Beth Johnson, reliable guide

Many of you have doubtless heard about the brouhaha about Elizabeth Johnson, Distinguished Professor of Theology at Fordham University, whose book Quest for the Living God was criticized, yea even condemned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Doctrine in late March. If you have not heard about the controversy, all the more reason to read the article linked below and links embedded in it.

Prof. Deirdre Good (who blogs at On Not Being a Sausage) and I have written an essay on Prof. Johnson, her theology, and the controversy. The article just came out today (Easter Monday, April 25) at the Episcopal Café. Have a look here (permanent link, will stay up even when article is no longer on the front page) and please feel welcome to leave a comment at the Café below the article.

Bread

Today I made and baked bread for the first time. Bread made with yeast and kneaded by hand. I have of course made all manner of quick breads: corn bread, muffins, that sort of thing. Not real bread, though. I do have a memory of making little loaves in my mother's oven for some kind of school project, and the funny thing is I don't remember yeast or kneading, but I do remember that the bread rose. Maybe my memory is faulty.

I have two roundish loaves cooling on a rack and of course I could not resist cutting into one and tasting it before it was completely cool. It was good.

These are whole wheat loaves, 100% whole wheat. The recipe is the "Plain and Simple" bread from the Cheese Board's book. I don't own loaf pans, and I don't like pan-shaped bread anyway, so I made rounds (one is actually an oval) and I sprayed the loaves, as they say you should to get more of a crust. It worked, but I need an oven thermometer. I think the oven was too hot. I followed the directions religiously because I wanted to make the basic recipe first and then fiddle with it once I had the hang of it, and the directions said 450 degrees for 5 minutes and then 400. Crust nearly burned. Anyway, I am pleased with myself and with the bread, the house smelled a little like France all of a sudden, and kneading really does get out your aggressions.

I still have writer's block, though. My latest Facebook update says "baking bread and battling writer's block." I need to stay off Facebook. Which mostly I do when I am writing. I am working on a book chapter and now that it is late at night and the bread is out it will probably start "cookin'," but I am trying not to stay up too late, so I'll have to go to bed trusting that the words and more importantly, the sentences will appear in the morning.

Some of this, as I mentioned in the last day or so, is undoubtedly related to the way in which my job drains me of my own writing voice and of much of my energy, but there are other causes too. At any rate, analyzing my writing process is not my purpose here and does not belong here.

The wonderful Fran (formerly of FranIAm blog), who is a dear friend and spiritual sister, now has a blog called There Will Be Bread and there she writes with great fluency and beauty, straight from the heart, and with a good mind, too. I on the other hand am rather dry these days. At least, though, there is bread with crust and crumb, right here, tonight.

Holy One of Blessing, your presence fills creation, bringing forth bread from the earth.*


* Contemporary translation, in inclusive language, of the traditional Jewish ha-motzi, the blessing over the bread.

Photos: Jane Redmont

An Open Letter to Anne Rice

My open letter to Anne Rice, an essay on the church, its flaws, and why you can't be a Jesus-person alone in a corner, is up at the Episcopal Café.

Feel free to circulate prn.

Cross-posted on Facebook.

Keep prayin', please

For the wordy request, see here.

Thank you.

Book sale! Get your cool books! ("Cool" rather than "hot:" it's a steamy summer here in the U.S.)

The writing crawls along. Some days are worse than others.

In other news, my paperback publisher has a sale on my book on prayer at deep discount, so buy it! (Let's hope this doesn't mean trouble, just summer sales. Addendum: Nope, no trouble, just some overstock.) It's less than half the usual price! You know you want it. So does your mother. So do your rector, pastor, best friend, father, sister-in-law, lover, parishioner, and spiritual director. Seriously.

I posted this little announcement on Facebook (woe is me, I returned to Facebook, but only for that announcement - true!) yesterday and several people wrote very nice things about the book in response to that update. Those people includes a prison chaplain, an M.D. pathologist, a counselor-in-training, a vocational deacon who works with people who are down and out, and others. Here endeth the shameless self-promotion. Buy the book. Buy ten of 'em.

Meanwhile, over on one side of the house...

Inside the house, Jane continues to write and edit and pace the floor and +Maya sleeps, plays, and pesters Jane for treats, but only when Jane is in the kitchen.

Prayer Posse, this one is for you, with my thanks

My friend Paul the BB is much more faithful than I in posting prayer concerns and requests in his "heart threads" and "Oremus" posts, but I am making bold to join him with a few requests for you intercessors out there.

First there's Kirstin, who is undergoing chemotherapy in an experimental protocol for a nasty recurrence of cancer. She is surrounded by love and very good care and has a strong will to live and live well, but this is one of those cases where the potential cure is very tough on body and soul. Please keep her in your hearts. Pray also (or offer merit or chants -- whatever your tradition is, we welcome it) for her best friend Andee, who has been faithful and compassionate in her attention and care. And for the medical people, of course.

Then there's Joel, beloved spouse of Margaret and informally-adoptive parent of Juan Manuel. Joel has had a bad attack of myasthenia gravis and they almost lost him a few nights ago. He is doing better, "guarded," as they say, and has a host of praying and caring folks in his life, not least of them our Margaret. Please pray for Joel, for Margaret, for Juan Manuel, and of course for the physicians and nurses and other caregivers.

And Fran of Smallbania, dear friend of mine and of many of us both irl ("in real life") and in the blogosphere, has had to forgo a vacation abroad with her spouse and daughter because of a most unpleasant episode in the hospital involving a gall bladder (now gone, bye-bye gall bladder) and several related complications. Fran is at home resting up and improving every day, but she could use some more prayers. She continues to be her thoughtful self and is black to blogging, a sure sign she is on the mend.

Here's a link to the Taizé chant "Bleibet hier" (literally "stay here" and known and sung in English as "Stay with me, remain with me, watch and pray").

Please pray also in happy thanksgiving for Nathan, a young man I've prayed with and mentored a bit, who was baptized yesterday at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Greensboro. Nathan had been baptized as a child but in the tradition of his family, the Jehovah's Witnesses, who do not baptize in the name of the Holy Trinity. So, after becoming quite involved in the Episcopal Church, he asked to be baptized with the ancient Trinitarian formula which is that of most Christian traditions including the Anglican one. Nathan is a member of St. Andrew's but is also involved at St. Mary's House, where he has been co-convening the Centering Prayer and Taizé Prayer with me. (We are on break for July-August but will resume our hour of contemplation -- half Centering Prayer, which is a Christian form of silent meditation, and half Taizé prayer, with chants from the Taizé community, readings, silence and simple prayers -- in the fall semester.) He also helped start a local chapter of Integrity. He is a wonderful young man with much enthusiasm and feels blessed to have found a welcoming and inclusive church with a strong and long historical tradition.


Finally I ask your prayers for me, Jane. I am in hermit mode, chugging to the finish on a very large and long theological project known to the general public as The Big Tome. I have burrowed deeper into solitude and struggle in order to get it done and it is very intense work, even when I am not working consciously. I am well and healthy, I get good nutrition and enough sleep, enjoy the solitude much of the time, and have the wonderful company of Maya Pavlova, Feline Bishop Extraordinaire. She is very good at sleeping, napping, being playful, and keeping me company at the keyboard. She usually sleeps all afternoon but in the evening she tends to be in supervisory mode and hang out here in the study. I have no idea what she does in the morning, since I am keeping odd hours and am asleep much of the a.m. +Maya does come and visit after the alarm clock rings and usually settles on my chest for a while. She is a very civilized cat and does not wake me at 6 a.m. as some other cats are wont to do to their human companions.

I need and welcome your prayers, good vibrations, chants, meditations, and other holy expressions of support. Thank you! Come, Holy Spirit.*

*That's a link to the Taizé chant "Veni lumen" -- "Come, light" in Latin. "Come, Holy Spirit, light of our hearts," etc.

It is beastly hot here in Greensboro as in much of the Eastern part of the U.S. but I do have an air conditioning unit in the study and another in the kitchen/dining room, so I am managing, though the air conditioning is noisy and it is odd to be spending 90 to 95% of my time indoors in the summer. The phlox are blooming outdoors and surviving nicely. The humans, however, are wilting.

Peace to you all, and to all sentient beings.

Pledging Allegiance: a reflection on Christian commitment and community on Independence Day weekend

Ann Fontaine of Episcopal Café fame asked on Facebook what we were planning to do for our churches tomorrow when Sunday falls on July 4.

When I was writing lectionary reflections (meditations to help people who are either preaching or reflecting on the readings assigned for the Sunday in question) a few years back for the late lamented magazine The Witness, I wrote this --and later preached a related sermon-- for the feast of All Saints.  

Though this was an All Saints' Day meditation, it may be apt for July 4 with its "Pledging Allegiance" theme and its reminder of the "Where do we place our security?" question of the 1980s religiously based disarmament movement and the question about who, what, is our primary community. 

Not to take away from love of country (for the record, I get misty-eyed at "America the Beautiful" -- and at "This Land Is Your Land" :-)) and struggle for independence -- just to put patriotism in perspective.

Cross-posted on Facebook

In anticipation of Trinity Sunday

Until a month or two ago I had forgotten that I'd written this piece! This is Year C in the lectionary, not Year A as it was when I wrote the essay highlighted in the previous sentence, but perhaps some of you will find this helpful as you prepare sermons for Trinity Sunday or as you prepare to celebrate the feast.

(Cross-posted on Facebook, but without the icon.) 

Silences, part 2

From Tillie Olsen's Silences (New York: Delacorte Press / Seymour Lawrence, 1978).

In case it is not obvious, italics in black are my words. The words in color are Olsen's.


Literary history and the present are dark with silences: some the silences for years by our acknowledged great; some silences hidden; some the ceasing to publish after one work appears; some the never coming to book form at all.

What is it that happens with the creator, to the creative process, in that time? What are creation's needs for full functioning? Without intention of or pretension to literary scholarship, I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me.

These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot. In the old, the obvious parallels: when the seed strikes stone; the soil will not sustain; the spring is false; the time is drought or blight or infestation; the frost comes premature.

The great in achievement have known such silences --Thomas Hardy, Melville, Rimbaud, Gerard Manley Hopkins. They tell us little as to why or how the creative working atrophied and died in them--if ever it did.

...

Kin to these years-long silences are the hidden silences; work aborted, deferred, denied --hidden by the work which does come to fruition...

Censorship silences. Deletions, omissions, abandonment of the medium (as with Hardy); paralyzing of capacity (as Dreiser's ten-year stasis on Jennie Gerhardt after the storm against Sister Carrie). Publishers' censorship, refusing subject matter or treatment as "not suitable" or "no market for." Self-censorship. Religious, political censorship --sometimes spurring inventiveness--most often (read Dostoyevsky's letter) a wearing attrition.

The extreme of this: those writers physically silenced by governments. Isaac Babel, the year of imprisonment, what took place in him with what wanted to be written? Or in Oscar Wilde, who was not permitted even a pencil until the last month of his imprisonment?

Other silences. The truly memorable poem, story, or book, then the writer ceasing to be published. Was one work all the writers had in them (life too thin for pressure of material, renewal) and the respect for literature too great to repeat themselves? Was it "the knife of the perfectionist attitude in art and life" at their throat? Were the conditions not present for establishing the habits of creativity (a young Colette who lacked a Willy to lock her in her room each day)? or--as instanced over and over--other claims, other responsibilities so writing could not be first? (The writer of a class, sex, color still marginal in literature, and whose coming to written voice at all against complex odds is exhausting achievement.) It is an eloquent commentary that this one-book silence has been true of most black writers; only eleven in the hundred years since 1850 have published novels more than twice. [Olsen backs up her statement with a citation; note that she was speaking in 1962.]

There is a prevalent silence I pass by quickly, the absence of creativity where it once had been; the ceasing to create literature, though the books may keep coming out year after year...

...

Almost unnoted are the foreground silences, before the achievement. [T.O. names writers including George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Isak Dinesen]-- all close to, or in their forties before they became published writers; [more names, including Laura Ingalls Wilder] in their sixties. Their capacities evident early in the "being one on whom nothing is lost;" in other writers' qualities. Not all struggling and anguished... ; some needing the immobilization of long illness or loss, or the sudden lifting of responsibility to make writing necessary, make writing possible; others waiting circumstances and encouragement...

Very close to this last grouping are the silences where the lives never came to writing. Among these, the mute inglorious Millions: those whose waking hours are all struggle for existence; the barely educated; the illiterate; women. Their silences the silence of centuries as to how life was, is, for most of humanity. Traces of their making, of course, in folk song, lullaby, language itself, jokes, maxims, superstitions--but we know nothing of the creators or how it was with them...


Olsen then quotes Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, as one expects. I think of Alice Walker's title essay in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens about the creative gifts of Black women. Olsen also quotes Rebecca Harding Davis, who writes of the illiterate ironworker in Life in the Iron Mills who sculptured great shapes in the slag: "his fierce thirst for beautiy, to know it, to create it, to be something other than he is--a passion of pain."

....

..."Without duties, without almost without external communication," Rilke specifies, "unconfined solitude which takes every day like a life, a spaciousness which puts no limit to vision and in the midst of which infinities surround. "

Unconfined solitude as Joseph Conrad experienced it:
***"For twenty months I wrestled with the Lord for my creation... mind and will and conscience engaged to the full, hour after hour, day after day... a lonely struggle in a great isolation from the world. I suppose I slept and ate the food put before me and talked connectedly on suitable occasions, but I was never aware of the even flow of daily life, made easy and noiseless for me by a silent, watchful, tireless affection."

I'll bet that was a woman. Who was silent and watchful, that is, and made the food, and provided affection.

...

But what if there is not that fullness of time, let alone totality of self? What if the writers, as in some of these silences, must work regularly at something besides their own work--as do nearly all in the arts in the United Sates today.

I know the theory (kin to "starving in the garret makes great art") that it is this very circumstance which feeds creativity. .... But the actuality testifies: substantial creative work demands time, and with rare exceptions only full-time workers have achieved it. Where the claims of creation cannot be primary, the results are atrophy; unfinished work; minor effort and accomplishment; silences. (Desperation which accounts for the mountains of applications to the foundations for grants--undivided time-- in the strange bread-line system we have worked out for our artists.)

Twenty years went by on the writing of Ship of Fools, while Katherine Anne Porter, who needed only two, was "trying to get to that table, to that typewriter, away from my jobs of teaching and trooping this country and of keeping house: "Your subconscious needed that time to grow the layers of pearl," she was told. Perhaps, perhaps, but I doubt it. Subterranean forces can make you wait, but they are very finicky about the kind of waiting it has to be. Before they feed the creator back, they must be fed, passionately fed, what needs to be worked on. "We hold up our desire as one places a magnet over a composite dust from which the particle of iron will suddenly jump up," says Paul Valéry. A receptive waiting, that means, not demands which prevent "an undistracted center of being." And when the response comes, availability to work must be immediate. If not used at once, all may vanish as a dream; worse, future creation be endangered -- for only the removal and development of the material frees the forces for future work. ...

There is a life in which all this is documented: Franz Kafka's. For every one entry from his diaries here, there are fifty others than testify as unbearably to the driven stratagems for time, the work lost (to us), the damage to the creative powers (and the body) of having to deny, interrupt, postpone, put aside, let work die.

... [Excerpts from Kafka's diaries follow. Also comments on Rilke, who neglected and moved away from his wife and child to protect his poetry writing, and on marriage and childbearing and how rare, till recently, most women writers did not marry, or if they did, did not have children. Or if they did, they had household help.]

The power and the need to create, over and beyond reproduction, is native in both women and men. Where the gift among women (and men) have remained mute, or have never attained full capacity, it is because of circumstances, inner or outer, which oppose the needs of creation.

Wholly surrendered and dedicated lives; time as needed for the work; totality of self. But women are traditionally trained to place others' needs first, to feel these needs as their own...; their sphere, their satifaction to be in making it possible for others to use their abilities...

...

...[W]e are in a time of more and more hidden and foreground silences, women and men. Denied full writing life, more may try to "nurse through night" (that part-time, part-self night) "the ethereal spark," but it seems to me there would almost have had to be "flame on flame" first; and time as needed, afterwards; and enough of the self, the capacities, undamaged for the rebeginnings on the frightful task. I would like to believe this for what has not yet been written into literature. But it cannot reconcile for what is lost by unnatural silences.

*******Originally an unwritten talk, spoken from notes at the Radcliffe Institute in 1962, transcribed and edited, and published in this version in Harper's Magazine, October 1965.

Quoted in The Tablet

The Tablet, whose articles you can't read online unless you subscribe, is probably the best Catholic periodical on the planet, or one of the best. It is certainly one of the most respected in the Northern Hemisphere and perhaps beyond. Published in England, weekly, thoughtful, thorough, independent.

Like all periodicals I'm sure they are struggling to stay afloat, so that may be the reason for the Web gatekeeping. Either that or the spammers and trolls.


At any rate, a dear friend wrote me yesterday morning with the news that I had achieved fame: The Tablet quoted me! More precisely, it quoted a passage from When in Doubt, Sing. Even more amazingly, the passage in question was in the good company of the Psalmist, Meister Eckhart, and Thomas Dorsey!

Ad majorem Dei gloriam!

(But good for the ego too during a hard week.)

Oh - it was in last week's issue.

(A new issue is just out with comment and analysis on the latest Catholic/Anglican brouhaha.)


Here are the quotes as they appeared:

The living Spirit [name of the feature / column]

[and an image of a dove which I can't seem to transfer here]

Both perfectionism and self-forgiveness bear a direct relation to our understanding of God. The first step of prayer is telling the truth about who and where we are. It is also, at the same time, learning the truth about who and where God is. We are the ones who tend to place limits on the mercy of God. Prayer involves a capacity to stretch our imagination, to imagine and therefore to begin knowing a God who is not a projection of our own self-condemnation … The idea that prayer is somehow a production (in the economic or in the theatrical sense – both are destructive) will take us away from prayer.

Jane Redmont
When in Doubt, Sing
(Sorin, 2008)


Our steps are
made firm by the Lord,
when he delights in our way;
though we stumble, we
shall not fall headlong,
for the Lord holds us by the hand.

Psalm 37: 23-24


If you have failings, then ask God frequently in prayer if it may not be to his honour and pleasure to take them from you, for you can do nothing without his help. He gives to each according to what is best for them and most suitable. If we are to make new clothes for someone, then we must make them according to their dimensions, and those which fit one will not fit another. We measure everyone to see what fits them. So too God gives everyone the best thing of all according to his knowledge of what is most suitable for them. Indeed, whoever trusts him entirely in this, receives and possesses in the least of things as much as they do in the greatest.

Meister Eckhart: selected writings
(Penguin Classics, 1994)


When the darkness appears and the night draws near,
And the day is past and gone,
At the river I stand,
Guide my feet,
hold my hand;
Take my hand, Precious Lord,
Lead me home.

Thomas Andrew Dorsey
(1899-1993)

Facebook updates

A day at home writing after an intense half-week of teaching.

Thus lots of opportunity to procrastinate (or take comforting breaks, depending on your spin) on Facebook. Posted a lot of updates. They are a bit like haiku, just longer. This may be the day with the most updates since I started Facebooking. (Is that a verb? If not, it will be soon.)

I still dislike Facebook's changes of this summer with the change in the update formula. Silly. But like lemmings, we have all started talking about ourselves in the 3d person. Mostly.

Jane R. Link

Jane R. Today, the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Maya Pavlova, Feline Bishop Extraordinaire, is my supervisor.

Jane R. Sometimes it's good to take some time simply to breathe and observe.Even, or especially, in the midst of urgent concerns, policy discussion, and activism. Link.

I posted these next two to the blog way back; revisited the music to listen and shared them on FB today as I listened.

Jane R. Link.

Jane R. And a live version... J.S. Bach never gets old. All hail to the best of his ancient and recent interpreters. Link.

Jane R. has now hidden from her news feed Vampire Wars, Mafia Wars, FarmVille, Farmtown, Funky Flowers, Pirates, (Lil') Green Patch, 101 Eggs, YoVille, and Pillow Fights. I'll keep hiding these sorts of apps as they keep appearing. I do like reading your personal and news updates, though, all y'all.

Jane R. Thanks to Vince Masi for pointing out this article. And hey, that's my old friend Edward, the Exec. Director whom the article quotes! Link.

Jane R. was attacked by a thorny branch while mowing the lawn and has the scratches to show for it.

Jane R. wants to keep looking at the recently arrived photos of her 6-year-old great-nephew instead of working on the Big Tome... But we do our theology for our children, don't we? If it doesn't make the world better for them, it's not worth the time. Another picture to post above the desk. What a cutie. And I'm not biased or anything.


Jane R. is remembering her beloved friend David, now deceased (brain tumor, summer 2002), who rushed downtown (he worked midtown and lived on the Upper West Side) on September 11, 2001, to see if he could find his nephew, and who miraculously ran into him, alive.

Summer slowdown, but we'll be back. And don't forget, When in Doubt, Sing is good summer reading!

Hallo all --

As you have seen, posts have been few and far between, at least for this chatty blogger. I'm glad +Maya Pavlova has kept you posted and admonished you all to take naps.

I am still several time zones away from home and having a combination of rest and writing, and need a lot of isolation and quiet, hence the lack of blogging. I will return.

Meanwhile, remember that When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life is a good book for summer spiritual reading. And yes, I do travel to give workshops, retreats, quiet days a.k.a. days of recollection, lectures, and other presentations based on the book. Also sermons or homilies and adult (and adolescent) forums. If your congregation or community group cannot afford speaker fees and travel expenses on its own, think "coalition funding" and "ecumenical coalition funding." Get together with several other congregations, parishes, or other groups and split the costs. You can contact me at widsauthor@earthlink.net.


The book is available at the usual online places, directly from the publisher, or at your local independent or chain bookstore. If you are able, support your local independent bookstore! Remember, any bookstore can order any book for you. Have them order five or ten copies of WIDS so they have some around for other folks. Here endeth the publicity announcement.

Blessings to you all. Please keep me in your prayers.

Summer greetings from +Maya Pavlova

Beloved humans and other readers,

Greetings and purrs to you. My Jane, also known as the Canon to the Extraordinary, has asked me to post a little note to you since I am home and she is not.

The Canon has been on the road for nearly two weeks, or rather, she was on the road for a day and settled down for what she thought would be ten days in faraway land where the sun shines, the nights are cool, and the weather is not muggy. She is working on a Big Theological Tome and, I suspect, enjoying herself somehow amid the footnotes. I do not make footnotes, I sleep on Big Tomes and walk on the computer keys, but humans do strange things.

As it turns out, my Jane has prolonged her stay in the faraway land, and she may or may not blog. Sometimes I tune in on feline frequency and hear her groan "must... stay... away... from... intertubes..." Good luck to her. I hope she is remembering her naps. I hear she is eating well. What's this about enjoying fresh fish without me? And why does she like nectarines so much? I just sniff and play soccer when faced with something that looks like a peach or a plum.

I am well. A nice young man cat-sits and I roll over on my back for him and show him my furry tummy, and I keep him company while he reads. I like the hand that feeds me, though I will climb all over my human when she returns. I do remember her. I just enjoy the present.

Never, ever, my beloved, forget to nap. Most of you know this, but my one and only Pastoral Letter so far (there is no need for another) is On the Necessity of Naps. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Or as we say in the feline world, streeeeeeeeetch, yaaaaaaaaaaawwwnnn, puurrrrrrrrrr.

Love,

The Right Reverend and Right Honorable Maya Pavlova, F.B.E.*

* Feline Bishop Extraordinaire

Deenie, at rest at last

Deenie died peacefully yesterday, Saturday June 27, in the afternoon, at her home near Boston.

The hospice had adjusted Deenie's medications and she was not in pain in her last days. She went gently, and as she has wished, in a familiar and comfortable environment. She was just two days short of her 70th birthday.

I have limited internet access but wanted to post this quick note, with thanks to all of you who prayed so generously for Deenie in intercessions that encirced the globe and embraced this noble spirit, friend, worker for justice, intellectual, and loving human being.

All is well here. I have slept and rested a lot, attended the joyful Bar Mitzvah of a dear friend's son, and done some work (there is more to come) on a Big Theological Tome. Went to a glorious gospel-music Mass today and sang and clapped and felt and heard the Spirit. Not that She doesn't speak quietly too, She does -- but She must sing out and so must we.

Happy Pride Weekend to friends in New York, San Francisco, Paris, and many other places. Thinking of you with love, pride, hope for a welcoming world, and commitment to making it so.

Lost Things and the Power of Memory

My latest essay, "Lost Things and the Power of Memory," is up at the Episcopal Café today. The Café welcomes your comments. (If you don't already have a login there you'll have to get one, but it's free and easy. See here.)

I've also posted the link on Facebook.

Trinity as practical doctrine

A relational ontology* focuses on personhood, relationship, and communion as the modality of all existence. This secures for Christian theology a basis for a theology of God that is inherently related to every facet of Christian life. To say that the doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately a practical doctrine with radical implications for Christian life makes sense when the theology of God is removed from the realm of speculation on God in se** to the real of reflection on God-for-us as revealed in creation, in the face of Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit who brings about communion between God and creature.

* ontology: the study or concept or understanding of being.
** in se: Latin for "in itself" [herself/himself/godself].

If you ponder this passage, you'll see that it is not as dense as it seems at first.

With thanks to FranIAm for drawing my attention to this quote from Catherine Mowry LaCugna's God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. (New York: HarperCollins, 1991, [pbk] 1993), 250.

That conversation took place today. Two days ago, on Saturday afternoon, I wrote this Facebook update:

Three friends from East, South, and West strolled on a yacht club boardwalk talking about the mysteries of the Holy Trinity. Srsly. Now we are writing. (Two theological works, one novel.) Tonight: silliness, boogie-ing, pre-nuptial and natal day (the groom's) festivities.

Who knew? Unlike Paul the BB, I am not among the 0.5 percent of preachers who like to preach on Trinity Sunday. Maybe this will change! I did once write a little something on the Trinity, to my own surprise.

I'll be on the road on Trinity Sunday, two weekends from now, so this is a little advance resource -- though there is never an inappropriate time to ponder the mysteries of the Trinity. (Another thing I thought I'd never say.)

Speaking of FranIAm, if you are a liturgical Christian (or perhaps even if you are not), you will like her "Ascension to Pentecost" series.

Or you can just ponder the Rublev icon.

Light blogging ahead

The feline bishop is taking a short retreat for a combination of prayer and frolic, and I will be away from her for a few days, perhaps blogging, perhaps not -- more likely not since I will be in R&R mode. Meanwhile, watch the Episcopal Café-- I have a new piece coming up there in the Daily Episcopalian section, though I am not exactly sure when. Could be tomorrow, could be next week. But it is, as they say, in the hopper.

Meanwhile, Donald Schell has two lovely pieces in the Daily Episcopalian (link above) called "Making Saints." Ann Fontaine will have an essay up about Ascension this weekend. Enjoy.

Blessed Feast of the Ascension today!

Lost and found

I have been cooking an essay called "Lost Things" which has suddenly started flowing out of my fingers. It may or may not be my next piece for the Episcopal Café, whose editor has been extraordinarily patient with my absence from my contributor duties during this difficult year. I have been musing about the things I have lost or have had stolen from me over the course of my life and about why their absence bothers me. The essay comes straight out of those musings.

In the course of hatching a rough draft, I have remembered once again one of my favorite books from childhood, one which I reread many times as a young adult and which my parents had to give away or leave behind during a major move. I cannot hope to track down that very copy of the book but in these days of the World Wide Web it is possible to find a book that has long been out of print. Every so often I search for it on the internet.

Lo and behold, after two and a half pages of writing I began poking around for the first time in months, and I found not only copies of the book available for sale but confirmation that the book was in fact the one I loved in the form of a picture of the book cover! The first few copies I saw online had either no picture of a cover or a very different picture from the edition I remember. So here is a picture of my beloved book. At some point I will order a copy for myself, or perhaps I will wait till my next trip to France or ask a friend to get it for me. I really want to read the book again but I am just happy it still exists somewhere.


By the way, the book is full of wonderful fables and legends and tales: how certain streets in Paris got their name, what a fortune-teller said to one of the Medici queens (two Medici women married French kings), who built what when, and how the city got its start. That part is not fable but historical fact. It is through this book that I learned about the Parisii, the tribe that gave Paris its name. Paris was a city of boat people, clustered on a few islands that were later consolidated into the two islands we know at the heart of the city. The Romans, of course, took over the islands when they conquered Gaul, did a lot of building, and named the city Lutetia (Lutèce in French), though some sources say that the city's name was already Lutetia by the time the Romans conquered it in 52 BCE. Bits of Roman amphitheatre and baths survive, but the Parisii came first and it is their name that endures.

The book is also chock-full of stories of the saints, and I still remember them: Denis, martyred (on what became known as Mons Martyrium, later abridged to Montmartre) and carrying his head in his hands all the way to what is now the town of St. Denis, where a basilica commemorates him; Geneviève the shepherd girl, praying away the Huns; and others, but those two especially.

Interesting how stories pour out of us when we are ready, or sometimes long after we were ready. I should have known by the grumpy mood of the last few days that I was cooking several pieces of writing. Reports and other mundane word processing stood at the doorway and blocked them. I must get back to those duty-bound words, but now I know what was ready to come forth, and there will be no stopping it.

A sermon for the 2d Sunday of Easter

Here is Sunday's sermon, preached (twice) at All Saints' Episcopal Church, Greensboro, North Carolina.

Student Christian Movement meeting, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2002
Photo: Peter Williams, WCC (World Council of Churches)

Revised Common Lectionary

Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 133
1 John 1:1-2:2
John 20:19-31


Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one
claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was
held in common.
***************Acts 4:32


The Resurrection
may have been a one-time occurrence for Jesus,
but for us,
it is a life.
And it is a life
for Christ in our midst.

Easter is not just one day
in our church.
It is a whole season.
Not only do we have 50 days to let the joy sink in
–or to lift up our hearts, or both—
but we probably need those 50 days
to reflect on what it means
to live after the Resurrection,
to live the Resurrection,
to live after Easter
and be Easter people.

How will we live?
Who and what
will we become
after the Resurrection?

Today’s lessons,
especially the first one from the Acts of the Apostles
and the Gospel story
but also, in a more subtle way, the passage from the First Letter of John,
show us that post-Resurrection life
is a particular kind of community life.

They are not just about what happens to us as individuals
after the Resurrection.
In fact, the Resurrection is not
primarily
about what happens to us as individuals.[1]

I want to invite us today
to reflect on what our life as a community looks like
after the Resurrection:
the community of the friends of Jesus,
the community of the friends of Christ
who is risen and present.

Our focus on this second Sunday of Easter
has often been on Thomas.
There’s nothing wrong with that:
many of us can identify with Thomas,
the one who wants concrete proof.
And for the author of the Gospel of John,
writing a generation or two after Jesus
for a no longer quite new Christian community,
the statement “Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have come to believe” [John 20:29b]
is an important one in a church where most people
were not eyewitnesses,
not contemporaries of Jesus and Mary of Magdala
and Thomas and the rest of the Twelve;
that generation had passed away.
So believing
without that live connection to the beginnings
was important.

We can see other indications of how late the Gospel was written
in the odd and frightening language about “Fear of the Jews”
which makes no sense as language from Jesus’ day,
since Jesus and his friends in the house with the closed doors
were all Jews.
That language was born of a kind of family feud,
much later, when church and synagogue
were going their separate ways.[2]

But back to our friend Thomas
And to what this Gospel story
might mean to us today.
This is not just the story of Thomas.
We can read and hear today’s Gospel
and all of the Scripture readings
to discover how communal
and how bodily
the experience of Resurrection is.

Let me say that again:
Today’s Scripture passages reveal to us
how communal and how bodily
the Resurrection is.

We have a preview
of the communal experience of the post-Resurrection life
in one of the preceding scenes in the same Gospel of John,
the crucifixion scene.

There we see and hear Jesus
helping to create a new household,
one not based on ties of blood,
as he speaks from the Cross
and tells his mother Mary and the Beloved Disciple
that now they are each other’s mother and son:
they are family.

And indeed, the disciple,
whom many have identified as John,
takes Mary into his home.
Jesus’ legacy
is a relationship,
a new kind of family.

If we think back to what we celebrated
in the holy days of Triduum,
the three days that are really one celebration,
Jesus’ legacy to us is deeply and widely communal.
His legacy is the washing of feet and serving of each other;
his legacy is the meal we celebrate in his memory and with his living presence.
They are meant to shape us and build us
again and again
into a body of believers and doers,
a community of friends of Christ
and friends of each other.

Jesus’ resurrection legacy is communal as well.
The texts today
have more than hints about living in community.

They speak of two of the most difficult realities to negotiate in our world
which are also
two of the most essential:

material possessions and reconciliation.

Think about it.

Material and economic realities:
Food,
water,
shelter,
safety,
health care,
and enough money for basic needs.

All this is part of “distributing to each as any had need.”

That’s not easy to do.

And there seems to be a connection
between being “of one heart and soul”
and not laying claim to private property.
I’m not giving you political ideology here,
I’m just having a look at a passage from the Bible
and how we might understand it!
So stay with me.

Material and economic realities:
There they are.
In one of the earliest communities after the resurrection,
living as Easter people involves particular relationships
to material realities,
to the needs of bodies and communities
-- and, we might add today on this Earth Day weekend,
to how we live on the Earth.

Material possessions… and reconciliation.

Reconciliation: right relationship.
Relationships between people:

Living the Resurrection is about
this forgiving of sins Jesus talks about,
--not just the fact that God forgives us, which of course God does,
but the fact that Jesus Christ,
risen and present among us,
gives us the power and the responsibility and the invitation
to forgive each other.

He gives us the power
and the responsibility
and the invitation
to forgive each other.

The prevention and healing of jealousy, of envy, of broken hearts,
of emotional abandonment and abuse,
of estrangement for reasons of
ideology, personal disagreement, national claims,
racism,
discrimination because of caste or religion
or economic class or social status,
the prevention and healing of
war and tyranny:
all this falls under the umbrella of
“be reconciled.”

Not to use people…
To see them as the image of God…
That too is part of living
reconciliation.

What you bind on earth will stay bound.
What you unbind, what you forgive,
will be
and stay
unbound and forgiven
[today’s Gospel says]
with God’s help,
as we say in our baptismal promises,
the promises we renewed at Easter.

We tend to focus on Thomas in this Gospel,
But what if we focus on Jesus?
Thomas says,
I will not believe
unless I see Jesus in some bodily way, and not just that--
unless I see Jesus with his wounds!

Last month a theologian named Nancy Eiesland [pron. EES-lund]
died at the age of 44.
Living all her life with multiple physical challenges,
she was the author of a book with a challenging and surprising title,
The Disabled God.[3]

In the book Dr. Eiesland commented
on the resurrection appearance in the Gospel of Luke,
but that appearance features the same gesture
as the one we see today:
Jesus showing his wounds.

Nancy Eiesland
“proposes that the image of Christ’s resurrected body, with pierced hands a feet and scarred side, offers a way of seeing God as having lived through the fullness of human experience in a very physical way. Not only was [Jesus’] body broken in life,
but the signs, the symbols, of this brokenness remained after the resurrection.”[4]

“‘In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,’ she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can
identify with, she argued…”[5] —
and “the disabled” means not just 43 million people in this country,
but also most of us at some point or another in our lives,
as we age,
or as become ill or suffer accidents.

Christ crucified and risen
“…is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him…”
It is not a divine punishment
or an opportunity for a cure.[6]

What happens when we view Christ this way?

What happens when we view God this way?

We Christians often have a thing about perfection.
Does Jesus Christ bring us perfection?
Not in the sense of a particular kind of beauty or
bodily wholeness.[7]
We meet in this season
a risen, wounded Christ
in a new kind of community.

We also tend to confuse resurrection
with immortality of the soul.
But the texts here do not talk about
immortality of the soul.
They proclaim
the resurrection of the body
and the victory of God’s justice:
the healing of the earth
and of society.
The resurrection is not,
as my mentor Krister Stendahl put it
in his inimitable way, about what happens to
“little me.”
When we pray as Jesus taught us,
We pray for God’s kin(g)dom,
not for our own immortality.[8]

What we do with our money;
whether we all have food;
how we feed each other;
how we walk on the earth;
how we view and treat each other’s bodies;
how we envision the Body of Christ;
how we go about the hard work of forgiveness
day after day after day:
This is the risen life.
This is Christ among us.
We are the community of Christ’s friends.

Alleluia!
Christ is risen!

[1] See Krister Stendahl, “Immortality Is Too Much and Too Little,” in Meanings: The Bible as Document and as Guide (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 193-102. This essay was originally a lecture at the 1972 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College and was first published in the conference proceedings in 1973.

[2] See Jane Carol Redmont, “Fear of the Jews,” Lectionary Reflections for Easter 2 (C), A Globe of Witnesses, The Witness, April 15, 2004. http://www.thewitness.org/agw/redmont041504.html

[3] Nancy Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (Abingdon Press, 1994).

[4] Nancy Erickson, review of Nancy Eiesland, The Disabled God, United Church of Christ Disabilities Ministries 4/7/07, http://www.uccdm.org/2003/04/-7/the-disabled-god/ , accessed 4/18/09.

[5] Douglas Martin, “Nancy Eiesland Is Dead at 44; Wrote of a Disabled God.” The New York Times, March 22, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22eiesland.html?em

[6] Ibid.

[7] I preached the weekend after Susan Boyle became an international sensation after her vocal performance on a British reality show, but chose not to mention her because most of the congregation, especially the one at the early liturgy, was not active on the internet, where hundreds of thousands of people had viewed and heard Ms. Boyle’s performance and read commentaries about her and attitudes toward her before and after her performance. The live audience and judges’ initial attitude and their surprise and delight were a consequence of their perception of Ms. Boyle as plain and ugly; the beauty of her voice and delivery stunned them.

[8] Stendahl, “Immortality.”