Τι εἰναι αυτό; What is that?

I shared this on FB but it needs more viewers. You owe yourself this five and a half minutes.



"... my innocent little boy"

h/t to SYNTHEOPOIESIS † ΣΥΝΘΕΟΠΟΙΗΣΗΣ
--the BB

There was another wedding in town today

This very sweet young couple met on campus (Davidson College) and used to hang out at the Soda Shop. So they took a few pics there. She was lovely and he was very tender and loving toward her. Warmed my heart, I tell you. Blessings upon them and their life together!

We had to stop for a little something before dinner - an incredible meal at Bucci's on Depot Street, which I highly recommend - and while chatting after my chocolate malt I just had to get a photo of the young lovers.

--the BB

Happy Valentine's Day, ALL you lovers!

This is so sweet. I saw it at Americablog.

Tom Goss sings "Till The End."



--the BB

Words of wisdom from Richard Rohr

This is part of a sentence from Richard Rohr's Radical Grace quoted by MikeF at his blog. The post merits a visit.
--the BB

Advent thoughts – Wednesday of Advent 2

Don’t you just love repackaging? That moment when you are pushing your cart down the supermarket aisle and reach for a familiar product, then notice that the packaging is different. The brand group in some marketing department has tweaked the design. It’s still familiar but the graphics are not quite the ones you remember, the color palette is still the same (don’t want to waste recognizability, after all) but you know it’s different and the package even says: “New package, same great taste!”

So, why change the package? Good question. You have a sneaking suspicion that the dimensions are not what you remember. The box feels the tiniest bit thicker, but is it shorter?

If you have the time and inclination to compare the old and new packages, you may find that what has happened is that where you bought 13.2 ounces last week, you bought 12.9 ounces this week. For the same price as before. Not enough to bother about on your end, but a nice shift in margin for the manufacturer. Or perhaps amid the very noticeable label change you did not notice that the can is thinner, still functional but flimsier than before. Less expensive aluminum, more profits.

It is a small modern example of manipulating the perception of the customer in order to maximize prophet: a very ancient practice.

‘We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’ (Amos 8:5b-6)

Actually, what Amos denounced was more than manipulated perception, it was outright cheating with falsified weights and measures in order to cheat people. And most of the customers were agrarian peasants living on the edge. We will sell a scant measure, we will put our thumb on the scale, we will market inferior product, we will insist on full price. It all accumulates until the poor customer is driven into debt and bankruptcy. And then you really have them at your mercy.

Sound like the American banking system, mortgage brokers, credit card companies? I thought it might.

And God don’t like it one bit.

Turning to the Apocalypse we have the letter to the first of seven churches. Note that at the end of each letter it says “hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” Each letter, though full of details related to specific churches in John’s time, is addressed to all the churches. They still speak to us.

‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false. I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.’ (Apocalypse 2:2-4)

Because the text does not then explain what “the love you had at first” means we are left to speculate whether it is our love of Christ or our love of one another. The First Letter of John makes it clear that we really cannot separate the two. So, whether either or both, we have fallen away from love.

How easily we fall from charity. How long does it take you from receiving the Body and Blood of Christ until you make the first gossipy or unkind remark, curse or flip someone off in traffic, or wish evil on someone? Is it measured in days? Hours? Minutes? You don’t need to tell me and I’d rather not tell you, but you can guess because y’all know I’m snarky and am given to less than gentle rants.

The Anglican Communion wrestles with our inability to remain in charity because lines are drawn and folks are refusing to come to table with each other. What is or is not “core doctrine” is in dispute. Differing views on the Bible and its interpretation and application have become chasms not to be bridged instead of differences of perspective.

Jesus seems very insistent and persistent on the issue of love. He’s funny that way.

They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. (Matthew 23:5)

And don’t get me started on the puffed up and proud, especially if they happen to be clergy. A friend recently commented to me that ALL priests are vestment queens, no distinctions being made for gender or orientation. Well, yes, we are human and vain and we love putting on pretty things, even the butchest males among us. It may not be vestments, however, but the tendency to make certain that those present know who is a cardinal rector, whose numbers and pledges have grown, who got published in some Anglican quarterly that none of the rest of us reads, who has the most degrees, and who has the bishop’s ear. We are talking phylacteries a yard wide and fringes that trail behind us for half a league.

Jesus says it’s all crap.

O God, help us all to see what is truly real and what is illusion, to know what truly matters and what is indifferent, and always to show compassion and affection for one another, lest we lose our love, forsake justice, and turn our backs on you. Amen.

I will confess my iniquity and be sorry for my sin.
O LORD, do not forsake me; be not far from me, O my God.
Make haste to help me, O Lord of my salvation. (Psalm 38:18, 21-22)

--the BB

Change Is the Only Constant

Change Is the Only Constant

We are not who we were yesterday,
nor yet what we shall be tomorrow.
Our world shifts, and we shift,
every aspect of our being in transition
from subatomic particles to our character.
Today you felt a shift in your feelings
for someone you have gotten close to—
too soon to know just what happened
or how it will sort itself out.
The fact that some deep stuff is involved
becomes obvious when you sense that
you have to reach for the word “Love”
to talk about it, though love is not
some moment or decision or fixed thing either.

Love grows and develops, it is many-sided
and many-layered, you cannot define it.
You can know it by certain distinguishing marks,
so to speak, and by its fruits.
Love will anchor you when you need to be held fast
and uproot you when you need to let go,
yet it will always serve life,
even when it embraces death.
Love will increase your compassion,
your willingness to understand where others come from,
what disasters, blessings, detours shaped their journey,
what scars they bear too deep to be spoken of,
and this is not just compassion for your beloved
or for those whose love carries you in their hearts—
it will be for all beings.
Love will show itself in respect: for others,
for yourself, for creation, and for your Creator—
you will want to treat all things and persons well.
Love overcomes sin and all manner of evil,
not by power but by its ability to embrace
all things and to forgive and make new beginnings possible.
Love is truthful and will not tolerate evasion, illusion,
deceit, manipulation. Love has nothing to hide.
Many passions know shame, and should, but love does not.
Love will be gentle with you but it will not coddle you;
it will hold you to account for your decisions, words, thoughts,
actions and non-actions and their consequences;
by doing so it takes you seriously
and reminds you that you matter.
It is a sad thing that we hurt those we love;
given this painful reality, remember that love itself
will not use or abuse others and love will seek
the restoration of relationship where breaks occur.
Love does not exploit, it does not make excuses,
it does not seek to justify itself, it does not blame or judge—
what it does is see clearly and makes the truth known.
Love is not cowardly, nor saccharine and sentimental;
it has a backbone and it can outlast mountains.

We do not create love, we cannot make it happen,
it is in the very fabric of the universe and is something
of the cosmic dance with the energies of God
whirling all the worlds into being,
a dance we share in. We open our hearts to love,
to the dance, to the rhythms of life,
allowing them to flow through us,
and the tides of those energies and the rhythms of that dance
come to us in times and manners we cannot control.

So as all things change in the endless interchange
of many dancers joined to the One Dancer in the One Dance,
we are changed and changing. For all that,
and for reasons known to the Dancer alone,
we are allowed to shape the dance,
to determine our part, even within the constraints
of all those givens that we cannot alter or evade.
My friend, be deliberate as you choose
which rhythm to step to and how
you shape the next figure of that dance.
By the time you take that next step,
all things will have shifted yet again,
but you are contributing to the ever-unfolding pattern.
Make beauty, make life, open your heart
to feel all things in their uniqueness and reality,
songs and sorrow alike, know them,
and a deep joy will spring up within you,
the joy of the Dancer.
Do not fear change,
choose life!

August 27, 2002
(c) by PES

Advent thoughts - Wednesday of Advent 1

First lines of second verse, Verbum supernum prodiens, Hymn # 63

Light for our darkness! Vision for our blindness! We cry for a sign, a marker, a clue--some means of finding our way out of the mess we make of things. How can we be delivered from our illusions, our deceits, the trivia with which we divert our attention and clutter our lives?

Psalm 12 concludes with that frightening truth.

Perhaps we can join Bartimaeus and cry out to Jesus that he might open our eyes. The song from my Baptist childhood just came to mind:

Open my eyes that I may see
glimpses of truth thou hast for me....
Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine.

--Clara H. Scott, 1895
#454 in The United Methodist Hymnal

What a bouleversement [I'm grasping here, people, and the French word for overturning things just sounds right] there will be when the scales fall from our eyes. Imagine how Saul of Tarsus felt when he looked at the same world as before and saw it in a totally new way, his values suddenly reversed!

Some of us may be tax-collectors (traitors) and prostitutes (or at least sluts). We all carry inner shames and burdens of guilt, both real and false. Some of us are perhaps a bit too proud of being reprobates (mea culpa), troublemakers (we like to call it being prophetic), mockers and scoffers (we call it being sophisticated), and fools for Christ (when we are actually just acting like damned fools, period). But we always find someone else we can point to with "righteous" judgment, those whom we deem the true outcasts, the unwashed, the unworthy, the wicked, the unredeemable.

Kris Kristofferson sang "Jesus was a Capricorn," a song dear to me back in my first seminary days. Here is the chorus:

'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty decent folks can frown on
If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me

Well, this is what Jesus had to say about where we stand:

“Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax-collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.” (Matthew 21:31b-32)

The merciful message buried in this deliberately shocking admonition is that though "the wicked" will precede us "righteous" folk, their getting there "ahead of us" still implies that we will get there too. Late and shamefaced, perhaps, but once there it will not matter when or how we got there. And the gates of the New Jerusalem are never--I repeat--never shut.

--the BB

LET IN THE LIGHT!

Solar Flares

Yesterday I had the sad task of officiating at the memorial service for a fifteen-year-old boy who died by accident. The offsetting grace of such a tragedy was the outpouring of love that occurred amid the devastating loss.

It is difficult to offer solace without resorting to platitudes. And. I. Hate. Platitudes. They ring so false and only make things worse.

I was incredibly proud of the teenage boys who got up in front of a multitude and spoke. They were nervous, uncomfortable, fidgety, and very brave. They gave voice to their sorrow and to their friendship. They were a living testimonial to love--deep caring, deep loss--altogether not what they usually think about or talk about, not what one usually hears from lads their age. They were warriors and they were shattered children all at once. I am so glad they spoke because the rest of us needed to hear the truth of who he was for his friends.

All the stories were moving.

I was startled to find myself carried back to when I was seventeen. One of my classmates, a really nice guy, took his own life. Suddenly he was not in the desk in front of me. He did not show up and then we heard about the gun and the note. None of us knew why. In later life I have my guesses but his death remains a mystery, and with an ending like that his life remains a great mystery as well. None of us knew how to make it better--too young to know yet that we couldn't. But we thronged to his service because we had to do something to say we cared.

The kids yesterday were far closer to Frogger than I was to Frank. But I found myself choked up for both of them and for all youths whose lives are cut off, so soon, too soon. So I spoke of the truth I know, broken human hearts.

I urged those present not to rush to close over the cracks in their broken hearts. It is our defensive tendency to wish to be invulnerable but we aren't and we can't be. We try to ward off the hurt and prevent the pain. Hearts that are walled off, however, are cut off from community. It is precisely through the cracks that light, and life, and love can flow into and out of our hearts. The raw spots are where we can be real, can feel, can know the truth.

Well, I wasn't nearly that eloquent because I was speaking impromptu. It comes out more polished a day later at a keyboard. I just wanted those who were hurting to know that it was all right to hurt, to feel, and be vulnerable. I wanted the youths especially not to try to build up defensive walls. The world will lead them down that deadly path soon enough.

As for the Anglican Communion and my beloved Episcopal Church, that's pretty shattered at the moment too. I wish we could let our brokenness be a means for God's light, and life, and love to pour into us and through us and out of us. I do trust the Holy Spirit. And, in the long run, I trust the People of God. Clergy, especially bishops, and even more so primates--not so much. You might think funny collars just suddenly make us all stupid and headstrong. But, as Baptism is indissoluble, we clergy are still part of the People of God. So I will trust that God's purposes will be realized even through our brokenness. After all, that is how God has always operated and I don't think the Holy One is about to change methodologies all of a sudden.

Yes, we're cracked. Broken vessels. Cracked pots, indeed. May the Uncreated Light flow among our cracks with all manner of healing grace.

And to Frank and Frogger I say, may you and all souls rest in peace and rise with Christ in glory.
--the BB

So, what is the Anglican Communion all about?

God's loving embrace, that's what.

Photo of my dear friend JoAnne Bennett the day she was ordained a priest by the Rt Rev Wm E Swing in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco.

All the rest, my friends, is commentary. Or irrelevant.

--the BB