Of Prayer and Polity

In a few days Katharine and I leave for Anaheim California where we will attend the seventy sixth General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I am one of four clerical deputies representing the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast in the House of Deputies. Even though the Episcopal Church is relatively small compared to other denominations, the General Convention is the largest legislative body in the world. There are some 850 members of the House of Deputies comprised of clergy and lay, four of each from each diocese; and there are some 200 plus members of the House of Bishops, active and retired. So when the Church speaks, it speaks from a broad and diverse base.

Any resolution or canonical action, or constitutional consideration must be concurred to by both houses for such action to be adopted. The bicameral polity of the General Convention (GC) was intentionally patterned after the newly formed United States Congress in 1789. Hence we are one of just a few democratic provinces in the entire Anglican Communion. Most other provinces are governed strictly by hierarchy; and statements made by those provinces are made unilaterally by the archbishop of the province. In our case we speak as the majority of the church through respectful debate and due consideration of matters of importance to the whole of the church. It is a fascinating process in which to participate.

The GC, though, is more than passing legislation. It is punctuated throughout by prayer and worship; and ardent conversation. There are celebrations affirming the many ministries that abound in the Episcopal Church. It feels more like a big family reunion. Sometimes there is a family fight, but mostly it is a grand gathering of people of good will and conscience and intellect intentionally seeking with all diligence what this church of ours can be; how we can make a meaningful difference in the Gospel matters of our world. I am honored to represent our diocese, and honored to be a priest of this church. I ask your prayers for me and for the seventy sixth General Convention.

Almighty God, source of all wisdom and

understanding, be present with those who take counsel

in the seventy sixth General Convention of the Episcopal Church

for the renewal and mission of your Church.

Teach us in all things to seek first your honor and glory.

Guide us to perceive what is right, and grant us both the courage

to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through

Jesus Christ our Savior. (BCP p. 818)

Of the Sacred Feminine

In the beginning was the mother God. So writes Jane Harrison anthropologist, linguist and scholar on ancient religions, pacifist and suffragette born in England in the 1870's. She found in her work in the early twentieth century that the origins of Greek religion came from fertility cults which worshiped the Goddess, the sacred Mother. Religious iconography throughout the seventh century B.C.E. was decidedly female. It is not until the sixth century that figures of the male gods appear. There is an ancient Persian myth called the myth of Mardok in which Mardok the rebellious warrior murders his mother who is the queen, and thus patriarchy and the ways of patriarchy are born.

According to Proverbs, the figure of Wisdom, she the queen of heaven, is the one who delivers Israel from the Red Sea; it is she who leads Israel through the Sinai desert; it is she who teaches the way of Torah; it is she who prepares the Eucharistic feast; she who stands in the marketplace and at the cross roads, in the midst of human commerce, demanding justice and mercy and hope. But alas, she is finally exiled from earth, banished to her ivory tower aloof in the heavens. But she still is, and she makes her appearance among us now and again.

We have been watching in horror in the news, thanks to Internet technology, the crackdown upon protesters in Iran. The primary face of the victim of this brutal abuse of power is the educated woman. Patriarchy and its modus operandi of violence fears most of all the sacred feminine. Patriarchy fears justice and peace and forbearance and freedom, because it would cede its grip on power and control in favor of the common good. Matriarchy is mutual and collaborative. Patriarchy is self interested.

We are seeing in our own time another attempt at exiling our Mother God, controlling, binding her for the sake of power and greed. We see her dying in the streets of Tehran; we see her occupied and held hostage in Gaza; in every act of violence she is battered: Just War an insidious illusion wrought by patriarchy. Who will speak for her? Who will call out the death spiraling ways of warfare and greed and corruption and violence? Who will free her from her exile, so that her ways become the ways of earth. "Come to me and I will give you rest; take my yoke upon you and learn from me", she pleads in the voice of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel; "for I am gentle and self giving of heart (my translation of the Greek); and you will find rest for your souls." Who will set her free? Who will break the rattling spear of patriarchy? It is now time....Who?

Of Small Things

When I arrived at the office this morning there was an older African American woman in the lobby in conversation with Mary R. and the volunteer. I assumed like so many of poor Blacks in our neighborhood, folks we see on a daily basis, she was another who was here seeking financial assistance. The volunteer informed me that she was here in fact to give us money. I was taken aback. Over a year ago, she told us, her daughter had come to All Saints needing financial help with a prescription. We were able on that day to help her, and bought the medicine she needed. This woman, the mother, had been instructed by her daughter, now that she had a job, to give to All Saints ten per cent of her latest paycheck in gratitude for what we did for her. It seemed such a small thing this bit of grace we were able to share; but for this woman and her daughter it was huge, so much so that their lives had been touched in a profound way.

Such is the way of ministry, the way of scattering seeds...small things that bear a sonorous resonance within the very fabric of the universe...lives changed; dignity brought to bear; a new creation at hand; things are changed profoundly with every small act of God, the potential of which we bear in our very hands and hearts... I think we all need to hear it; I know I certainly do: that God comes mostly in small and unexpected ways; that the seemingly small things we do for our neighbor, for the stranger, for the sick, the compromised; in every act of dignifying the shamed, small things mostly.....in these small things the heavens are brought near and God's gracious commonweal is made alive. Such is the way of things in God's economy...a collaborative, mutual caring for each other in ways no matter how small that divine grace is made real; for in God's alchemical economy these small things become profound and transformative...the mundane becomes shining gold. Every act of love no matter how small a quantity, bears the quality of God's reign here and now. Love defies quantity...Love is love, no matter how small...and I saw this morning what gratitude and praise love brings.

We are to scatter the seeds of love, no matter how small...It is quite enough for us to sow...for our God, through our hands and hearts, will redeem all in all...one small thing unto another.

Of Liturgy and Transformation

Liturgy, derived from the Latin Leitourgas, means literally "the people working." But working for what? I was once at a wedding rehearsal and the mother of the bride didn't like the way we were doing a certain thing in the marriage rite and was vocal about it. My response was that my job and every one's job when we gather here is to make the liturgy beautiful. That is the sole end of all worship: to enact and embody beauty. We don't gather here chiefly to propound doctrine and dogma, though it is important to say in a ritualized way, outwardly and visibly, what we believe (and that is in itself speculative); but we gather chiefly to celebrate the beauty of being loved, the beauty of being called on to love, and the beauty of what it means to be human; the beauty of living amid the beauty of our planet in its remaking. Beauty is transformative. We are changed in the perceiving of it and in the making of it....and the world is changed too. The world is changed by beauty made outward and visible. To experience the beautiful changes everything.

As the people working for beauty, we, liturgists extraordinaire, the people of faith and conscience, are world changers, world makers..that is our sole vocation:... enacting, embodying beauty in its infinite unfolding...music and art and nature, outward and visible signs of how we are made, how the world is made...the truth of the matter... the presence of evil notwithstanding. Our Church Liturgy at its best should celebrate and point to how the created order is rightly made; that it is imagination that turns the spheres, the creation dancing into being to a song....and the song's lyrics include something about a meal graciously served; something about taking care of the least of us; something about kindness and mercy and justice and sacrifice and dignity, standing in the face of the not-rightness in our world...and the whole of it still, all beautiful, dynamic, unfolding ever as we speak... a sacred entanglement in the labors of new birth.

In the beginning God looked at all of what God had made and called it beautiful; and as God continues God's own liturgical vocation of singing the world into being, bearing beauty from the source, beauty that is the source, we dear people of the Work of the Way are implied profoundly, and that is a beautiful thing.

Of Spirit and Advocacy

We are now in the season after Pentecost, the season of the Spirit, that enigmatic third person of the Trinity. In Luke the Spirit shows up fifty days after the Resurrection. In John the Spirit shows up Easter evening. But in truth the Spirit is forever on the move. For Israel in the first century the Spirit had grown silent during the brutal occupation of Rome. At Jesus' resurrection the Spirit for the early Jewish Christians returns empowering their communities for the way ahead. John names the Spirit the Advocate. So for us the modern day spirit-filled, we are to live lives of passionate advocacy.

The theme of this year's General Convention is Ubuntu, which is a Zulu word that means I in you and you in me. It is a word that calls for intentional community, that we live not for ourselves, but that we live for the good of the whole, something quite counter cultural in the west. Ubuntu is the life of the Spirit, that we become advocates for our brother and sister; that our well being is intimately connected to the well being of the other. We become Advocates for the voiceless of our world, advocates for mercy and compassion; advocates for peace and nonviolence; advocates for justice and dignity. Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit is the very revelation of our vocation, what we are made for: that we live as the community of faith as the Advocate, the incarnation of the Spirit, given to a world in want of saving breath.

This is the same Spirit that moved over the deep in the very beginning, the life force, both matter and energy, wind from the stars, that creates and recreates our world to the tune of an ancient and sacred song. In the Spirit we are co creators with God, we in God and God in us, reconciling the world into the gracious commonweal, that God imagines; we the bearers of God's imaginative Spirit that lives so that all may live in the new creation that comes as a song in the wind in every act of advocacy for the least of us. We saw in the flesh this Sunday past what the Spirit can do: The Kuot family now has a home all their own through the power of the Spirit...they in us and we in them... Spirit alive and real. The Spirit is no ghost, but flesh and blood, bringing dignity to the beloved of God's world, and we have proof, do we not?

Of Knowing Ignorance and Ignorant Knowledge

Mary Robert and I just attended the Spring Clergy conference of our diocese. Dr. Catherine Keller, process theologian extraordinaire was our presenter. In her opening lecture she spoke of two modalities of knowing having to do with knowing self, knowing one's environment and knowing God. The first mode of knowing she calls knowing ignorance. This is the vast field of what we don't know, that infinite horizon of truth that we approach with great reverence and humility. This is the luminous infinite field of knowledge that calls us into new revelation and into truth told anew...ever illusive and ever present...ever unfolding from its hiddenness, offering truth speaking, singing the world into being... new paradigms, new things and ways. This is the enlightening presence of mystery that draws, beguiles seeker and mystic and pilgrim like bees to honey...It requires diligent relationality, humility, persistence and courage. It is an intimate process that is life long and perhaps beyond...It requires strength of the imagination...and will surely surprise and awe.

The second mode of knowledge she calls ignorant knowledge. This is a dogmatic ideological fixed set of beliefs that eschews process, openness and possibility...a willful ignorance as it were. This type of knowing insists on its own way...and scapegoats that which threatens its self sufficiency and certainty. It is the mode of knowledge that on an institutional level gets us into wars. It is ignorant knowledge that has perpetuated global warming up and against a decided agreement in the scientific community on the causes of climate change. Rush Limbaugh, and bigotry in its myriad manifestations, icons of ignorant knowledge.

We must live into our mystic tendencies as people of God; we must embrace the beautiful potential of the great unknown that wants more than all things to be known intimately. It is God's way, is it not, that to truly know, one must go the way of unknowing, as T.S. Eliot puts it. To know the light, one must embrace the glowing dark. There seems to be an emerging trend these days among the world of nations that embraces the art of collaboration...an institutional modus operandi of respecting what we don't know about each other, and therefore being open to knowing more truly each other...a new relational way of solving problems and creating collaborative potential...a way of humble and respectful knowing of things hidden before...an artful and gracious process of becoming the sacred Commonweal God intends for all people in all places. Perhaps as humankind we have begun in earnest to embrace our knowing ignorance.

Seek, O pilgrim, the great unknown, that luminous other that calls to us from just nearby...and you will begin to know, face to face, God's own knowledge of a paradise here and now, that will enlighten, to the utter surprise and joy of all, the universe, in all her infinite beauty, entire.

Of God's Greening Love

I received something of a cryptic E-mail a few days ago. At first it looked like spam, but the sender's name was vaguely familiar, so I opened it. It was titled something like "in praise of God's greening love," and it went on to talk about the advent of spring, and the new gardens all around, and the renewing of the earth. It was a little too sentimental for my taste, or as my sons would say, cheesy, but I've not been able to get it off my mind.

It is told that once St. Francis of Assisi was asked what he would do if he knew for sure that the end of the world was imminent. His answer was that he would keep on hoeing his garden. We are the gardeners of Eden. We live in a paradise not lost, a theology the church likes to foist upon us, but in a marvelous paradise in which we are created to enable and participate in the greening, the restoring of it, from year to year, from season to season. K, to the curiosity of our incredulous neighbors, has dug up the grass in our front yard and planted a parterre vegetable garden...now at the center of our comings and goings...and we see from day to day its greening...its germinating potential...the hope it engenders...a living and apt metaphor for who God is and what God does. God is all about greening, setting life loose, making hope alive.

Our God hoes the garden, God's life and labor, bringing forever and always, new life. We know, if we but pay attention to the signs of nature around us, that God forever and always comes to us amid the cold barrenness of winter, bringing green shoots from the earth which will renew and sustain the life force, our souls as natural as the plants of a garden, raised, renewed, a new germination towards hope and love and life. So we never despair...for even in our dark winters...God is forever greening. God's greening life is the one life and light we forever share in profound intimacy, and life which we forever bear to our world with artful gardeners' hands. Get hoeing gardeners for winter is past and it is for us, God's sons and daughters, heirs of the garden, to bring life and life abundant.