Things that Fit Together

Let me hear what God will  speak, ... Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. God will give what is good… from Psalm 85

Did you ever ponder how some things in life just fit together – like Advent and Christmas, mustard and baloney, bread and butter, popcorn and movies – you know what I’m talking about – some things just naturally seem to go together. However – because life is what life is – the things that go together don’t always remain together. Like all the plastic food containers without their lids or that one lonely sock in the bottom of your suitcase.

I’m sure – you – if you are 7 or older, realize that sometimes throughout the days and months and years some of the things that belong together – for whatever reason – get separated, become alienated and lost. Maybe you - and your best childhood friend - or your lover - are estranged. Perhaps you are separated from someone you love – someone who has had great impact on your life and now you aren’t speaking and it feels too hard or hurtful to reach out for renewal and reconciliation. Well, this is a good season for you.

As we move through Advent - waiting, preparing, reflecting and repenting, we are reminded once more that this journey offers expectation of a time when God will embody within us the realm of God – the kingdom of God - which is now and still to come. The Psalmist from today’s reading forecasts a time when things and places in our lives that appear to be  separated will be healed and reconciled. The Psalmist tells us of a glorious day of salvation when love and faithfulness will meet together, righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

Difficult to imagine isn’t it – difficult to discern this time of peace and hope within the world we know and experience. I think that’s why we need Advent and Christmas – a period of expectation and reflection as the season points us again and again – year after year – to the birth of Jesus. I don’t understand this but what I believe is - the birth of Christ changed creation and the order of things as we have known them. His birth put something new into motion – into action – God’s plan to bring together the things that belong together and have throughout time become separated – you know – you and me, our neighbors and friends - us and God. The Psalmist sings and rejoices for the day peace and righteousness will reign throughout the universe.

As you reflect upon your life and loved ones this season – upon the things that belong together but are separated, may you find love, hope, joy and peace in God’s never failing promise that what has been broken can and will be made whole.

We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are all over stimulated and drowning in options. We are trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. That is what built our culture. It is not all bad, but it you transfer that to the spiritual life, it is pure heresy.– Fr. Richard Rohr from Preparing for Christmas

Growing up I didn’t know Mary much. She was that lovely, flawless Madonna, Jesus’ mother, and that was about it. As I developed a new understanding of Mary theologically, Mary has been a companion and model of Christian servanthood. As Mother of Sorrows, she has walked with me in my own loss and prays with me for the grieving. As advocate for peace, she guides my prayers for those victimized by violence.

Each liturgical year we return to the Mary of the Annunciation for what she can teach us:   her humility, trust, obedience, her powerful “Yes,” risking all that she is to become a vessel of the holy will of God. This season, though, it is a certain kind of receptivity to what life brings her that I want to try to understand, that I want to shape me. In whatever form the divine “messenger” came, it was a staggering experience breaking into her life with astounding words about her future. But rather than doubting, feeling unworthy, or running screaming into the hills, she is described as “perplexed”—puzzled, bewildered, wondering. She listens deeply, her fears stilled, and she begins to “ponder.” This meditative and reflective stance, different from needing to discount, decide, manage, judge, keeps her open.  She asks a question, but it is not like Zachariah’s desire for certainty and proof in his own divine encounter—“how shall I know”; it is a wondering question: “How can this be?”

Mary’s receptivity requires a kind of spaciousness in the self that doesn’t urge us to quick conclusions, that allows us to hold uncomfortable oppositions together without canceling one out, that bids us stay in the midst of all that is swirling around in us. It involves, according to Fr. Rohr, a “gradual emptying of our attachment to our small self so that there is room for a new conception and a new birth. There must be some displacement before there can be any new ‘replacement.’ Mary is the archetype of such self-displacement and surrender.”

Prayer

I need this Mary right now. And many I know do. Rather than acting out of fear of the uncertain future or painful loss or trying to control God’s movement in our lives with a worthiness contest, may we pray into the spacious expansiveness of waiting, in the full trust that the grace-filled birth already begun in us will indeed become a holy child. Amen.

Meditation on World AIDS Day 2009

They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer. Psalm 78:35

Today is World AIDS Day, observed every year on December 1st. The yearly remembrance and awareness day was established by The World Health Organization in 1988. Today, over a million Americans are estimated to be living with the disease and worldwide well over 33 million people are living with HIV. It is a day that governments, many faith traditions, community organizations, and individuals are provided with an opportunity to focus attention on the global AIDS epidemic. 

I remember the first time I saw the AIDS quilt in the mid 1990's. Even in those days, there were enough panels that together covered an entire convention center floor. It was a sobering sight, more profound than viewing acres of headstones in a cemetery, because each of the panels was a personal product of love, carefully sewn together by those who made valiant attempts to sum up entire lifetimes in small rectangles of fabric. They varied as much as the personalities of those memorialized, and I noticed that the most repeated phrase in the religious ones often made reference to God as the Rock, the one immovable source of comfort and stability in the early days of the sudden epidemic's unexpected tragedies.

Most visitors that day were either silent or spoke in hushed tones and as I said my own silent prayers remembering many dear friends memorialized in cotton and felt, I began to realize that, whether we knew it or not, were not on a cold convention floor at all, but were reverently strolling on that same Rock that is always there to bear us in times of our greatest losses; the Rock of peace that passes understanding holding up those with faith as well as those without.

Have a Fair Trade Christmas

So the stores are playing Christmas music and as I visit Tampa this past weekend for a friends wedding and the highs are in the 70s and 80s, so the holiday season must be upon us. But as we gear up for the celebrations, the spiritual reflections, and the traditions, now is a good time to start deliberately planning how we can make this Christmas a just Christmas. In other words, how can we subvert systems of oppression and exploitation through our holiday habits. And while I think some of those habits might need to be reevaluated, some of them are beautiful and hold special meaning. So while I am wary of over-consumption, we still practice the giving of gifts in my family. I just do my best to therefore try to make my consumption ethical.

So I’m excited by Trade As One’s campaign this holiday season to encourage all of us to buy Fair Trade gifts this Christmas. We turn our traditions into a way to help and love others through such purchases. And if enough of us do it, we can make a big difference. They write:

    Think about this: Just One Fair Trade purchase from every American churchgoer this Christmas would lift one million families out of abusive poverty for one whole year. Let’s make sure that when gifts are given, they speak of the sort of world that Jesus came to show us — one where the last is first, where the poor are included, the sick are healed, and the captive is set free.

Fantastic idea. 

There are numerous ways one can support Fair Trade or other justice causes this Christmas. We are excited this year to find a Fair Trade Chocolate Advent Calendar. And I take time with the kids to support families around the world by purchasing animals from Heifer International. But there are numerous places online where one can find Fair Trade items to give this Christmas. I’ve listed some of my favorite sites below. But all it takes is just a little tweak to our holiday habits this Christmas to help show love to people around the world.

Clothing and Accessories

    * Be The Change Elements

    * Earth Creations

    * Ecoland

    * Fair Indigo

    * Greenheart

    * Indigenous Designs

    * Mata Traders

    * No Sweat Apparel

    * Rawganique

    * Simple Shoes

    * Tinctoria Designs

    * Tom’s Shoes

Food, Coffee, and Gifts

    * Cafe Justo

    * Equal Exchange

    * Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee

    * Natural Candy Store

    * SERRV

    * Taraluna

    * Ten Thousand Villages

    * Trade As One

    * World of Good

Other

    * Fair Trade Sports

    * Reusable Bags

So have yourself a merry little fair trade Christmas. Celebrate traditions and do some good while you are at it.

Thanksgiving Meditation

I have to confess that, sometimes, I have a hard time being totally present with the person or in the place that I am. Instead, I find myself thinking about chores still to be done, what I will say next in the conversation, or where I have to rush off to next. However, I became aware recently of an activity in which I found myself totally present: weeding.

One afternoon, I spent some time in a row of onions overgrown by some weeds. It was during this time that I found myself totally present in the activity; there was no thought of anything else. I forgot about my “to do” list or what would be happening the next day. My mind was nowhere else.

As I pulled the weeds, I noticed the detail of each—the shape of the leaves, the length of the roots, their color. As my hands began to get dirty, I smelled the freshness of the earth. As I worked, I felt the wind blow and the warmth of the sun, and I heard the sounds all around. Then, I noticed her watching me, something my otherwise busy mind would not have paid any attention to.

She was as ordinary as I was, but at the same time very beautiful. She would move almost in synch with me as I moved down the row. My activity did not seem to bother her as she sat very still a few feet away. For whatever reason, she shared this time with me, and, because I was totally present, I noticed.

On this day of thanksgiving, as you spend time with family and friends, I invite you to really be present. Don’t think about the things still left to do at work or that you have to hurry off to Aunt "Suzy's". Instead, as you share a meal together, reconnect with those you love. As you play with the children, let yourself get lost in their world for a while. As you spend time outside, observe creation all around you. If you do, I think, at the end of the day, you will be able to say, “I have seen remarkable things today.”

The weeding of that onion row ended way too soon. As I stood up, the moth, sensing my disconnect, flew up and faded into the distance. As I watched her fly away, I felt grateful for her presence that day. Maybe she had been there a number of other times as I worked, but, that day, I was there with her as well.

I hope that this Thanksgiving Day I find myself really present with those I love. My prayer is that you can do the same.

Come to the Episcopal Church Roman Catholics

Now that the Pope welcomes unhappy Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church - We Anglicans welcome those who are Roman Catholics who don't like the homophobia and sexism in their Church to come to our branch of the One Holy Catholic Church. The Episcopal Church Welcomes you! I think this is good evangelism for those of us who open our arms for all God's children.

Manifesto from Bishop John Spong

October 15, 2009

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.

I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.

The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

– John Shelby Spong