our 'president' (I won't capitalize it any more, or name him) called the governors who handled the virus when he didn't and called them 'weak' for not arresting and punishing more people who were protesting Floyd's murder.

Most protests have been peaceful. If you've seen them on TV and on line, you will see that the protestors are inter-racial, in some cases as many whites as blacks. And in many you see police taking a knee to communicate that they support the protests!

The thing that troubles me is that these massive demonstrations may, in fact, help the virus spread.

Pain on top of pain on top of pain.

Racism and inequality must come to an end, at long last. If there can be a blessing for our nation and our people to come out of this time of pandemic--that would be a huge one.

I grew up in a county that was 50/50 black and white. But I never went to school with a black student until my Senior year of high school when the black high school sent over 3 male athletes and 2 female A students to begin the consolidation that took place the year I went to college.

I knew very few black people growing up. McDowell County, WV was as segregated as the deep south. But a woman who was my uncle's cook and housekeeper and her husband who worked in my uncle's store, were dear to me. I worked in my uncle's grocery after school and during the summers with Gene and he was a gentle, funny and a tad outrageous. His wife--we lived next door to my uncle--treated me with kindness and good humor.

But they were the only two I knew well though half the people around me were black.

In college, I became friends with a student who had gone to the black high school in the town where I went to the white high school. He would introduce me to his friends as 'Jim, we went to different high schools together'.

I should have grown up surrounded by black friends. But I didn't.

That kind of separation should have ended decades ago.

It didn't and it hasn't yet.

It must end as this virus ends.

It is the only way forward for 'all of us' in the future.

No more George Floyd's should be our battle cry.

But for that to have a chance, this president must be defeated in November. Only that will enable, at long last, some moves toward racial unity.

I believe that with all my heart. And pray for it with all my soul.

Join me in that belief and that prayer.

Please.